VRchitecture

Last week we attended the Liverpool Binary Festival and had a play with two pieces of new(ish) virtual reality equipment – the Samsung Gear VR and the HTC Vive. Both are headsets that display a virtual world on hi-resolution screens and by using motion tracking sensors, respond directly to your heads movement and rotation. After acclimatising to wearing the tech and the new surroundings presented, our initial thoughts were of amazement! Very quickly, your senses adjust to the new visual and audio environment and you actually feel like you are in a different place. We see huge potential for architects to use this technology as part of their everyday working tool kit in a number of ways. Primarily, we see it being used to help clients visualise their projects and understand the scale and design being proposed by a designer – taking them inside our actual Revit and Sketchup models. We also predict that as the technology becomes cheaper and more readily accessible, it could be used as a collaboration tool between architect and builder (and entire design teams and stakeholder groups).

We will certainly be looking to implement VR into our studio, and will report on the best methods and tech we discover to take advantage of this exciting new emerging technology.