Examining VR Technologies for Immersive Lighting Performance Simulation and Visualisation in Building Design and Analysis

Kieran William May, James A. Walsh, Ross T. Smith, Ning Gu, Bruce H. Thomas

Abstract: This paper presents IVR-LPSim: An Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) Lighting Performance Simulator (LPS) capable of real-time indoor artificial illuminance, glare, daylighting and energy consumption calculation and visualisation. Current LPS's consist of traditional ex-ocentric CAD-based interfaces built for desktop-based PC displays. Lighting performance data is represented using reports, numerical datasets, two-dimensional graphs, charts and static visualisations. Additionally, PC-based LPS's do not provide real-time simulation support, creating a gap between the design and analysis process. As an alternative to current approaches, we present a novel LPS that leverages VR technologies to support an egocentric approach for lighting performance design and analysis. Three immersive lighting performance visualisations are presented to facilitate the representation of lighting performance data within IVR-LPSim.