Filed under: architectural resources, archvirtual, community, engineering, machinima, real estate, rl architecture, Unity3d, virtual architecture | Tags: architecture, archvirtual, city, downtown, dubuque, funding, game, iowa, kickstarter, main street, MMO, multi-player, multi-user, real, realtime, Unity3d, urban
We’re raising funds to launch Main Street MMO, and we need YOUR help as a founding supporter!
There are so many incredible sci-fi, war games and medieval adventures available today, with amazing complexity, detail and realism.
Main Street MMO seeks to combine the fun and interactivity of video games with real cities to promote local businesses, showcase city initiatives, visualize architectural designs, and a lot more.
We need your help!
Here’s a link to our Kickstarter page where you can pledge your support for our project:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keystone/main-street-mmo-real-cities-in-realtime-3d
As a founding supporter of Main Street MMO, we will engrave your name in a cornerstone, add your name to the credits, name an NPC after you, or even kickstart an MMO of your city (other creative award ideas are welcome! =)
Even if you can’t afford to back the project financially, please consider sharing this within your network to help raise awareness! Your tweets, facebook updates, and blog posts are the stuff a successful Kickstarter project is made of, so please help us spread the word!
We’re just getting started! For the past year, we’ve been partnering directly with local businesses in our premiere city of Dubuque, Iowa to determine which features they feel would be most useful in a technology like this, and have compiled a list of features and functionality we believe will take this project to a new level, but we need your help!
Please consider backing Main Street MMO! Your support is very much appreciated. If you think your city would be interested in something like this, or if you have ideas for new features we should add, please get in touch with us!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keystone/main-street-mmo-real-cities-in-realtime-3d
Thanks SO MUCH @openingdesign @epredator @pbroviak Derek Barrett @samdriver and @moirah for stepping up as our first backers! We can’t thank you enough for your support!
Filed under: architectural resources, archvirtual, city planning, collaborative design, real estate, rl architecture, Uncategorized, urban planning | Tags: 3D, animation, AR, arch virtual, architecture, archtech engine, augmented reality, autodesk, BIM, CAD, cities, city, collaboration, community, design, downtown, dubuque, education, game engine, geography, GIS, google, government, historical, interactive, iowa, jon brouchoud, kml, main street, maya, planning, realtime, replica, resource, simulation, tour, Unity3d, urban, virtual, walk-through
Introducing Virtual Dubuque, a premiere development of our new Realtime Cities initiative by Arch Virtual, built with ArchTech Engine.
Read the full post HERE.
This new community resource will provide free and easy to access windows into interactive, customizable 3D models of cities. To learn more about how we can build a realtime model of your city or architectural project, send us a note here. We’re currently seeking development partners to build new features, create custom content, and build out additional architecture and cities around the world, so please send us a note to learn more.
Over the past year,we have been partnering with local businesses and organizations in Dubuque, Iowa to develop features and sponsored content, including a project in the Historic Millwork District for a local real estate developer (coming soon!), as well as the Masonic Temple, where international members of Demolay will be working with industry pioneers in developing a world-class learning environment, using Virtual Cities as its core platform.
Read the full post HERE.
“We’re harnessing the same technology used to make the latest iPad apps and XBox 360 games, but we’re not making a game, we’re building dynamic and ever-changing models of cities that are designed to serve as true community resources that can be easily accessed directly from a website,” said Jon Brouchoud, Founder of Virtual Cities.
Using ArchTech Engine and the Unity3D platform, we’re now able to transforms buildings, geography and entire cities into realtime 3D environments that are easily accessible, and can be embedded on your website, or deployed to a tablet. These interactive models can be geo-referenced to real-world coordinates, dynamically linked to databases, and layered with interactive content.
As visitors explore virtual cities, links to websites and additional information about nearby buildings, parks, and businesses appear automatically. For example, when you approach a restaurant, you can click through to read their menu. If you’re near a historic building, you can learn more about its past. Businesses and organizations can customize and enhance their space in the virtual model, layering it with more information or interactive features.
