'Immersive' - evolving the definition
‘Immersive’ is already an overused buzzword, and not just in relation to technology – it’s commonplace in gaming, retail, entertainment and marketing. So how do we make it more meaningful to the construction and property sectors?
As with most things, the benchmark for what constitutes an immersive experience is evolving. In much the same way as the term 'mobile' has transformed in the last few decades to cover any remotely portable telephony device to what we all now recognise as powerful handheld computers & multimedia entertainment systems.
In the 70s, IMAX defined ‘immersive’ with a large curved screen that offered at best 25-30% of visual field coverage (depending on where you sit) and in the early 90s, a CAVE defined a flat screen solution that arguably provided a much larger visual field. There are also now solutions that are based on an abstract curvature and the ‘immersion’ relies on proximity to the screen surface, rather than a precise emulation of human vision at scale. These systems all offer something that broadly falls into the immersive category - but how do we then distinguish what defines an appropriate standard for the needs of our very precise and quality conscious industry?
While some of these technologies are important way-points in the evolution of immersive viewing platforms for our industry, there is a growing understanding of what an effective shared experience should look like. For an audience fast becoming accustomed to the benefits of individual forms of virtual reality in headsets, a projection system that claims to offer ‘shared immersion’ needs the following as a minimum to meet these expectations:
- No seams
- Unbroken visual field (vertical & horizontal)
- No edges/corners
- No shadows
- 1-to-1 reality mapping
- Low gain/high contrast
So the use case below is a particularly satisfying indication of progress, as we upgrade our understanding of the term ‘immersive’ to reflect where we are now and the effect that conventional (headset-enabled) VR has done to push us on from more traditional forms of flat screen and ultra-wide, curved projection systems.
Read the AEC Magazine coverage about how we have done this for Willmott Dixon to enable true shared reality viewing alongside a coordinated review process enabled by Revizto: