IrisVR specialises in creating virtual reality (VR) software which allows the building industry to visualise their 3D designs with true to scale walkthroughs, improving design workflows for architects, engineers and construction professionals. The app is called Prospect and it supports HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. The company will soon be expanding that support to Oculus Quest, giving users wireless all-in-one freedom for the first time.
Prospect is all about streamlining workflows to improve efficiency on construction projects, helping minimise rework costs and project delays. Clients are able to walk through their 3D models created from a number of different file formats including Revit, Navisworks, SketchUp and Rhino, all in 1:1 scale at any time, and soon thanks to Oculus Quest, anywhere.
The software can’t be used directly with Quest, instead, users will need a Windows PC with Prospect installed to generate an IrisVR experience which can then be synced to the standalone headset. The reason being that due to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor inside the headset only small files are supported. “The factors that contribute to performance include the size of textures, the complexity of the geometry, and the number of individual elements in the scene,” notes IrisVR. “With each release, we’ll continue to improve our optimization engine.”
Compatible smaller files can be loaded onto Oculus Quest and then taken out onto site putting subcontractors into the model early and often – so installation gets done right the first time (catching possible dangerous or costly errors that aren’t always noticeable using traditional 2D and 3D QA/QC methods).
Selecting and flagging elements while in a Multiuser Meeting
And Prospect isn’t just about viewing models, thanks to the Multiuser function companies using multiple headsets can hold meetings in VR. Up to 12 individuals are able to join from anywhere in the world and experience a walkthrough of the same model together.
Oculus Quest is launching on 21st May with pre-orders already available. IrisVR hasn’t yet confirmed when Prospect will be compatible with the headset. Additionally, for enterprise use cases, Quest will be available via Oculus for Business. As further details are revealed, VRFocus will keep you updated.
The global leader for immersive design review and collaboration tools for Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries, IrisVR, have announced that over 108,000 virtual reality (VR) experience have been created by users across 105 countries in the past year.
This achievement has been made possible thanks to the companies Prospect software, which allows Architecture, Engineering and Construction professionals a means to instantly create true to scale walkthrough of any 3D model. This means that stakeholders are able to experience a building before construction begins and see it in an immersive way. Since 2017 this has be done by firms including Ennead, Mortenson, SHoP and many more, leveraging Prospect to create and launch immersive design walkthroughs.
“IrisVR is a tool that gives us the ability to do something in the AEC world that we have never been able to do before; explore, refine, and explore again with full spatial understanding in an extremely compressed timeframe,” said Taylor Cupp, Project Solutions Technologies at Mortenson Construction.
So far 2018 has been a big year for the VR startup with the release of Prospect 2.0 in February, which introduced the ability to host collaborative design review meetings in VR. Powered by IrisVR’s proprietary Multiuser technology, Meetings allows for up to 12 individuals to come to join from anywhere in the world and experience a walkthrough of the same model together. More recently, IrisVR launched No Headset Mode as part of Prospect 2.1, which allows Meeting participants to join a walkthrough without a VR device.
“IrisVR provides the simplest and fastest solutions that I have found for stepping into a design during the early stages. The attention to detail that is paid to VR development fundamentals is also outstanding when compared to IrisVR’s peers. Being able to lock in the framerate with clear visual amenities so smoothly and seamlessly.” said Ben Steinert, Visualization Artist at pb2 architecture + engineering.
IrisVR’s Prospect is available to users through a subscription model that has a number of different models available to ensure that large firms can unlock the full potential of the software while giving small firms an affordable solution as well.
For more on IrisVR in the future, including their Prospect software, keep reading VRFocus.
Last year, we released a tool called Inspect Element for Prospect. This feature allows users to select an element in their project and view its properties, such as the layer the object belongs to or the material it is made of. The user can then flag it if it needs to be fixed later in the original 3D modeling tool.
A user can select, inspect and flag an element in Prospect,
The design, development, and testing of this feature involved all the teams at IrisVR in some capacity. This blog post will detail how we came up with the feature, how we developed it, and how we made sure that the tool would meet the needs and expectations of our users along the way.
