GreenSpace II Content
To empower people to collaborate over long-distances more efficiently and intuitively than by traditional means, the HIT Lab has been developing the GreenSpace project. Begun in 1993, the GreenSpace project has served as a the venue to develop distributed, networked virtual environments for collaboration by multiple participants. The first phase of development, took place in November 1994 and featured a trans-Pacific virtual environment was inhabited by participants immersed in Seattle, WA and Tokyo, Japan.
The second phase of the GreenSpace project was demonstrated in February and March of 1996. Incorporating ideas from the Virtual Design Studio project, GreenSpace II (GS2) was implemented to explore and demonstrate the utility of distributed virtual environments in architectural design review. The staff and students from the CEDeS Lab worked closely with the HIT Lab GS2 team to develop the application software and the content for experimental demonstrations. The prototype software, based on Silicon Graphics OpenInventor 2.1, effectively demonstrates that distributed virtual environments aid in the communication of design ideas using virtual interfaces in real-time simulations.
To demonstrate the GS2 application in architectural design review, the CEDeS Lab designed and developed a number of hotel guest rooms. This program was selected because the content was simple to implement and represent, yet allowed enough variety of design to enable effective demonstration of the GS2 application tools. Along with a vestibule and hallway, three hotel guest rooms were designed and built. Each of the guest rooms was represented as several design alternatives: an empty, flat-shaded space; an empty space with "realistic" lighting; and a number of furnishing and lighting alternatives. The participants, represented as "avatars" with heads and hands, could interact with each other in real-time to evaluate and critique the designs.
The GS2 application provided a "worktable" in each design alternative, on which scale models and tools were placed for use by the participants. The tools, implemented to facilitate interaction between participants, enabled navigation within and between alternative designs, communication between participants, and manipulation of the environment itself. Navigation within the environment was accomplished using standard Inventor tools and with virtual interfaces including six-degree-of-freedom controllers, magnetic trackers, and head-mounted displays. Navigation between room alternatives was implemented with hyperlink technology: hyperlinked doors switched participants between adjacent rooms and icons on the worktable "transported" participants between non-contiguous spaces.
Audio communication between the participants was enabled to aid in the critique of the designs, and scaled models of the hotel guest rooms were place on the worktable for visual reference. Each of the models was surrounded by a "cutting" tool, which when picked up could clip the model in plan or section. This proved to be an effective tool to supplement the full-scale investigation of each virtual environment, as it recalls traditional media of scale models and orthographic projection drawings for the critique of architectural ideas.
In traditional design reviews, there is rarely manipulation of the design (representation) itself. Feedback is often limited to a gestural and verbal critique. However, given the ability to edit digital data in real-time, participants find it advantageous to modify the environment during the critique of the design. To allow minor modification of the environment itself, the GS2 application enabled participants to move and (re)color furniture in each of the guest rooms.
The experimental demonstrations of the GreenSpace project have indicated several new directions for further study in the application of digital technology in architectural design review. The GS2 application software is now slated for testing in conjunction with the Virtual Design Studio project. This will demonstrate and test the use of real-time digital simulation technology in a global context to aid in the communication and evaluation of architectural design.
