Applications for Virtual and Reality Modelling for Construction: ПРИЛОЖЕНИЯ НА ВИРТУАЛНОТО МОДЕЛИРАНЕ И МОДЕЛИРАНЕТО НА ВИРТУАЛНА РЕАЛНОСТ В СТРОИТЕЛСТВОТО

Virtual and Reality modelling applications to the construction industry has not been examined to the necessary degree, with researchers disagreeing as to how to best apply these applications to construction. As most Building Information Models (BIM) are created for design purposes (Eadie et al, 2013), this research concentrates on the design office environment. This study concentrates on firstly seeking to clarify the best means of importing a (BIM) into virtual reality (VR) for viewing and secondly, analysing how 360-degree camera work can be linked to Autodesk RevitTM. Both these elements utilise plugins to import the elements to and from Autodesk RevitTM. Sixteen plugins in total were examined: 13 Virtual Reality Plugins (on 2 different Head Mounted Displays) and 3 360-degree camera work plugins. The usability of the 360-degree camera work plugins were examined determining that Holobuilder was the preferred option. The VR plugins were measured against the 8 dimensions of service quality and ranked. This led to Iris VR: ProspectTM being ranked the top VR plugin. The study is unique in that there is little published work in the plugin area and this paper ranks the different plugins for the first time.