Why Use Virtual Worlds?
Most companies involved in architecture, property development, planning and regeneration are already using 2D and 3D mapping and visualisation tools. Whilst Virtual Worlds may not replace all of these they offer a number of distinctly different approaches.
Living The Design - The Social Aspect of a Build
Whilst visualisation tools may let you create a 3D fly-though of a proposed build they rarely let you stray off the pre-defined track. With virtual worlds once you have built a structure or environment users can move around it at will, they are not confined to a particular path. What is more multiple users can be active at any one time.
The ultimate expression of this would be in regeneration planning or new office/campus design where people could actually "live" in the proposed design over an extended period, getting to know it, using public spaces and finding its good and bad points. And every movement could be tracked and logged if required. Virtual worlds can provide a richness of quantitative and qualitative data unrivalled by any other technology.
Interaction
Within a virtual world objects can do things. Doors can open, lifts can go up and down, screens can show video, and sofas can be sat on. A virtual world can truly bring your proposals to life.
Easy, Remote Access
Virtual worlds are easy to use and operates across the Internet, so clients can access your visualisations from their homes or offices within minutes, using a simple, free download. You can of course control access, so you can chose who sees your visualisations.
Planning
Virtual Worlds are proving to be a viable alternative to audio video conferences Participants can view presentations and even stand around a planning model and dynamically change the model as the discussion flows.
In fact Virtual Worlds can provide the ideal counter-part to Planning For Real® sessions - enabling output to be readily captured, discussed and further manipulated over the web from participants homes and offices long after the cardboard boxes have been put away.
Annotated Spaces
Annotated Spaces is Daden's system to support the consultation process - with clients or the public, in virtual worlds. It allows users to drop 3D "post-it" notes inside the model, and add their comments. Those comments are immediately logged back to a web-based database, and later visitors can vote for or against each comment, or add their own.
Next Steps
If you would like to know more about Virtual Worlds, and how they could help your business promote and develop better projects and improve sales and client satisfaction then please get in touch today and we can arrange a free demonstration at your office.
Why not:
- Look at our project list
- Read our Building Visualisation flyer
- Ask to visit our 1:1 scale build of Birmingham's Millennium Point or the new Library of Birmingham
- Visit our whole-city planning model for Birmingham City Council on the Birmingham Island sim in Second Life, or read about it on the Virtual Birmingham web site