Read the full post HERE.
Proceeds from sponsorship and custom content are then re-invested in the ongoing development of the city model, enabling Realtime Cities to add more features, build new parts of the city, and refine models with more detail.
But a virtual replica is just the beginning.
“If you’ve ever experienced the Voices Gallery in the Millwork District of Dubuque Iowa, for example, you’ve seen how a building can be completely re-imagined into a destination that celebrates the unique architectural character of a place, yet transcends it to become something completely unique,” said Brouchoud.
“That’s really what Virtual Dubuque, and the Realtime Cities initiative is all about. A replica of the city as it is now will certainly have interesting use cases, but I’m looking forward to seeing how cities can be re-imagined within an environment where anything is possible.”
Read the full post HERE.
Read the full post HERE.
Filed under: architectural resources, architecture, autocad, real estate, Unity3d, urban planning | Tags: 3d environments, AEC, animation, arch tech engine, arch virtual, architectural drawings, architectural visualization, architecture, archtech, BIM, building, CAD, cg, city, collaboration, communication, computer, construction, education, engine, engineering, game development, geography, interactive models, learning environments, military, military simulations, multi-player, planning, prototype, simulation, training, Unity3d, urban, video, virtual, voice, voip, walk-through
[Intro video] I am very excited to announce the launch of our new ArchTech Engine, a technology that transforms buildings, cities and geography into realtime 3D environments that are easily accessible, and can be embedded on your website, or deployed to a tablet.
Read the full post HERE
These interactive models can be geo-referenced to real-world coordinates, dynamically linked to databases, and layered with interactive content.
Transform your architectural drawings and 3D models of almost any format (including CAD and BIM) into information-rich applications that are perfect for architectural visualization, and city planning, as well as learning environments, military simulations, historical recreations, training environments and more. Students can interact within a more memorable learning environment, and achieve much greater retention over reading a textbook. All within a web browser or tablet.
Your application can be customized to suit your project’s specific needs. Make it multiplayer with voice and video communication or a single player experience and add non-player characters or an entire crowd of people to bring it to life.
To learn more about Arch Tech Engine, or to get started on your own project, visit www.archtechengine.com Arch Tech Engine is built on the Unity3D, and was developed in partnership between Arch Virtual and Tipodean Technologies.
Read the full post HERE
Filed under: rl architecture, Uncategorized, Unity, Unity3d | Tags: animation, arch virtual, architecture, arcspace, BIM, blueprints, CAD, cg, collaboration, computer, faculty, graphics, import, jon brouchoud, replicate, rutgers, school of business, simulate, simulation, student, ten arquitectos, virtual, visualization, walk-through
Construction is now officially underway on the new Rutgers School of Business, designed by the renowned architecture studio Ten Arquitectos (frequently covered by arcspace), but you don’t have to wait until construction is complete to explore the new design! Arch Virtual recently completed a virtual prototype of the new facility for Rutgers University, replicating the design based on architectural CAD drawings, BIM models and blueprints provided by the architect, then publishing them into realtime 3D with the Unity3D game engine. See a video preview of the virtual model below, and see some screenshots of the model here.
Read the rest of this post on our new site HERE.
Rutgers University leveraged the best of several virtual platforms throughout design development of this project. In early design phases, Arch Virtual replicated the design in Second Life, which was ideal for recreating the schematic and conceptual models and making the design accessible to students and faculty (seen here). That model was then brought into OpenSim, where it was integrated into a more comprehensive model of the campus, including more of the context surrounding the Business School’s new building site.
When final construction documents were ready, we interpreted the architect’s CAD drawings and BIM model with Autodesk Maya, that could be brought into the Unity3D game development engine. Rutgers worked with Tipodean Technologies to export their OpenSim islands, including buildings surrounding the new business school. Tipodean converted them into Collada mesh format, along with the textures, which were then added to the Unity3D environment. The final result is a blend of the architectural model alongside meshes exported from OpenSim.
