Australian Library Design Awards 2017 — from The Australian Library and Information Association has announced the five winners of its inaugural Library Design Awards at its conference in Melbourne.
Excerpt:
Thirty-three stunning libraries were entered in the awards and there is a winner in each category: public, school, academic and special libraries all feature in the entries.
The Australian Library Design Awards were created to showcase the best in contemporary library interiors and exteriors in Australia, and to celebrate the investment in libraries made by Australia’s institutions, corporations, local, state and territory governments.
Education
Virtual Reality to teach the skills needed for the future by enabling learners to explore, play, work as a team, compete, and be rewarded for their achievements through interactive lessons.
Virtual Field Trips
Immersive VRXOne Lab
VR for Arts & Design
Safe Laboratory Practicals through VR
Game based Learning
Geography, Marine Life VR Exploration
Astronomy & Space Research through VR
Architecture & Interiors
VR for Sports & Games
VR to improve Public Speech
Corporate Training Virtual reality (VR) enhances traditional training methods through a new, practical and interactive approach. Improve Knowledge Retention by doing things in an immersive Environment.
* VR based Induction/ Onboarding
* Improving Health & Safety through VR
* Increase Knowledge Retention
* Hands-on VR Training Simulations
* Customer interactivity through VR
* VR to improve Marketing Strategy
* Special purpose training in VR
* High Risk Environment VR Simulation
* Critical National Infrastructure brief on VR
* VR for Business Planning
Healthcare
Virtual Reality has proven great results with 34% of Physical Health and 47% of Mental Health Improvements through various applications and learning programs.
* 360° Live streaming of Surgical Procedure
* Medical & Nursing Simulation
* Emergency Drill Scenario
* VR for pain & anxiety relief
* Assistive Technology for Special Education.
* Interactive Anatomy Lessons
* Yoga, Meditation and Recreational Therapy
* Virtual Medical Consultation
* Motivational Therapy for Aged Citizens
* VR for Medical Tourism
Review: From Revit to VR — from aecmag.com Greg Corke gets hands-on with three Virtual Reality (VR) applications that work seamlessly with Autodesk Revit, weighing up their capabilities and assessing how well they combine with the HTC Vive and workstation GPUs
Excerpt:
Virtual Reality (VR) is one of the most exciting technologies to hit the AEC market in years. Architects, engineers and clients alike can experience a realistic virtual prototype of a building long before it is built.
A fully immersive VR experience gives you a sense of scale, depth and spatial awareness that simply cannot be matched by a rendering, walkthrough or physicalscale model. The feeling of presence – of existing inside the 3D model – is quite incredible. Users have the freedom to explore a building at their own pace, to understand how it will feel and function. Walking across rooms, teleporting through doors, peering around corners – it’s all possible with a fully tracked roomscale experience.
The impact on the design process can be huge – but only if VR can be used at the precise moments where it adds most value.
Augmented reality has a number of increasingly important applications in a variety of industries, from engineering to retail to interior design. One of the most exciting applications of AR, and the one that promises perhaps the most immediate impact on our lives, is in medicine, where AR can help educate, diagnose, and even treat disease in new and innovative ways.
Microsoft’s HoloLens AR solution is perhaps the most advanced today in terms of becoming a part of the real world, even while it’s not yet a retail option aimed at consumers. Global medical technology company Stryker, which is using HoloLens to redesign the operating room, provides a clear example of the potential of AR in this setting.
From DSC: Microsoft uses the term “mixed reality” when they are discussing their Hololens product:
Using HoloLens and Stryker’s new By Design solution, hospital stakeholders are now able to envision the ideal operating room configuration with the power of holograms and the benefit of mixed reality.
Virtual Reality for architecture: a beginner’s guide — from aecmag.com With the availability of affordable headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, VR is now within reach of AEC firms of all sizes. Greg Corke explores this brave new virtual world
Excerpt:
It’s an all too familiar scenario: an architect enters a building for the first time and the space doesn’t quite match the vision of his or her design. However beautiful a static rendered image may be, traditional design visualisation can only convey so much, even when the scene is rendered at eyelevel with furniture for scale.
