30 minute read
architecture
Virtual Reality for architecture: a beginner’s guide
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.
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 threedimensional 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.
A VR experience with an HMD can fool your brain into thinking what you’re seeing is actually real. The WorldViz ‘Walk the Plank’ demo at Nvidia’s GTC event in April stopped me dead in my tracks. Even though I knew I was standing in an exhibition hall, I literally could not step forward for fear of falling. The sense of presence was overwhelming. It felt like I truly ‘existed’ in the scene and, from then on, the fight of mind over mat-
Exploring different furniture options in Autodesk Stingray Architectural VR experience created by TruVision using Unreal Engine
ter was well and truly lost.
This sensation of actually being inside a building also makes VR an incredibly powerful tool for communicating design intent. Clients, in particular, often don’t have the ability to understand spatial relationships and scale simply by looking at a 2D plan or 3D model. VR can evoke a visceral response in exactly the same way that physical architecture can.
“We just had a client where we were showing some conceptual renderings and they were having a hard time [understanding the building],” explains Mr Ko. “The second we put goggles on them, it was like, ‘Oh yeah. Build that. That’s great. That’s what I want.’”
VR can play an important role at all stages of the design-to-construction process, from evaluating design options and showcasing proposals, to designing out errors and ironing out construction and serviceability issues before breaking ground on site.
Even at the conceptual phase, VR can be an effective means of exploring the relationships between spaces – the
impact of light on a room at different times of the day or year, or views from mezzanine floors. With a physical scale model or BIM model on screen, you still have to imagine what it would be like to exist inside the space. With VR, you actually experience the proportion and scale.
VR software VR environments for architecture and construction projects have traditionally been created with powerful professional VR development platforms, such as WorldViz Vizard or Virtalis Visionary Render.
But with VR now set to go mainstream, so-called 3D game engines, often used to create first-person shooters, offer a powerful, low-cost (and sometimes free) alternative for architectural VR.
Portsmouth-based VR specialist, TruVision, for example, relies on Unreal Engine to generate its fully immersive 3D environments for architects and clients.
Architectural content is also being generated specifically for the popular game engine. Software developer UE4Arch, for example, sells a wide
What is an HMD?
A head-mounted display (HMD) is a pair of goggles that you strap on your head for a fully immersive VR experience. Each eye is shown a slightly different view, fooling your brain into thinking you are inside a virtual 3D world. Wearers experience an amazing sense of presence, scale and depth. The virtual world can be explored from any angle, simply by moving your head or eyes. Movements are tracked by the HMD and the view of the virtual world adjusts instantly.
range of materials and models for They can be rendered out from a range of ronment, things like materials, lighting, Unreal, including beds, tables and chairs. applications including Chaos Group V-Ray, furniture and other small details that
Autodesk Stingray is a relatively new Nvidia Iray VR Lite, Autodesk A360 make the VR experience feel real are game engine that was built from the Rendering, Iris VR Scope and Lumion. added. Barcelona-based ARQVR, for BitSquid engine that Autodesk acquired in In Vectorworks 2017, due for release example, even goes so far as to add tiny, 2014. It offers a live link to Autodesk 3ds later this year, users should be able to cre- personalised decorative objects such as Max, which is great for design viz special- ate a VR panorama very easily, simply by paintings, books, logos and plants. ists familiar with the 3D modelling, ren- uploading a 3D CAD model to the cloud. Additional programming work can be dering and animation software. However, The resulting stereo images are then dis- done to make the experience more interacAutodesk is also exploring ways to make played on a smartphone’s web browser. tive, such as enabling clients to experithe technology more accessible to archi- ment with design options, materials and tects and other users of Revit. From BIM to VR lighting. Architects can flip between
Crytech is another popular game Most CAD and BIM models feature design schemes without leaving the VR engine, as is Unity, which already has a extremely detailed geometry, which is not environment. big presence in the AEC sector. Unity is needed for VR. Fully interactive VR soft- For Autodesk’s Stingray demo of a San also being used as the foundation for new ware also has extremely high perfor- Francisco apartment, for example, Londonarchitecturally focused products. New mance demands, so some form of model based creative agency Rewind proYork-based startup IrisVR, for example, optimisation is required when bringing grammed in the ability to try out different has adapted the game engine for Prospect, BIM data into a VR environment. furniture options or strip back the walls to a software tool that allows architects to quickly bring SketchUp, Revit and other BIM models into ‘‘ The wearer is instantly immersed in a reveal the building services. Creating the most realistic and interactive VR experiences a VR environment. Other software developers are getting in on the act by building true three-dimensional environment that gives an incredible sense of scale, is a skilled process, so firms typically outsource or employ specialists. in tools to render out VR panora- depth and spatial awareness Increasing visual quality also mas. Unlike the tools above, which generate VR-optimised 3D models for real-time navigation, VR pano- This is one area where specialist VR ’’ demands much more from the workstation that renders the images in real time, so there are some tricks ramas are essentially wide-angle pano- consultancies earn their keep with finely such as light baking, which can remove ramic images that deliver a full tuned processes for tasks like simplifying some of the load. However, pre-rendering 360-degree snapshot of the world around geometry, adding lighting, fixing gaps in can take hours, even on a render farm. you. The viewing position is static, which the model and culling objects that will Nvidia Iray VR takes realism to the next is a big downside, but with a stereo pair of not be visible in the scene. level by delivering physically based renimages, the user can still get a good sense “Our clients have the models, we have dering inside the virtual world. The GPUof depth and the quality can be excellent. the headsets, the graphics engines and the accelerated ray trace rendering technology
VR panoramas are best viewed on knowledge of how to stitch all these accurately simulates light to deliver stunentry-level ‘smartphone’ headsets like the together,” says Scott Grant, CEO of ning effects, such as reflections in the marSamsung Gear VR or Google Cardboard, Glasgow-based design viz specialist Soluis. ble floor that change as you shift position. but will also work fine on the Oculus Rift. Once the model is inside the VR envi- There are some downsides. First, the
Workstation hardware for smooth VR
Virtual Reality demands extremely powerful workstation hardware. While most modern CAD workstations should satisfy the minimum requirements for CPU and memory (3.30GHz Intel Core i5 4590 / 8GB RAM or above), they will likely fall well short on graphics.
Both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive require a graphics card capable of sustaining a minimum frame rate of 90 FPS per eye. Anything below this and the user is likely to experience nausea or motion sickness.
VR not only pushes the computational limits of GPU hardware, but can place huge demands on memory size and memory bandwidth as models need to load into GPU memory quickly.
AMD recommends its topend professional GPU, the AMD FirePro W9100 (available in 16GB or 32GB versions). However, it recently launched the Radeon Pro Duo (pictured right), a hugely powerful liquid-cooled dual GPU graphics card, designed specifically for VR content creation and consumption.
Nvidia recommends its top-end Quadro M5000 or Quadro M6000 GPU (available in 12GB and 24GB versions).
In many cases, a simple graphics card upgrade will turn your CAD workstation into one capable of running VR. However, this depends on what type of machine you have. All of the aforementioned VR-capable graphic cards need two PCIe slots, an auxiliary power connector and more than 150W of available power. You
AMD Radeon Pro Duo need to make sure your CAD workstation can satisfy these demands.
Nvidia has also launched a ‘VR Ready’ program to help users buy a workstation that is capable of running professional VR applications. Workstation manufacturers Dell, HP a n d Lenovo have all announced ‘Nvidia VR Ready’ professional workstations. The
HP Z240, Z640 and
Z840, Dell Precision T5810, T7810 and T7910 and the Lenovo P410, P510, P710 and P910 all come with Nvidia-recommended configurations, as well as an Intel Core i5-4590/Intel Xeon E3-1240 v3 or greater CPU and a HTC Vive or Oculus Rift HMD.
MSI has also announced the first ‘Nvidia VR Ready’ mobile workstation, the MSI WT72, designed to handle VR-powered design reviews. It features the new Quadro M5500 GPU, which is said to be the world’s fastest mobile GPU. Eurocom also offers a number of laptops capable of powering the Rift or Vive.