Read the rest of this post on our new site HERE.
With the model in Unity, Rutgers will now be able to embed the virtual model into a variety of formats. For example, they can embed the model directly a website or Facebook page, but could also publish the same model to be accessible from Android or iPad mobile devices, or as stand-alone applications that can be installed on a Mac or PC and run locally without being online, and at full screen.
To follow the progress of the virtual Rutgers School of Business, join the Rutgers University Virtual Worlds facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/ruvw3d
To learn more about how Arch Virtual can translate your blueprints, CAD, or BIM file into a virtual experience, contact us here. http://archvirtual.com/?page_id=3388
Read the rest of this post on our new site HERE.
Filed under: rl architecture | Tags: arch virtual, architecture, collaboration, collaborative, community, crowdsource, customer-oriented, dane, derrick van mell, dimension iv, facility, independent living, jim gersich, jon brouchoud, madison, participatory, rita giovannoni, second life, senior living, wisconsin
There’s a fantastic snippet in this video, about 2 minutes and 58 seconds in, that does a great job of capturing the spirit of this project. This is a group of senior citizens looking at the virtual world of Second Life projected on a wall in front of them, and you can hear the almost visceral reaction the group has to watching their suggested design changes to a new senior living community take shape before their eyes.
Read the rest of this post and view the machinima at our new site, HERE.
A single window was turned into a glass wall, which suddenly lets in more light, and opened up more views to the outside. The impact of this design change was immediately evident to everyone in this session, which was held simultaneously in a conference room in Madison, Wisconsin as well as a platform in the sky above Architecture Island in Second Life.
My long-time friend and colleague, Derrick Van Mell, of Van Mell Associates, had recently introduced me to Rita Giovannoni, CEO of Independent Living, and we sat down at a coffee shop for a quick demo of Second Life. Derrick had been following my interest in virtual worlds since the very beginning, and knew Rita was interested in a fresh perspective on the design process for her next project. Having led construction of 3 previous senior living facilities, and entering the early design planning for a 4th facility, she was eager to find a unique approach to design.
Read the rest of this post and view the machinima at our new site, HERE.
I opened Second Life on my laptop, and walked my avatar into an empty virtual room. So far, so good, but Rita looks hesitant. Inside, my avatar reaches up and slowly starts lowering the ceiling down until it’s hovering just above his head. “That’s way too enclosed and claustrophobic! We don’t want that.” Rita immediately reacts. I then slowly raised the ceiling up higher. “That’s too high – it looks too institutional.” I lowered it half-way down, until it was “just right.” We went through other parts of the building, and similarly modified the design in realtime, until it was all “just right.” Rita immediately recognized that this was not only a truly unique way to visualize design ideas, but also an opportunity to actively engage others in the design process itself. We started brainstorming ways Independent Living might be able to invite prospective residents to participate in designing their new facility.
We decided to work with focus groups of prospective residents who were considering a move into a facility like the one Independent Living would soon be building. We invited Jim Gersich, Partner-in-Charge at Dimension IV Madison Design Group, which has a lot of experience with designing senior living facilities, and he offered to host the session in his studio’s conference room. We projected Second Life onto a wall, and invited the group to imagine how they would like the new facility to feel and function. I had been concerned that the virtual modeling might cause some motion sickness, or may even be just too silly to take seriously as a design medium, but there was no hesitation with this group, they got it immediately.
Read the rest of this post and view the machinima at our new site, HERE.
The movable ceiling trick was all it took to get their attention. It never ceases to amaze me how strong of a reaction people have to watching my avatar slowly being enclosed by a lower and lower ceiling. They can literally feel the difference it’s making to the way the space feels. Therein lies the whole idea behind this endeavor – to use virtual reality to immerse people in a simulated environment, where they can immediately see and feel the impact of design ideas in 3D as the discussion unfolds, in realtime. What’s more is that they can actually suggest design ideas, and watch their ideas take shape before their eyes.
All of the residents did a great job providing invaluable feedback on the design of the new facility, and I think they each left with a sense of ownership in the project, having contributed to this early ideation phase. As we prepared for this session, it was tempting to assume we knew certain things about how the design would layout, and to start preparing design solutions ahead of the focus groups. But as we quickly learned, many of those assumptions turned out to be wrong, and this group had a lot of great ideas we would never have thought of.
Not every project is right for bringing end-users into the design conversation this way, but there are always numerous project stakeholders with a vested interest in being sure the building feels and functions exactly as they need it to. Working within a virtual environment not only helps everyone visualize the design more holistically, but it opens up the opportunity to take steps toward getting it “just right,” and ensuring the project more closely reflects the goals of the organization.
I think one of the participants concluded the session well when she said, “I just so appreciate that you’re willing to listen, and to get that input. Because, you could just slap up a building, and say ‘it’s for rent, take it or leave it, that’s the way it is’ – and people would do that. They do it all the time.”
If you’re interested in using virtual reality in your next design project, send us a note at info (at) archvirtual.com.
Read the rest of this post and view the machinima at our new site, HERE.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 3D, arch virtual, architecture, city planning, education, online, participatory, simulation, training, Unity3d, urban planning, visualization, walkthrough
Check out our new site here! http://www.archvirtual.com
It’s been a while since our last post, but we’ve been hard at work on some new projects we hope to publish soon! In the meantime, check out our newly renovated website: http://www.archvirtual.com We’ve made some exciting progress in technologies and methods for bringing architectural and city models into virtual environments, along with interactive features to augment and enhance those models. We will be posting more about these projects and services soon, so stay tuned!
Here are some pieces from the new website front page:
Architectural Simulation: Import buildings and entire cities into online 3D environments that can be accessed from a browser or embedded directly into your own website. We use cutting edge game development technology that enables you, your clients, project stakeholders or community members to explore, interact and collaborate within immersive 3D environments that are easily accessible.
Virtual Architecture: Use virtual environments for long-distance collaboration, education, training, simulation and more. We create virtual spaces that help organizations achieve greater effectiveness and efficiency for a variety of use cases. Contact us to learn more about how your organization can make use of virtual environments.
Design Collaboration: Nobody knows how your new building should function and perform better than you. Being able to witness and participate in the design evolution through interactive workshops, puts you, the end-users of your building, and other project stakeholders in the driver’s seat of the design process. Instead of waiting weeks to see the results of design changes, see them take shape immediately. Contact Arch Virtual today to learn more about how we use virtual environments to offer a whole new approach to building design.
Check out our new site here! http://www.archvirtual.com
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AEC, architecture, collaboration, innovation, jeffrey philips, jena ball, jibe, opensim, ovo innovation, prototype, retail, startled cat, Unity3d, virtual
This blog has moved – read the full post HERE.
What a year so far! Lots of great Unity3D and jibe projects, a pair of OpenSim builds, and even some Unreal and Web Alive work. This year has been all about platform diversification, and some of the biggest and technologically innovative builds I’ve had the pleasure of working on.
Yet it seems somehow fitting that the ‘dream come true’ project brought me full circle back to Second Life, with a project for a Fortune 500 firm to design and prototype the firm’s physical retail spaces. This project truly raised the bar for architectural brainstorming and collaboration around physical architecture and the built environment. Jena Ball (Startled Cat) and Jeffrey Philips (OVO Innovation) touch on some features of the project, and the advantages of innovation and collaboration in their paper, “Immersive Virtual Worlds as Innovation Platforms: http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2011/05/26/immersive-virtual-worlds-as-innovation-platforms/
The full white paper describes the concept in greater detail. Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
“More recently, the authors of this paper worked with a Fortune 500 firm to design, prototype and model both the look and feel of the firm’s physical retail spaces and the experiences the firm wanted customers to have in retail establishments. To accomplish this task we immersed the team – clients and consultants – in Second Life, building new retail establishments and interacting with those retail spaces using avatars. We believed thatworking as avatars in an infinitely malleable 3D environment would not only spark their creativity and encourage experimentation, but be quicker and more cost effective than trying to do the same work in a sterile conference room.
