UrbanVR: An immersive analytics system for context-aware urban design

TL;DR

UrbanVR is an immersive VR system designed for urban design, enabling architects to visualize and analyze high-dimensional data interactively, improving decision-making in urban planning.

Contribution

The paper introduces UrbanVR, a novel immersive analytics system with customized visualization and interaction techniques tailored for urban design in virtual reality.

Findings

System effectively supports quantitative assessment of design metrics.

User studies show improved understanding and decision-making.

Expert feedback confirms usability and potential for urban planning.

Abstract

Urban design is a highly visual discipline that requires visualization for informed decision making. However, traditional urban design tools are mostly limited to representations on 2D displays that lack intuitive awareness. The popularity of head-mounted displays (HMDs) promotes a promising alternative with consumer-grade 3D displays. We introduce UrbanVR, an immersive analytics system with effective visualization and interaction techniques, to enable architects to assess designs in a virtual reality (VR) environment. Specifically, UrbanVR incorporates 1) a customized parallel coordinates plot (PCP) design to facilitate quantitative assessment of high-dimensional design metrics, 2) a series of egocentric interactions, including gesture interactions and handle-bar metaphors, to facilitate user interactions, and 3) a viewpoint optimization algorithm to help users explore both the PCP for quantitative analysis, and objects of interest for context awareness. Effectiveness and feasibility of the system are validated through quantitative user studies and qualitative expert feedbacks.