The Opportunity
Most of our users belong to the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry and and rely on 3D building models to get work done. The objects they create have data associated with them – sometimes, tons of it! This data creation is known as Building Information Modeling (BIM) and it helps designers and engineers make sure that the decisions made regarding the program distribution, structural typology, material finishes, or mechanical systems selected are the right ones.
At IrisVR, our goal is to help users catch issues early to save time and money and keep the project stakeholders on the same page, and this led us to conceptualize a new tool, called “Inspect Element” that exposes BIM data in VR and facilitates an easier review and QA/QC process. This tool allows multiple people to review a given element in the shared virtual environment that Prospect provides. We knew we also needed to output a document to help record the design review done while in VR,help fix the 3D model, and move the project forward.
BIM Properties (left pane) of a roof selected in Revit.
Conceptualizing the “Inspect Element” Tool
Selecting an object on a 2D screen is a straightforward interaction. To make this action intuitive in virtual reality, I took inspiration from the typical interaction in 3D modeling tools on a screen and how we interact with objects in the real world. I looked specifically at what we can touch when we are on a construction site. To communicate with the rest of the team and to show users what the new tool would do, I spent some time sketching ideas on a notebook and on a whiteboard.
The tool would have two parts: a VR component and a Library component. In VR, the requirements were:
Provide visual feedback to the user when they pointed at an object
Allow the user to select an object and display its BIM properties, starting with name, layer and material
Allow the user to paint it red and flag it for review
The Library requirements were:
Display a list of the objects that had been flagged in VR and when
Ability to share the list with colleagues easily
Use the list to find the elements in the original program
A sketch of the early design for the Inspect Element tool
Tests
To test with our users, I built a proof of concept using C# in Unity to showcase what the Inspect Element tool would do. The prototype was rough, but it helped in conversations with architects and with the developers on our team. The video below shows the expected UX flow while reviewing a Revit model in VR:
Design
I created mockups for our VR tool to get feedback from our users in terms of which information they wanted to see. It was clear that we needed to include the Element Name (also the Family Name in the case of Revit elements), the layer the object belonged to and the name of the material assigned to it.
Highlight and selection statesFlagging and removing flag states
Along with the images above, I provided our engineers with notes regarding which button activates the feature (the trigger), if other actions (such as teleportation or taking screenshots) are permitted while this tool is being used, and any edge cases that needed to be addressed.
As a group and every week, the interaction team reviews together design work done by each of us. In this discussion, the case for objects with textured materials was made: what would an object that has a texture look like when flagged? Another image was added:
Flagged elements – with no texture (left) and with texture (right)
As we were working on this feature, our users asked repeatedly that we add a toggle right in the Inspect Element tool so that the entire layer the object belonged to could be switched off. This new action added complexity that we needed to document. For instance, if the layer of an object is set to off in this tool, we needed to make sure to display the same state in the Layers tool list.
A user can turn off the layer an object belongs to using the Inspect Element tool
In the Library, I followed a similar process and mocked up a new panel for the settings drawer called Flagged Elements. The list had to include the Element IDs, the name of the object (also including the Family Name), and would group the objects by date, to let the user know when the review was made.
Flagged Elements as mocked up for the Prospect Library
A button reading Export Report at the bottom would let the user download a CSV file that would contain all of the necessary information. A user could print this spreadsheet or copy the Element IDs and use them to find the objects in their 3D model.
Report of Flagged Elements as a CSV file
Development – Part 1 (infrastructure)
Along with interaction/design discussions, we meet as often as possible with the development team to get their early feedback on what will be needed to support a new feature and understand how long it will take to get it built. The Inspect Element tool was especially complex because it meant new work and some “rewiring” in different parts of our export and loading processes.
We needed to export and save the name of the objects, their Element IDs, and the name of the materials they use while opening the door to support BIM data in the future. This would have to happen for all the file formats we support. While we decided to support flagging elements for all of them, we settled for only providing the object name and the element ID data for Revit files based on our user insights.
Additionally, it required a major change in how Prospect was grouping objects in VR so that we could highlight and select individual elements as needed without seeing a performance reduction. We also needed a new graphics system to create an outline around the selected object, a new tool that would change the appearance of the objects temporarily while keeping track of their state, and a new setting per file (Flagged Elements) that would display in the Library next to Viewpoints.
