Virtual reality is emerging as a valuable technology for the visualization of building and infrastructure design and construction information. The Immersive Construction (ICon) Lab, located in 306 Engineering Unit C and under the leadership of Dr. John Messner, is bringing the world of virtual reality to AE students—broadening their horizons when it comes to seeing how buildings are put together. ICon Lab rendering by Ming Norman Tsui, 5th-year AE student

The purpose of the lab is to facilitate the effective use of virtual reality (VR) techniques in design, construction and other disciplines. The aim is to develop low cost, easy-to-use and easy-to-administer VR display systems to facilitate their deployment in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry and throughout engineering and architectural academic programs.

The ICon Lab contains an affordable immersive projection display which allows 3D and 4D models to be displayed in stereo at full scale. This allows students and practitioners to virtually “walk through” buildings prior to their construction. The display consists of three screens, with each screen measuring six feet high by eight feet

wide. Screens are angled to provide a wider field-of-view, semi-surround, visually immersive display. Each projection screen can be driven from any of three computer display sources. A single Windows workstation and contiguous desktop display is the option-of-choice for most students. The Windows console uses a three-headed, stereo-capable graphics card, which provide a contiguous, panoramic Windows desktop for leveraging existing CAD, presentation and multi-media applications. Switch-selectable displays allow various projection sources to be mixed and matched as needed in the lab.

The lab is also set up to function as an Access Grid node. The Access Grid provides a flexible and extensible framework through which lab users can in real-time share a mixture of graphical applications, data, voice and video streams in rich tele-collaborative work sessions with other students or colleagues from multiple locations worldwide.

The ICon Lab is available to students 24/7. Students can load their designs into the immersive display system and easily navigate the 3D models at full scale as well as display additional media information related to the project. A major benefit of the ICon Lab is that students can work within a familiar computing environment and applications workflow, augmenting that work with the virtual reality experience of human scale with a stereoscopic and navigable display, thereby facilitating understanding of spatial relationships and the ramifications of their design and construction planning decisions.

Academically, Dr. Messner and other faculty are excited about experimenting with the development of educational simulation modules for use in the classroom. These modules can show students design coordination issues and construction sequence, and allow for interactive activities to be performed in the lab.

This lab is one of two affordable immersive display labs at Penn State with the Immersive Environments Lab (IEL) in the new Stuckeman Family Building as a related facility, operated by the department of architecture. These facilities provide the core infrastructure for collaborative visualization research between the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Information Technology Services, and Architectural Engineering related to the design and adoption of VR in the AEC industry. The principal funding for the ICon Lab has been provided by the National Science Foundation (Grant EEC-0343861). Collaborative support from ITS, especially the Visualization Group led by George Otto, and the architecture department, with extensive support by Loukas Kalisperis ’85g, has been instrumental in the development of the lab. Successful operation of the ICon Lab is also dependent on the daily support of the following graduate students: Alex Zolotov, Grace Wang, Kurt Maldovan, and Rob Leicht.

For more information, please visit the Computer Integrated Construction Research Program web site at www.engr.psu.edu/ae/cic or contact Dr. John Messner at 814-865-4578 or jmessner@engr.psu.edu.