DIGITALISATION
CONTRIBUTING TO BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLING AND OTHER APPLICATIONS ‘The Singapore Engineer’ learns about the solutions that Barco has to offer the Built Environment industry, from Mr Gan Ta Loong, Managing Director, Barco SEA and Vice President Immersive Experience, Barco APAC. Barco is a world leader in Virtual Reality (VR) visualisation solutions.
Mr Gan Ta Loong
Question: What are the solutions that Barco is offering the Built Environment industry?
completely absorb the attention of audiences and bring science to life.
Answer: The introduction of Virtual Reality (VR) in the industry has been a complete game changer, as BIM and digitalisation accelerate. VR offers a fast and inexpensive method of modelling, compared to the physical models of the past.
Belgium-based Reynaers Aluminium, a leader in developing innovative and sustainable aluminium solutions for residential, commercial, and industrial building projects, used Barco's laser projectors to create AVALON - a five-sided, immersive cave where architects, contractors, and investors could experience, discuss and fine-tune building designs.
Barco's immersive Cave VR solutions consist of multiple projection walls, and can be customised to accommodate unique needs. Teams can be jointly immersed in the 3D experience, making it an ideal place to share experiences and facilitate collaboration among several stakeholders. The Barco Canvas solution brings VR into meeting rooms, enabling more people to experience group VR for team collaboration as well as for previewing and assessing buildings or designs before construction. Also, technical master plans (dealing with, for example, HVAC and building materials) can continuously be simulated, evaluated, validated and improved. Projects designed in this way are not only better thought-through, but also advance a lot faster than traditional projects. Q: How do these solutions help engineers and other professionals? A: Building designs visualised in Barco's Cave and Canvas VR environments allow professionals an immersive and life-like environment to evaluate designs and make changes. Virtual prototyping of complete or partial designs allow teams to see the results of designs immediately and make adjustments in the early phases of a project, reducing overall costs. VR also provides an increasingly better idea of what to expect onsite, which reduces overall risk, and empowers more experimentation and new ideas.
New building designs are visualised in an immersive, five-sided Cave VR display.
Q: Could you briefly describe one or two actual applications of Barco’s solutions? A: At the Science Museum in Tokyo, Japan, Barco worked with a partner to upgrade the Synra Dome, which is a theatre that utilises 3D images to show views of the universe and of the sky, as seen from an observatory in America. The existing system was replaced with six Barco F35-AS3D projectors that deliver greater stability from less input and images that are more vibrant, to 28
THE SINGAPORE ENGINEER January 2021
Barco’s Canvas VR solution enables teams to collaborate and visualise projects in 3D.