“As we developed the retail spaces, their avatars moved through the spaces, recommending changes and generating ideas on the fly in a setting where rapid prototyping was exceptionally simple.
“Working with trained innovation facilitators and a “real” world architect specializing in virtual world development the firm’s participants generated more ideas, a much larger range of ideas, in far less time, at a fraction of the cost than in previous attempts. We were also able to create a significant number and wide variety of prototypes for consideration. The immediate feedback and ability to modify the prototypes in real time while participants watched and commented significantly increased the speed and effectiveness of the prototyping as well. We easily tested dozens of ideas based on the architecture, technology, allotted space, traffic flow, the needs of customers, and the skills of the firm’s retail personnel. It is important to note that all of this work was done with a team whose members were distributed all across the US and never met face to face. All interaction and prototyping was conducted in Second Life.”
“Virtual worlds allow rapid, iterative prototyping in three dimensions with little cost. Architects, for example, can quickly and easily create mini or even full-scale models of homes to show to their clients. Likewise, it is quick and easy to make adjustments based on client feedback in real time as it is given. This kind of iterative prototyping not only speeds up the development process, but encourages idea generation and out-of-the-box thinking as well. Rapid, iterative prototyping is so natural in these spaces that you’d think the virtual worlds were designed for this purpose alone” (bold emphasis mine).
Filed under: second life | Tags: animation, archi21, architecture, clil, crit, design, machinima, malaquais, paris, second life, studio, video, virtual worlds
This blog has moved! Please read this post on our new blog location: http://archvirtual.com/?p=3295
From my studio in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, I’m listening to 3 architecture students in Paris, France presenting design concepts they developed during a week-long ‘intensive’ design studio at Paris-Malaquais using the virtual world Second Life, and I feel as though I’m participating in architecture’s best kept secret. I’m joined by dozens of others logged in from every corner of the world as part of this <a href=”http://www.vwbpe.org/” target=”_blank”>VWBPE Conference</a> session by the newly founded European initiative ‘ARCHI21,’ and can think of no other medium, method or technology that could bridge our worlds as effectively. As I listened carefully to their fascinating presentations, I was totally immersed and engaged, and if the quantity and thoughtfulness of the back-channel chat was any indication, the others in attendance were equally impressed.
This intensive was the first time most of these students had been exposed to Second Life for architectural design, and due to time constraints, they were given very little time to prepare for this presentation. Not only that, but they are presenting their work in English, their second language, which is a significant part of what ARCHI21 is all about:
“A consortium of British, Danish, French and Slovenian universities has just begun its first action learning phase of ARCHI21, a two-year project as a part of the EU Education and Culture DG Lifelong Learning Programme. Innovative approaches converge language learning, architecture and design, social media and 3D virtual worlds. With a thematic focus on communication of ‘respecting fragile places’ , this project explores the areas of a) content & language integrated learning in higher and vocational education sectors, b) the inter-relationship between linguistic competence and design competence building in project-based learning and c) the intercultural issues to be considered.”
I was in awe at the quality and theoretical sophistication of their work, and the deep thinking they had put into these projects in such a short space of time. Having spent the past several years exploring virtual architecture, I was challenged and even a little intimidated by what these students were able to come up with in just one week. My only criticism might be that I think they seem to have underestimated the utility of common ‘real world’ visual cues and practical function of virtual spaces – instead prioritizing pure philosophical and theoretical exploration. I think it’s possible to achieve a balance between conceptual thinking with the more pragmatic concerns of potential end-users of these spaces – blending form and function into a seamless composition, rather than favoring one over the other. However, they may have explored this more than I am aware, and since this was their first exposure to Second Life, with only had a single week’s development time, I can hardly fault them for not exploring every possible angle.
