Grasping three-dimensional (3D) topography and drawing a harmonious highway route is the most important factor in mountain-area road design. Contour maps have long been used as base maps for understanding topography. However, recent 3D computer graphics advances have enabled us to leverage topography without paper contour maps. Thus, we have been studying design methods in virtual spaces that can more accurately reproduce 3D topography. Expensive equipment, however, including head-mounted displays (HMD), are required. In recent years, simplified smartphone-based HMDs have become very popular. Virtual reality (VR) environments have thus been created, where anyone can easily enjoy an advanced VR experience anywhere. With the advance of game systems, VR has also rapidly improved. These systems make it possible to easily design a virtual space without depending on expensive or specialized equipment. Therefore, we offer a road design system based on a simplified cardboard smartphone HMD with lenses to solve the current problems of road design.
A system interface is indispensable when enabling and controlling movement and other operations in a 3D virtual space. Various interfaces are available for the PC. However, when using a simplified HMD, the available interfaces are limited, because the system’s main interface is the smart phone. Additionally, one of our system prerequisites is the ability to produce the system easily and cheaply to achieve our research objectives. The developed system consists of 4 modules: terrain representation, movement controller, route drawing, and driving simulator.
We performed experiments to evaluate the usefulness of the developed VR system using Google Cardboard. The experiments compared three methods: drawing with a pencil on a contour map; drawing on a single-screen 3D computer graphics (CG); and drawing in a 3D space by VR. As results, in terms of ease-of-understanding, Contour < 3D < VR for all items, and all users stated that the topography was easy to grasp, using VR. The HMD stereoscopic view functioned effectively, regardless of topography grasping ability. On the other hand, the problems with the nauseous using the VR system and the fatigue from holding the HMD for long periods with one hand were revealed.
The simplified HMD is cheap compared to conventional HMDs, and it is possible to simultaneously use many sets. Thus, it becomes possible for multiple people to immerse in the same virtual space. This will be useful for confirming the operation of a designed function and for public relations with the project owners. Moreover, the multi-user virtual space will be a useful collaboration tool. To realize this vision, development should continue.
ICCCBE2018_makanae_for_cameraReady.pdf 