Client: FLAD Architects, University of Florida
Application: Design Review and Presentation
Equipment used: VizMove Walking VR System
Flad and the UFL team requested our WorldViz Rental Service to facilitate this. A total of six different virtual model designs were prepared from Revit files that Flad Architecture provided us; two General Operating rooms and 4 Hybrid Operating Rooms. We set up a VizMove Walking VR System, a preconfigured virtual reality system built for wide-area, professional applications, including design visualization, architectural walk-throughs, industrial training and behavioral research.
The whole set-up, exhibition, and tear-down lasted one day. We had 15-20 participants walk through the different designs. Each user was able to put on the headset, describe to the architect what they saw, and move machines and furniture to their desired locations within the virtual environment. The Flad architect working on this project was able to make numerous design notes about the user’s experience in the virtual operating room. This careful process usually takes months; we condensed it into a few short hours.
The incredibly immersive system that we setup allowed the hospital personnel to validate the design not only in size, but overall feeling relative to each of the other spaces. Now, the hospital staff’s invaluable opinions can be considered and integrated into the architects’ design accordingly; and early in the design process. Virtual reality design is improving the industry in remarkable ways – it is no longer a hypothetical future. WorldViz tailors its services for its clients on a case-by-case basis in order to streamline the design process and bridge the communication gap between architects and those who will be working in the spaces that they design.