I am honored to be a part of this fascinating project as an associate partner as ARCH Virtual, and will be sharing much more of their work as it is made public. Congratulations and thanks to these 3 students for sharing their work!
This blog has moved! Please read this post on our new blog location: http://archvirtual.com/?p=3295
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: architecture, gigaom, harvard business review, remote, virtual collaboration, web worker, workplace
This blog has moved! See this article on our new site here: http://archvirtual.com/?p=3287
The results of this Harvard Business School study, and many others like it, provide enough ample and compelling evidence to suggest that virtual collaboration is a powerful means of achieving new levels of efficiency and effectiveness:
“Remarkably, an extensive benchmarking study reveals, it isn’t necessary to bring team members together to get their best work. In fact, they can be even more productive if they stay separated and do all their collaborating virtually. The scores of successful virtual teams the authors examined didn’t have many of the psychological and practical obstacles that plagued their more traditional, face-to-face counterparts. Team members felt freer to contribute–especially outside their established areas of expertise. The fact that such groups could not assemble easily actually made their projects go faster, as people did not wait for meetings to make decisions, and individuals, in the comfort of their own offices, had full access to their files and the complementary knowledge of their local colleagues.”
As information-based virtual collaboration gradually turns the corner to mainstream adoption, it won’t be long until the benefits of 3D collaboration are as unequivocally proven (if they haven’t already), and virtual worlds like Second Life and OpenSim will soon prove to be an ideal modality for gathering a virtual team together to collaborate within a realtime, 3D collaborative environment.
This blog has moved! See this article on our new site here: http://archvirtual.com/?p=3287
Filed under: architect, architecture, second life | Tags: AEC, animation, architecture, BIM, CAD, construction, daden, engineering, information, multi-user, online, realtime, second life, virtual world, visualization, walkthrough
Check out this article HERE.
“Whilst the hype (and marketing interest) around virtualworlds has faded, the technology is increasingly being used in areas such as training & education,collaboration and data visualisation. This paper explores the on-going use, and future opportunity, of virtual worlds to help model the built environment, and as a result to use the virtual world to build a better physical world.”
There are a number of key differences here in comparison to more traditional Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) visualisation tools.Principally that:
- The user is embodied in the world as an avatar, rather than having just a “camera” view
- The avatar/user can go where they like, and interact with the build
- The environment is multi-user, so users can interact with other users
- The environment is rendered in real-time, so although visual quality may not be as high, the environment can be far more dynamic and flexible, and renders instantly rather than needing an over-night render-farm.
I also appreciate their list of advantages of using virtual worlds in AEC fields:
The advantages of virtual worlds such as Second Life include:
• The ability to make changes instantly, in-world
• The ability to support multiple users in the same space – typically 50-100 (but of course you can always clone spaces)
• The ability to make things interactive – even linking computers to real computer applications, and signs to real signage systems
• The ability to not only integrate building environmental and performance data, but also to visualise it in new and effective ways
• The ability for users to peel-back layers of a building to see structural and service components
• The ability for users to annotate the space, feeding back comments which can be automatically collated
• The ability to track users through the building, and their interactions with its systems
• The ability to let users choose between configurations and vote on them
• The ability to support “live use” of the building, eg for entertainment or training
• The ability to clone the building to create multiple copies to explore what-ifs
• The ability to use the same platform to support virtual meetings, conferences, training, collaboration etc
• Dynamic rendering which enables the instant changes and multi-user deployment
Extranet Evolution has a great write-up (link) about this paper as well. Consequently, Paul Wilkinson’s twitter feed is also a must-follow resource for anyone interested in construction collaboration technologies (and more!) – follow him @EEPaul
This site has moved to
www.archvirtual.com
Check out this article HERE.