Creating an outline for an object selected was a very involved process, so we decided to settle for painting the entire object instead – in green when selected, and in red when flagged.
Inspect Element tool as released in Prospect 1.7
Development – Part 2 (Multiuser Meetings support)
As we released Prospect 1.7, we were gearing up for our Multiuser Beta release in 1.8. We needed to add support for the Inspect Element tool while in a Meeting.
The Inspect Element tool being used on the Scale Model
Activating this feature while in a project with other users meant:
Adding two extra fields in the VR menu to reflect who currently had selected the element (Selected by) and who flagged it (Flagged by). It is important to note that, while in a Meeting, we don’t currently share a user’s menu content with other users in the session, so for two users to review the properties of an object together, they must select it and interact with their own menus independently. Letting each other know that they were looking at the same element at the same time was a basic requirement.
The first design for the Inspect Element menu (left) was enlarged to support Participants’ information while in Meetings (right)
Adding an extra field in the exported report from the Library (the CSV file) to log the name of user who flagged a given element. This is relevant to keep track of issues and to document who found them.
If a user turned changed the visibility of the layer of an object, it needed to send that layer state to the server so that all users could see that change as well.
Design and Development Iteration
In Prospect 2.0, we were able to add blue outlines to an object when it gets selected. Finally, the tool could successfully represent the state of an object that is selected and flagged at the same time, while giving the user a better visual feedback of its extents.
Inspect Element tool outlines
As we continue to add support for this feature, we will be working on fully integrating with Rhino and SketchUp to output the list of elements that were flagged, we will be displaying BIM data from Revit, and we will providing a list of flagged elements not only in the Library but also while in VR. All of this with the goal of supporting our users across platforms and make the connection between their design tools and Prospect as seamless as possible.
Takeaways for our team
We learned a few things from creating the Inspect Element tool for Prospect:
Sketches are useful but VR prototypes are key to communicate ideas within our company and with our users.
While the scope for this feature was huge, we were able to reduce it due to development constraints and we released a feature that worked really well. Improving features over time is something we embrace and releasing an early version gave us more time to test and get feedback.
Providing support in Multiuser Meetings for the features we design means an extra layer of work for the entire team. From now on we will consider from the very beginning the design and development implications of having multiple people interact with our tools while in a Meeting in VR.
Selecting and flagging elements while in a Multiuser Meeting
If you are interested in trying out the Inspect Element tool:
IrisVR has today announced a new feature for the company’s virtual reality (VR) software platform which will allow for multi-user conferencing. Multi-User VR Experiences for Prospect Pro will make its public debut at the AIA Conference on Architecture in Orlando, Florida next week.
With Multi-User VR Experiences for Prospect Pro, users will be able to conduct remote or in-person meetings within a real-time, true-to-scale VR environment. This new feature will allow multiple individuals to enter the same 3D model and share a VR walk-through together. The technology is platform agnostic, meaning that users in different head-mounted displays (HMDs) will be able to join the same environment without limitation.
The news comes hot-off-the-heels of Facebook’s social VR programme reveal, Facebook Spaces, which debuted in beta earlier this week. However, while Facebook Spaces is targeting consumer collaboration, Prospect Pro is most definitely designed for enterprise use.
Multi-User VR Experiences for Prospect Pro is targeting HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Google Daydream and Samsung Gear VR. Attendees of the AIA Conference on Architecture will have the opportunity to experience the technology first-hand and walk through SketchUp, Revit and Rhino models with other booth attendees.
The Multi-User VR Experiences for Prospect Pro will be available to the public later in the year. VRFocus will keep you updated with all the latest VR initiatives from IrisVR.
Design
With Multi-User VR Experiences for Prospect Pro, users will be able to conduct remote or in-person meetings within a real-time, true-to-scale VR environment. This new feature will allow multiple individuals to enter the same 3D model and share a VR walk-through together. The technology is platform agnostic, meaning that users in different head-mounted displays (HMDs) will be able to join the same environment without limitation.