At Gensler, design director and principal Hao Ko knows the feeling. “You still have to make a translation in your mind, in terms of how tall this space is going to feel,” he says. “More often than not, I’ll go to my own projects and I’ll be like, ‘Wow! That’s a lot bigger than I expected.’ You still have those moments.”
This, he says, is where virtual reality, or VR, comes in – and others in the industry are starting to reach the same conclusion.
VR head-mounted displays (HMDs) such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have the power to change the way architects design and communicate buildings before they are built. The wearer is instantly immersed in a true three dimensional environment that gives an incredible sense of scale, depth and spatial awareness that simply cannot be matched by traditional renders, animations or physical-scale models.
What is the potential for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in the AEC industry? How might viewing virtual objects integrated into one’s physical environment or immersing oneself into a virtual world benefit the AEC sector? In this article, we will focus specifically on the use of augmented and virtual reality technology on head-mounted displays by architects, engineers and designers in the building design process.
From DSC: The following article reminded me of a vision that I’ve had for the last few years…
How to Build a Production Studio for Online Courses— from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser At the College of Business at the University of Illinois, video operations don’t come in one size. Here’s how the institution is handling studio setup for MOOCs, online courses, guest speakers and more.
Though I’m a huge fan of online learning, why only build a production studio that’s meant to support online courses only? Let’s take it a step further and design a space that can address the content development for online learning as well as for blended learning — which can include the flipped classroom type of approach.
To do so, colleges and universities need to build something akin to what the National University of Singapore has done. I would like to see institutions create large enough facilities in order to house multiple types of recording studios in each one of them. Each facility would feature:
One room that has a lightboard and a mobile whiteboard in it — let the faculty member choose which surface that they want to use
Another room that has a Microsoft Surface Hub or a similar interactive, multitouch device
A recording booth with a nice, powerful, large iMac that has ScreenFlow on it. The booth would also include a nice, professional microphone, a pop filter, sound absorbing acoustical panels, and more. Blackboard Collaborate could be used here as well…especially with the Application Sharing feature turned on and/or just showing one’s PowerPoint slides — with or without the video of the faculty member…whatever they prefer.
Another recording booth with a PC and Adobe Captivate, Camtasia Studio, Screencast-O-Matic, or similar tools. The booth would also include a nice, professional microphone, a pop filter, sound absorbing acoustical panels, and more. Blackboard Collaborate could be used here as well…especially with the Application Sharing feature turned on and/or just showing one’s PowerPoint slides — with or without the video of the faculty member…whatever they prefer.
Another recording booth with an iPad tablet and apps loaded on it such asExplain Everything:
A large recording studio that is similar to what’s described inthe article— a room that incorporates a full-width green screen, with video monitors, a tablet, a podium, several cameras, high-end mics and more. Or, if the budget allows for it, a really high end broadcasting/recording studiolike what Harvard Business school is using:
The Lounge, enabled by Samsung on November 8, 2016 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Anna Kucera)
The Lounge, enabled by Samsung on November 8, 2016 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Anna Kucera)
Also see:
The Lounge enabled by Samsung Open day and night, The Lounge enabled by Samsung is a new place in the heart of the Opera House where people can sit and enjoy art and culture through the latest technology. The most recent in a series of future-facing projects enabled by Sydney Opera House’s Principal Partner, Samsung, the new visitor lounge features stylish, comfortable seating, as well as interactive displays and exclusive digital content, including:
The Sails – a virtual-reality experience of what it’s like to stand atop the sails of Australia’s most famous building, brought to you via Samsung Gear VR;
Digital artwork – a specially commissioned video exploration of the Opera House and its stories, produced by creative director Sam Doust. The artwork has been themed to match the time of day and is the first deployment of Samsung’s latest Smart LED Display panel technology in Australia; and
Google Cultural Institute – available to view on Samsung Galaxy View and Galaxy Tab S2 tablets, the digital collection features 50 online exhibits that tell the story of the Opera House’s past, present and future through rare archival photography, celebrated performances, early architectural drawings and other historical documents, little-known interviews and Street View imagery.
