From: airey@woof.asd.sgi.com (John Airey)
Subject: Re: Comments on VR-based Architectual Design Products?
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1992 23:29:37 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA



In article <1992Jan2.192830.1248@milton.u.washington.edu>,
sbrenner@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (scott.d.brenner) writes:

|> On a recent "This Old House," Steve Thomas (the host) went
|> to a small firm in Massachusetts that used some type of
|> VR system to assist in the design of the kitchen in a house
|> that TOH is revamping.  Apparently, Steve provided measurements,
|> cabinet styles and colors, window type and size, floor type
|> and color, lighting fixture style, etc.  The VR people used
|> these inputs to create a "virtual kitchen" which could be
|> displayed and manipulated on a terminal screen. ...
|>
|> [Stuff deleted]
|> 
|> It seems to me that VR could be very useful in architectual
|> design applications.  Initially, the costs would be high.
|> But after the use of these systems became more widespread,
|> I think the cost/benefit ratio would become appealing to most
|> people considering building or redesigning a house.
|> 
|> I'd be interested in comments on the specific system I described
|> from This Old House and on the general use of VR systems
|> in architectual design.

I have heard of some small companies doing work as you describe, although
I don't know the name of the firm you mention. I also know of some research 
work that fits the VR system you wish for, but they are too expensive to be 
successful commercially at this time.

I earned a Ph.D from UNC @ Chapel Hill in 1990 for some algorithms 
developed while working on a research system to explore building designs.

We had many grad-student hours worth of custom software, 
a head-mounted display, a treadmill and used Pixel-Planes 4.
AutoCAD was the preliminary modeller. There is a paper in the
1990 Symposium on Interactive Computer Graphics, held at Snowbird, Utah
which I wrote with my colleagues if you are interested. There were also
pictures in january 1991 Smithsonian, I think. Occasionally some videos
we made appear on PBS shows and the like.

Note that making stills of a kitchen and doing interactive walkthroughs
of a large building are different things.

The former has been possible for several years (not to detract from 
the above un-named firm, it is still quite difficult); it is just a 
good computer graphics application, kind of like package design or
something. 

I have only seen the latter in research setups like the one I worked on. 
It could be done with commercial hardware (e.g. SGI Skywriter) and
custom software, but I would guess that it would require close to half 
a million dollars worth of equipment, all told, and a lot of unwritten 
software.

I have heard of other research into this type of system at several places. 
I think Carlo Sequin at U.C. Berkeley is working on a project like this with
his grad students, using AutoCAD and SGI workstations. I think UNC may still
use a Walkthrough demo to show off Pixel-Planes 5.

I also believe that Matsushita, or one of it's subsidiaries, wants such a 
system to help design and sell modular kitchens in japan and has researchers 
and money invested. 

My guess is you'll soon see small companies providing architectural services
that include VR walkthroughs but that they will be using cheap machines
and not getting much business or using expensive machines and going out
of business. Probably divisions of large companies that do similar things
will suffer the same fates.

But eventually the price/performance of real graphics machines (yes, that's 
right, SGI machines, not VGA/PC's :-) ) will reach the point where somebody 
can start to make money. How long will that be? I don't know.

          
john m. airey      airey@asd.sgi.com  (415) 335-7248
                   M/S 7U-550 Silicon Graphics, Advanced Systems Division
                   2011 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mtn. View, CA 94039