Abstract

‘Physical SimVillage' is a study about applying Tangible User Interface and the 3-D game system to support communication between people who have differing levels of expertise about spatial relationship in order to establish mutual understanding in architectural design projects. . This project would also allow dwellers or users of space to envision and interact with the design of their own habitat more efficiently. Simultaneously, ‘Physical SimVillage' also includes a study about the possibility of applying networked technology to support communications about spatial design among people in different locations. For this project, a research about the relationship between virtual reality and physical objects will be conducted as well.

Keywords:

Network, virtual reality, multi player online game, tracking system, architectural design, urban planning, game design, SimCity

Introduction:

For the past decade, CAD technology and 3-D applications have become the basic tools for most of interior and architectural design firms. However, most of the times, these technologies are used for presentations or as one-way communication tool. Although there are a lot of design applications that are built for helping designers to work more powerfully, most of these applications are still developed from the metaphor of pens/pencils.

In the meanwhile, people with different professional background usually have different perception even when they are referring to the same topics. This can be advantageous when brainstorming in groups but it can be cumbersome when one needs to express an accurate idea to other people in a limited time. Sometimes, many people cannot visualize thus are unable to give feedbacks about a spatial design project until it is already built.

Idea:

From the challenges mentioned earlier, I started to develop an idea of a 3-D communication device that can assist and support form + spatial design processes more effectively. I am particularly interested in experimenting about a system that can support communications among people to be more effective. At the same time, I would like to study about using computer as a tool for “design and communication”, not just for “design and presentation” in the architectural and spatial planning project.

Resources:

Physical Simvillage got its inspiration from two main technology schemes. They are ‘Tangible User Interface system' that was developed by MIT Media Lab, and the typical 3-D online games which I play in everyday life.

Accordingly, for this project, I tried to apply the idea of the Tangible User Interface as main interface for users to control objects from the top view (the combination of virtual top view and 3D physical models). On the other hand, this project uses the idea of 3-D games to allow users to visualize the spatial relationship of the space they created by generating perspective views by using the internet browser.

As a result, my intention is to develop an affordable and powerful system that people from different experience and background can use to communication without any language barrier.

Children, real-estate companies, people who are interested in building a new house, game players, architects, contractors, and designers.

There are two interaction parts in this project i.e. “physical + virtual” and “cyberspace”. The physical part consists of a table with simple architectural wooden models on it and a view of 3-D environment projected on the table top from above. The physical models are basically the same shape as the buildings in the view projected down. From this way, users can relate the 3-D view to the physical “sketched” models.

Plus, users from the table side can observe the position of the avatars of other users who is walking in the cyberspace. Users from the table side can move the models around to any desired position on the table. (The projected 3-D view will follow the movement of the models and reposition itself accordingly to the position of the wood models.) Hence, the players in cyberspace, who are able to walk (virtually) inside the environment, will see his/her environment suddenly changes because a new environment has been created for him/her to experience.

There are three main parts for the technical system in this project, video tracking, interactive 3-D controlling, and Networking. The basic technical aspect of Physical Simvillage is to use Max/Jitter as a video tracking system, and Virtools as a 3-D interactive and Networked engine.

Experimental Evaluation:

My overall evaluation method looks to verify three divisions: (1) the typical effectiveness of coding, physical setting and materials for successive generate of the physical interfaces from the VDO tracking system; (2) the network system from Virtools which actually is capable of supporting the networking for the virtual reality working projects; and finally (3) the combination of the physical spatial and virtual sensation by using the ability of Virtools and physical models.

Tracking Part: infrared camera, Max/ Jitter, cv.jit, projector, materials

I am slightly grateful for the VDO tracking system which is used in this project. Even this prototype is not successful enough because the limitation of working space, and time, it confirms a very good potential to continue developing this project from this VDO tracking method; it's amazing! I think that this section confirmed the tremendous capability of my hacked infrared camera and the algorithms in Jitter and CV for tracking the multi objects in the uncontrollable environment very well.

Network Part: Virtools, Netsend/Netreceive, Virtools Server

For the network system part, it was not successful enough according to my evaluation. Even though it works, I could not optimize the simplicity of communication between the multi-player part and the multi user funtion from Virtools before presentation. And the Netsend/Netreceive object is not good enough for working with the tracking project that requires very accurate values like this project. In conclusion, it works but is not the best direction to continue using for the next step.

Visual Element Part: Models, 3D modeling, Table set-up

For the combination between virtual and real space, from the user's feedbacks and my evaluation, it would be very great if this were an art project, but for me, it was horrible because this is a design project. Some users cannot get the perception of the relationship between the virtual movement and the real physical mass of models without an explanation from me. And this project is not an art work, so if it were not obvious for everyone to realize the sense of the combination of the virtual and real space, that means I failed again.

Actually, the result of this project made me very happy in terms of the experimentation and research project. But in terms of the design project, and the product itself, it needs more time to complete to be useful and obvious for everyone to use it.