Mobile VR is interesting for two reasons. First, it
Interactive ‘photorealism’ with Nvidia Iray VR
pre-processing requires a serious amount of compute power. Even with eight ultra high-end GPUs, it would take over 100 hours to render a set vantage point within a scene (approximately a 2m x 2m x 2m box). You can move from side to side and experience parallax effects (such as looking round a column or over a balcony), but cannot walk freely within the scene.
Second, while the output quality is excellent, it is a little wasted on current-generation HMDs. Viewing a ray trace rendered image on a 4K monitor is one thing but, on an HMD, the experience is completely different as you can still see the pixels. For both of these reasons, Iray VR is probably more of a technology for the future.
At the heart of design Virtual reality does not need to be ‘photorealistic’, or even close, for it to be of huge benefit to architects. One can argue that spatial realism is much more important than photorealism. The rendered quality of WorldViz’s ‘Walk the Plank’ demo feels like a 3D game from five years ago, but it still stops many in their tracks.
By not aspiring to create the most realistic experience possible, VR can instantly be opened up to a much wider audience.
After all, how can VR become an essential tool for architects if you have to hand off your BIM model to a specialist
means VR is portable, making it easier to take VR to client offices or construction sites. Second, some laptops can be worn in a dedicated VR backpack, complete with additional battery, which means no trailing cables.
However, with the Quadro M5500 GPU rated at 150W (most mobile workstation GPUs peak at 100W), we imagine there are some big thermal challenges to overcome.
VR is not limited to professional GPUs. The recently announced AMD Radeon RX 480 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 both meet the minimum requirements for the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift and should work fine with VR game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity.
However, both AMD and Nvidia have said they are currently testing and certifying their professional graphics cards for a range of VR engines and VR software. This should become more important moving forward, just as it already is for firms that rely on certified graphics and workstation hardware for running CAD software. The Nvidia ‘VR Ready’ HP Z840 workstation with HTC Vive
to work on? By the time you get your VR-optimised model back, the design Would you be able to walk the will have evolved. For VR to become per- plank in the vertigo-inducing vasive in the AEC sector, and used at the WorldViz demo? heart of design, it needs to be instant.
This is the approach taken by IrisVR whose Prospect software is specifically designed to help architects take BIM into VR in minutes. The idea is that whatever you see on screen inside your BIM software, you then see in VR. Simply press a button and the software takes care of everything: geometry optimisation, materials, lighting and all.
Enabling architects to effortlessly move between BIM and VR can truly revolutionise the way buildings are designed. At any stage of the design process, the architect can pop on a headset and instantly get a feeling of being inside the building. This simply cannot be matched by viewing a fortable to wear. Both feature a single in relation to others. For example, you BIM model on screen. 2,160 x 1,200 display, split across both can shift your body to one side to look
Autodesk is also working on making eyes, which equates to a per-eye resolu- around a floor column, or lean over a balVR much more accessible to architects. tion of 1,080 x 1,200. cony to see the road below – unless vertiProject Expo is a technology preview that This might sound like a lot, but as you go gets the better of you, that is! uses the cloud to bring BIM models from are viewing the displays up close, there is The Oculus Rift is generally used for a Revit into Stingray at the push of a button. some pixellation. David Luebke, vice seated experience. Movement is tracked
There are already signs of VR becoming president of graphics research at Nvidia, by a single base-station and a gyroscope, pervasive in the AEC sector. AMD FirePro, says that retinal resolution is 78m pixels accelerometer and magnetometer built for example, is currently talking to a large per eye – 60 times that of current HMDs into the headset. multinational engineering firm about put- – so there is still some way to go. And The headset currently ships with an ting VR on the desks of one in five of its things can’t progress too quickly as Xbox One controller for navigation, but employees. While many of the users will graphics processing also needs keep up. a pair of dedicated VR controllers (the be designers, it is even more interesting to Refresh rates on the HTC Vive and Oculus Touch) will be launched later learn that management and implementers Oculus Rift are incredibly high. While this year. will also have access to VR headsets. films and renderings give decent results Set up is very easy, almost plug and at 24 frames per second (FPS), VR must play. This is great for novice users, espeHead Mounted Displays (HMDs) run at 90 FPS – not only to reduce lag cially clients, as they generally don’t need Virtual Reality headsets (or HMDs) have and enhance realism, but to eliminate the any help to get it working out of the box. been around since the 1990s, but early feeling of nausea or motion sickness The HTC Vive is primarily designed for models were both ridiculously expensive experienced by some VR users. a standing, ‘room scale’ experience, which and offered a relatively poor user experi- However, the displays are only one part means the user can literally walk around ence, due to low resolutions, modest frame of the overall solution. It is the accuracy a building (although the trackable area is rates and poor head tracking. with which HMDs can track the physical limited to around 5m by 5m). The headset
However, the games and entertainment position of the user’s head, so it can be is tracked by two base stations, which can industry is now driving the market forwards at some pace. The Oculus Rift costs just £400. The ‘‘ Objects will appear to move in relation be mounted on walls or tripods. The Vive ships with two VR wands (one for each hand), HTC Vive comes in at £700. That to others — you can shift your body to which have a selection of butputs these low-cost, consumerfocused but professional-quality one side to look around a column, or tons including a trigger. Depending on the functionality headsets well within the reach of lean over a balcony to see the road below of your VR software, you can mid-size and smaller architecture and engineering firms. With both headsets, most of the heavy- synchronised with the virtual world, ’’ use the wands to select objects, navigate between rooms or even mark up objects. duty processing is carried out by a pow- which makes them so powerful. The HTC Vive is more complex to set erful PC or workstation with a high-end Both the Rift and Vive have rotational up than the Rift, as you need to install graphics card. The headset is tethered to and positional head-tracking capabilities. and calibrate the tracking cameras which the workstation by chunky USB and This means you not only have a must be placed at head height at opposite HDMi cables. This means the wearer has 360-degree view around a fixed point, ends of the room, either wall mounted or to be careful not to trip over trailing controlled simply by turning your head on stands. This can be quite daunting for cables, although some VR setups route (left, right, up and down and anywhere in beginners. the cables above head height. between), but the user’s head is also VR can also be delivered using smart-
The headsets are quite heavy (around tracked as it moves through 3D space. phones, which are attached to specially 0.5kg) but are padded and relatively com- This means objects will appear to move designed headsets such as the Samsung
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Gear VR and Google Cardboard. However, through the building from space to space. delivering practical tools for solving realas the smartphone is used to both display TruVision allows users to teleport world design and construction problems. and compute the images, performance is between rooms simply by pressing a but- But this will change. While most game nowhere near as good as with the work- ton on an Xbox One controller. engines strip out metadata, which is station-accelerated Vive and Rift. Both The use of waypoint systems is a popu- important for true BIM processes, when headsets also lack positional tracking, lar means of navigation for users of the moving from Revit to Autodesk Stingray, which is important for comfort and HTC Vive. For example, in Autodesk’s data is not only retained, but users can immersion. However, for VR panoramas, Stingray demo, users simply point a vir- click on objects and view the underlying you can get a pretty decent experience. tual laser at a floating ‘hotspot’ within the attribute information. 3D space and click to move. Revizto, a dedicated tool for turning Health and safety BIM to VR specialist IrisVR uses a simi- CAD models into navigable 3D environFeelings of nausea or motion sickness lar method, although navigation is not lim- ments, has a similar capability. In VR caused by HMDs used to be quite common. ited to pre-set portals. Here, users can mode, users can click on an object to view However, with new-generation headsets, move to virtually any point within the information, including metadata. better tracking and powerful workstations building by using the Vive to shine a virtu- Alternatively, they can pick an object to maintain frame rates, this is now less of al ‘torch’ on a surface and then clicking a from the object tree list and move to its an issue. In saying that, VR should still be button. location in the 3D model. Revizto also used sparingly, as some wearers report Professional VR specialist WorldViz is offers powerful issue tracking capabilistress, anxiety, disorientation and eyestrain getting closer to producing true-scale vir- ties, but these are not currently available due to focusing on a pixellated screen. tual buildings with its so-called ‘factory in VR. It will be interesting to see they Oculus Rift recommends at least a 10- to scale’ VR, which can track up to ten users make their way into the virtual world. 15-minute break for every 30 mins of use. in spaces of up to 50m x 50m. To do this, it IrisVR Prospect also retains BIM data
