Real Time Interactive Collaborative Exploration of Urban Data with Virtual Reality

Real Time Interactive Collaborative Exploration of Urban Data with Virtual Reality

Dunnewind, Mirko (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science; TU Delft Web Information Systems)

Bozzon, A. (mentor)
Wang, H. (graduation committee)
Lofi, C. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Computer Science | Software Technology

2023-07-04

Immersive technologies, such as head-mounted devices for Virtual Reality (VR), have experienced increased availability on the consumer market. This opens up numerous possibilities for scientific research and industrial applications. But, configuring and combining data from various sources to create an effective visualization to explore, collaborate in and interact with, has only been researched in limited aspects. This thesis aims to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating these diverse aspects into a single application while preserving their individual potential.

To achieve this objective, an extensive analysis of the literature was done to establish the state of the art. All aspects necessary to create a single application were investigated to define how much of the literature fully or partly implemented them. Findings of the literature were summarized through definition, progress, limitations and improvements.

Based on the analysis, a proof of concept was designed and implemented, which established a virtual reality framework for real-time analysis and exploration of heterogeneous urban data. The framework involved the development of both a client and server applications with real-time communication. The server application processes and caches input data based on a structured configuration file, while the client application renders and visualizes points and shapes based on instructions from the server. The layered processing approach in this proof of concept facilitated real-time data handling and exploration. Which also makes it possible to collaborate with multiple people working on or manipulating the same data at the same time.

Evaluation of the server application showed its capability of processing over 1.000.000 objects from GeoJSON data. After initial rendering, the client application could update over 4.000 objects with a latency of just 200ms, which is considered to be interactive. Feedback from experts further supported the validation of the proof of concept application as a viable solution to the research question.

This research established the validity of a configurable real-time analysis and exploration solution in virtual reality. With further development and research, this tool holds potential for being used in diverse environments dealing with urban data.

Urban Data
Virtual Reality
Collaboration

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:570ff1b3-cb1b-4e1b-9cd0-39c6d5f1240b

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 Mirko Dunnewind