In parallel with gaming, VR is expanding into many other areas, including these:
Healthcare Surgical Theater is working with UCLA, New York University, the Mayo Clinic and other major medical centers to use VR to help surgeons prepare for difficult operations. Virtual 3D models are constructed from MRIs, CAT scans and/or ultrasounds.
Mental health
Meditation promotes mental health by reducing stress and anxiety.
Education Unimersiv is focusing on historical sites, creating a series of VR tours for the Colosseum, Acropolis, Parthenon, Stonehenge, Titanic, etc. These tours allow each site to be explored as it existed when it was built. Additional locations’ virtual sites and attractions will undoubtedly be added in the near future. The British Museum offered a Virtual Reality Weekend in August 2015. Visitors were able to explore a Bronze Age roundhouse with a flickering fire and changing levels of light while they “handled” Bronze Age relics. The American Museum of Natural History allows students anywhere in the world to take virtual tours of selected museum exhibits, and other museums will soon follow.
Training
Virtual reality is an excellent tool when the task is dangerous or the equipment involved is expensive.
Crime reconstruction
Architecture
Collaboration Virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality will form the basis for the next set of collaboration tools.
However, we see very little experienced-based learning in all levels of education today. Traditional learning consists of little more than oration through lectures and textbooks (and their digital equivalents). Experience-based learning is often very difficult to facilitate in the classroom. Whether it be a field trip in elementary school, or simulation exercises in med school, it can be tedious, costly and time consuming.
…
Where VR is really winning in education is in subject matter retention. The first of several surveys that we’ve done was based on a VR field trip through the circulatory system with high-school age children. We saw an increase of nearly 80% in subject matter retention from a group that used VR, compared against a control group that was provided the same subject matter via text and image. (I’ll expand on the details of this experiment, and some research initiatives we’re working on in another blog post).
The old phrase of ‘needing to see it to believe it’ is a powerful mantra across all aspects of residential design. Architecture, interior design and property development are all highly visual trades that require buy-in from both those working on the project and the client. As such, making sure everyone is sold on a coherent vision is vital to ensure that everything goes smoothly and no one is left dissatisfied when the project is completed.
It’s a way for educators to bring their students to places that would be out of reach otherwise. Google Expeditions, the VR mode of Google Street View and Nearpod’s virtual field trips are among the most popular experiences teachers explore with their students. “Some of our students have never really left the bubbles of their own town”, says Jaime Donally, creator of the #ARVRinEDU chat on Twitter. “Virtual reality is a relatively inexpensive way to show them the world.”
In the video below, a facilities manager is using a mobile device to scan a QR code on a wall, behind which is a critical piece of HVAC equipment. With one scan, we can view data on the asset’s performance and health, location data for the asset. This data is being pulled by the IoT Platform from the asset itself, TRIRIGA, and any other useful sources.
Excerpt:
But the best experiences, VR acolytes agree, are still yet to come. Resh Sidhu leads VR development for Framestore, the high-end visual effects house that won an Oscar for the movie Gravity, and has since expanded into creating VR content. With hardware finally delivering on its promise, she believes it is now up to creatives to explore the possibilities.
There’s so much more to VR than just gaming. Which is probably why HTC has been exploring entirely new ways to bring VR to art, education and culture — starting with museums around the world.
HTC recently collaborated with TIME-LIFE on “Remembering Pearl Harbor,” a VR experience commemorating the 75th anniversary of the attack with exhibitions at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City and the Newsuem in Washington D.C. Last month, Vive also collaborated with the Royal Academy of Arts in London on the world’s first 3-D printed VR art exhibit.
Now HTC Vive has revealed the launch of a new VR center at La Geode, part of Paris’ Science and Industry Museum, as well as a partnership with the Nobel Museum for a first-of-its-kind VR exhibit showcasing the contributions of Nobel laureates.
From DSC: In the future, I’d like to see holograms provide stunning visual centerpieces for the entrance ways into libraries, or in our classrooms, or in our art galleries, recital halls, and more. The object(s), person(s), scene(s) could change into something else, providing a visually engaging experience that sets a tone for that space, time, and/or event.
Eventually, perhaps these types of technologies/setups will even be a way to display artwork within our homes and apartments.