The other potential health and safety uses longer headset cables, hung from ceil- when importing models from Revit, issue is physical injury. When you are ing trusses, which move with the wearer. although the developers have not yet immersed in a virtual world, it is very VR treadmills have the potential for a VR delivered tools to work with this data. easy to forget where you are. While experience with no boundaries. Infinadeck Having access to BIM data inside a VR architectural visualisation shouldn’t is an omnidirectional treadmill that environment could be a hugely powerful encourage the same kind of reckless allows the user to walk in any direction. It capability. For example, markups could abandon you might get from shooting aliens, you still need to be careful. ‘‘ Enabling architects to effortlessly be fed directly back to the BIM model for easy design resolution. Models could be displayed thematiThe HTC Vive protects against bumping into walls with a ‘chaperone’ system that can alert the user move between BIM and VR can truly revolutionise the way cally, automatically colour-coded by member size, material type, construction status or availability in when they are close to the edges of buildings are designed the supply chain. the room. However, moving around a room blindfolded with trailing cables to trip over still won’t get past some is said to react to the user’s movement, ’’ IrisVR Prospect does have some elementary markup capabilities where users can use the HTC Vive wands firms’ health and safety protocols, making including their speed and direction, to to draw in the space. Capabilities like a sitting VR or augmented reality experi- keep them safely in the centre of the deck. these will surely grow as VR becomes ence more appropriate. Meanwhile, Motion Chair, a research more ingrained in the design process.
VR can also have a positive effect on project from iSpacelab at Canada’s Simon While I don’t see a need for a full-blown health and safety. Human Condition Fraser University, allows the user to navi- VR BIM application (not least for health Safety is developing a fully immersive gate virtual environments by leaning in and safety concerns over long term use of VR platform designed to increase safety the direction they want to go – much like HMDs), I do expect to see elementary of construction workers and reduce sitting on a giant joystick. design tools appear. Being able to use workplace risk. The company’s SafeScan Users don’t have to be restricted to wands or hand gestures to change room software will help workers learn the cor- moving from room to room. With bird’s dimensions or ceiling heights without havrect ways to perform tasks, especially eye or doll’s house views, buildings can ing to go back and forth between BIM and dangerous ones, in a ‘hyper-real’ gaming be viewed from above and the user quick- VR would be a hugely powerful capability. environment that uses BIM model data. ly teleported to a room of choice. The problem with VR headsets is that There’s also the good old-fashioned they mostly promote a solo experience. Navigation architectural flythrough. TruVision’s Design review, as a true collaborative proVR headsets will often be used by all ‘drone’ mode allows users to fly through cess, is most effective when done in teams. types of users, experts and novices alike, buildings – walls and all. Even if everyone wears an HMD and so navigation around a building needs to ‘lives’ in the same model, not being able be easy. With the Oculus Rift, users can Design review and collaboration to make eye contact and observe body simply pick up an Xbox One controller Compared to dedicated AEC design language or expressions makes commuand explore, in exactly the same way they review software like Navisworks or Tekla nication less effective – in the same way would in a 3D game. BIMsight, equivalent tools inside a VR that a conference call always comes sec-
Of course, nothing is more natural than environment are still very much in their ond place to a face-to-face meeting. walking, but even with the ‘room-scale’ infancy. This is particularly true of game WorldViz is investing heavily in collabVR capabilities of the HTC Vive, you soon engine VR experiences, where the onus orative VR and already uses avatars for hit the limits of your physical room. This tends to be on presenting a polished so-called ‘co-presence’ experiences where means you also need a way to navigate vision of a proposed building, rather than users can interact with each other in the
Soluis’ immersive dome
virtual world. Participants of a design review session can highlight different aspects of the design simply by moving their virtual hands or pointing lasers at objects. Seeing another person’s avatar within the VR scene can also stop reallife collisions!
Of course, participants don’t have to be in the same physical location. You could, for example, have a New York-based architect, London-based engineer and Munich-based cladding contractor all collaborating in the same virtual building.
