Smith & Black To Revolutionise Urban Design With State-Of-The-Art Virtual Reality Technology!!!

Civil Engineering, Urban Design and Infrastructure specialists, Smith & Black, are set to revolutionise urban design and development, with the introduction of Virtual Reality (VR) technology to the forefront of its business.

State-of-the-art VR systems, including a Hologram Room, promise to bring design plans to life in 3D, allowing users not only to walk around plans, but to look under and around objects and have their movements tracked. 

 “This is new and clients are blown away when they use it, they haven’t seen anything like this,” said Smith & Black Technical Business Developer, David Johnson.

“There are no limits to where you can move. You can look at each side of an object- can stick your head out of the window.”

“This is what it means to reproduce reality, it’s staggering.”

Well known for their involvement in large scale construction projects, Smith & Black are re-invigorating the visualisation of large-scale plans with the Hologram Room, providing the opportunity to see buildings and entire cities before construction begins.

”When you’re designing something that big, it can be hard to visualise. Normally we use plans, the problem with this is that although they’re accurate and essential, they are not very easy for the average person to understand. Companies make pictures or videos to give an idea of what it will look like but you can’t see what the view will look like from this house or if there’s obstructions or if you want to add a tree or change something. Once you’ve made it that's it, it’ll take weeks to go back and make a new plan,” said Mr Johnson.

“With VR you can see it before it’s made, you can walk down the street and say this street is too narrow or if needs more trees. You can’t see these things from a plan or a video. Ultimately it can affect their sales.”

Key Elements of the Hologram Room

● Light, easy to use shutter glasses (these are the same as 3D movie glasses).

● State-of-the-art 3D, short throw projectors installed in the roof, appearing much like ones you see in a classroom. Supplied by Euclidean and manufactured in Korea, they are made of a special lens and scanner.

● Technology that can easily track your head position, using tiny infrared LED on the top of the glasses. Traditionally tracking a person's position was very difficult, however Smith and Black solved this problem with the LED.

● New technology that allows participants to look under tables and around corners etc. 

Primarily known for its capabilities in entertainment, such as gaming, VR is rapidly modernising industries and businesses with innovative and practical applications, such as city planning and urban redevelopment. 

Mr Johnson suggests that VR is data oriented in gaming and urban development, and that the two are interconnected. 

“There’s a huge overlap between games/urban development. They’re both about data, and games have lots of GIS, they’re very much the same. In games you have an action, whereas in Urban Development, it’s about accuracy,” said Mr Johnson.

“VR was originally made for architecture and looking at design work, it was much later before people started using it for entertainment and games.”