DOMOTEX VIRTUAL REALITY 60 THE ONLY THING


THAT CAN COMPETE WITH VR IS A 1:1 SCALE MODEL WHICH WOULD BE MORE EXPENSIVE. IT APPLIES TO ARCHITECTURE AS WELL


Olivier Demangel | IVR Nation


landscape when it comes to shopping for fl oor coverings. “AR is having a signifi cant impact on how consumers shop for most major purchases such as cars, houses, furniture,” he said. “Consumers expect to be able to ‘see’ the fl ooring products they want in the actual rooms in their home before they have it installed — why wouldn’t they? It’s available in so many other product categories?” So, AR or VR, what’s the diff erence? AR makes use of the existing


natural environment by simply overlaying virtual information, while VR exists entirely in a virtual environment. The ability to apply products into an existing environment has placed a world of furnishings in the palms of interior designers, manufacturers, retailers and end-users. At Coverings 2018, Tile of Spain hosted a session on AR that targeted


purchasers, sales-people, specifi ers and end-users, educating them about the tools that creative directors can employ to create eff ective and layered looks in ceramics-a product development focus rather than simply visualizing product on a fl oor.


ADVANTAGES ARE CLEAR TO SEE Visualization technology was initially


treated as more of an add-


on and less of a tool. But it is now being seen as a vital sales aid by fl ooring manufacturers, designers, fl ooring retailers and end-users for everything from product design to selling. It is no longer simply an add-on that allows a viewer to see a product in a room; it is now a tool with the ability to drive analytics. Five years ago, designer and visualiser Olivier Demangel predicted


every architect would soon be designing using 3D goggles, believing that virtual architecture will be as convincing as the real thing by 2020. Demangel, who works for London 3D imaging company IVR Nation,


was demonstrating a virtual reality model he’d created of a house using photos and plans found online. The model of Ty Hedfan – a house in Wales – was 90 per cent realistic and demonstrates how VR would


FACT Visualisation, once seen as an add-on, is


now regarded as a vifal sales aid for flooring manufacturers, designers and retailers


QUO TE


transform the way architects work, enabling them to open the doors, turn on the lights and instantly change materials for the walls, the fl oor, even the position of lights. He created a series of walk- through fi lms of the house, which could only be fully appreciated if the viewer was using an Oculus Rift 3D headset. “Your brain is completely tricked,” he said.


Demangel said at the time: “The only thing that could compete with VR is a 1:1 scale model, which would be far more expensive. This applies to architecture as well. For example, with the Oculus Rift, you could detect fl aws or issues in architecture that you couldn’t see on plans. “The other thing provided by real- time 3D engine is interactivity. In the Ty Hedfan demo you can open the doors and turn on the lights. You can instantly change materials for the walls, the fl oor, the position of lights. Interactivity means you can experiment with a lot of diff erent options — design, materials, lighting, weather — very quickly.”


Five years on – in fact, as recently as just this January – Greg Madison another interaction designer, who specialises in a completely diff erent fi eld, spatial computing at the video game engine company Unity Labs, used the Oculus Quest to turn his own apartment into a fully tangible, digital copy.


As an indication of how fast things


are moving, the demo would have been impossible until last year when Oculus VR released the Quest headset, one that sees the real


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DOMOTEX REVIEW 2020


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