VR does not have to mean users cut themselves off from the real world by donning a fully immersive headset.
Soluis has developed a portable highresolution dome system that offers a standing interactive experience without the need for headsets. It can be used for collaborative BIM design reviews or interactive exploration of 3D models.
Radisson Hotels, for example, has used Soluis to model and explore design options for its next generation of hotel interiors.
While the dome is expensive to purchase, around £100,000, it can be rented for short or long periods of time.
Meanwhile, companies like WorldViz and Virtalis specialise in virtual reality CAVEs and walls that use powerful projectors and 3D glasses to deliver a 1:1 scale experience. Deploying a CAVE on a construction site for example, could help problem-solve issues between the real and virtual worlds, combining laser-scanned, asbuilt data with design-intent CAD models
WorldViz Projection VR system for group design review
IrisVR Prospect: simply rendered but moves from BIM to VR in minutes
Soluis | Interact is a specialised division of the Soluis Group which connects with the work of Soluis Studios to deliver fully immersive interactive environments. These are delivered across a range of platforms, providing the ability to publish and present interactive content. Through Soluis | Studios we o er cutting edge design visualisation and digital communication services. These include everything from traditional CG imagery and animation - through to the use of advanced motion graphics and video composition techniques. Soluis | Apps represents the core development capability in the Soluis Group which boasts a diverse team of experienced programmers, database specialists, web developers and interface designers. Our teams create apps for a wide range of current consumer and professional operating platforms.
+44 [0] 203 301 6321 | info@soluis.com | soluis.com
Looking to the future and taking this idea a step further, Microsoft’s ‘mixed reality’ HoloLens could even be used to visualise a holographic 3D BIM model in context on site. Using augmented reality, users could solve issues by literally seeing the design model overlaid on a partially constructed building.
Conclusion Since the arrival of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, VR hype has gone into overdrive. But to dismiss these exciting new VR technologies as a fad would be a mistake. For AEC firms in particular, the benefits can be huge.
We all know BIM can optimise the delivery of buildings by providing greater efficiencies at all stages of the building lifecycle. But BIM does not encourage exploration of form, space and aesthetics — the human elements of architecture — as VR can.
While there is currently a big emphasis on using VR to wow clients (and it does this exceedingly well), the true power of the technology will be realised when the architect or engineer takes control and it becomes an essential, integrated tool for design.
It is one thing to model a building in a 3D CAD system, but using VR to experience how it will feel and function can take design to a whole new level. Architects can exist inside their designs, encouraging bold new ideas and more iteration.
Add design/review into the mix for optimising design or ironing out on-site construction issues and VR gives a whole new meaning to virtual prototyping.
Of course, for all of this to go mainstream, VR needs to be quick and easy. Control needs to be put in the hands of architects and engineers. They need to be able to take buildings into a VR environment at the click of a button so that they can make informed design decisions at the exact moment they are needed most.
If this all sounds familiar, then that’s because there are many parallels between VR today and design viz ten years ago. Back then, design viz was still a specialist skill. Now, high-quality, push-button rendering is available within most CAD/BIM applications. I expect the same will happen with VR, making flipping between the real and virtual worlds a natural part of design.
But you can forget about solving construction issues at the top of a steel-framed skyscraper. This vertigo sufferer will be keeping his feet firmly on the ground.
Virtual construction: exploring the real world
Nvidia is using its new Silicon Valley HQ to show how VR can be used to help track progress on a construction site. Wearing a VR headset, a site manager, client or architect could fly around a time-lapse point cloud that shows every little detail of the site.
The colour point clouds are being created from hundreds of photographs, taken by a drone that flies over the site every day.
In the VR environment, the user is able to step through the construction progress simply by pressing a button on an HTC Vive wand. Users can see demolitions being completed, the site being graded, then foundations and the building starting to take shape.
Navigation around the site is intuitive. Starting with a bird’s eye view, the user simply reaches out, then presses the trigger buttons and pulls the building towards them. The building can then be spun round like a turntable, or zoomed in further to look at details within the site.
The software includes basic measurement tools. Wands can be used to take horizontal and vertical measurements. This could help track progress of specific site components, such as how much of the highway has been completed on any given day.
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