USE OF AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY IN THE FIELD OF ARCHITECTURE

-This paper is based on the use of Augmented and Virtual Reality in the field of Architecture and how to use the resources available in present day to improve the vision of building great architectures and use this technology in other fields of science in order to more precisely understand the basic concepts behind everything. Augmented Reality can be of immense benefit to the architecture industry. The oft-cited benefits of AR in construction industry include real time visualization of projects, project monitoring by overlaying virtual models on actual built structures and onsite information retrieval. But this technology is restricted by the high cost and limited portability of the devices. Further, problems with real time and accurate tracking in a construction environment hinder its broader application. To enable utilization of augmented reality on a construction site, a low cost augmented reality framework based on the Google Cardboard visor is proposed. The current applications available for Google cardboard have several limitations in delivering an AR experience relevant to construction requirements. To overcome these limitations Unity game engine, with the help of Vuforia & Cardboard SDK, is used to develop an application environment which can be used for location and orientation specific visualization and planning of work at construction workface. The real world image is captured through the smart-phone camera input and blended with the stereo input of the 3D models to enable a full immersion experience. The application is currently limited to marker-based tracking where the 3D models are triggered onto the user’s view upon scanning an image which is registered with a corresponding 3D model preloaded into the application. A gaze input user interface is proposed which enables the user to interact with the augmented models. Finally, usage of AR app while traversing the construction site is illustrated.