{"id":{"repo_id":"vt","oai_identifier":"oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/110059"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/vt/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/110059","repository":{"repo_id":"vt","name":"Virginia Tech","base_url":"https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Towards Immersive Virtual Environments using 360 Cameras for Human Building Interaction Studies","abstract":"Virtual Reality has been growing in popularity and demand as technology has been substantially improved and become more readily available to the general public in the recent years. Similarly, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries have benefited from these advances and extensive research has been performed to adopt and streamline its utilization. An example of this adoption has been the use of Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) as a representation of the built environment for different purposes such as building design and occupant behavior studies in the post construction stage – i.e., Human Building Interaction. This research has investigated a workflow for different alternatives of reality-capturing-based technologies that have been tested to generate a more realistic representation of the built environment regarding HBI. One of these alternatives considered was 360-image based IVEs. This alternative in particular was tested and compared by the means of a preliminary user study in order to evaluate whether it is an adequate representation of the built environment regarding HBI, and how it is compared to commonly used benchmarked Graphical based IVEs. Ultimately, participants of this user study reported a strong feeling of immersion and presence in the 360-image based IVE and showed a better performance in cognitive tasks such as reading speed and comprehension. In contrast, participants showed a better performance in object identification and finding in the Graphical based IVE. The results of our preliminary user study indicate that 360-image based IVEs could potentially be an adequate representation in the study of Human Building Interaction based on these metrics. Further research with a larger sample size should be done in performed in order to generalize any findings.","abstract_html":"Virtual Reality has been growing in popularity and demand as technology has been substantially improved and become more readily available to the general public in the recent years. Similarly, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries have benefited from these advances and extensive research has been performed to adopt and streamline its utilization. An example of this adoption has been the use of Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) as a representation of the built environment for different purposes such as building design and occupant behavior studies in the post construction stage – i.e., Human Building Interaction. This research has investigated a workflow for different alternatives of reality-capturing-based technologies that have been tested to generate a more realistic representation of the built environment regarding HBI. One of these alternatives considered was 360-image based IVEs. This alternative in particular was tested and compared by the means of a preliminary user study in order to evaluate whether it is an adequate representation of the built environment regarding HBI, and how it is compared to commonly used benchmarked Graphical based IVEs. Ultimately, participants of this user study reported a strong feeling of immersion and presence in the 360-image based IVE and showed a better performance in cognitive tasks such as reading speed and comprehension. In contrast, participants showed a better performance in object identification and finding in the Graphical based IVE. The results of our preliminary user study indicate that 360-image based IVEs could potentially be an adequate representation in the study of Human Building Interaction based on these metrics. Further research with a larger sample size should be done in performed in order to generalize any findings.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Amezquita Radillo, Esteban"],"institution":"Virginia Tech","degree_name":"Master of Science","degree_level":"masters","degree_discipline":"Civil Engineering","degree_department":"Civil and Environmental Engineering","school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":["Jazizadeh Karimi, Farrokh"],"committee_members":["Garvin, Michael J.","Afsari, Kereshmeh"],"year":2022,"date_issued":"2022-05-11","date_published":"2022-05-11","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:20:20Z","subjects":["Human-Building Interaction","Virtual Reality","360 Camera","360 Panorama","Immersive Virtual Environment"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["In Copyright"],"rights_urls":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.other","label":"Dc Identifier Other","values":["vt_gsexam:34037"],"render_values":[{"text":"vt_gsexam:34037","href":null,"code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/10919/110059","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.uri"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.committeechair","label":"Committee Chair","values":["Jazizadeh Karimi, Farrokh"]},{"key":"dc:contributor.committeemember","label":"Committee Member","values":["Garvin, Michael J.","Afsari, Kereshmeh"]},{"key":"dc:contributor.department","label":"Department","values":["Civil and Environmental Engineering"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Amezquita Radillo, Esteban"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.accessioned","label":"Dc Date Accessioned","values":["2022-05-12T08:00:15Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2022-05-12T08:00:15Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.issued","label":"Date","values":["2022-05-11"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["Virginia Tech"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Civil Engineering"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["masters"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Master of Science"]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Human-Building Interaction","Virtual Reality","360 Camera","360 Panorama","Immersive Virtual Environment"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language.iso","label":"Language (ISO)","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["In Copyright"]},{"key":"dc:rights.uri","label":"Rights URI","values":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.other","label":"Dc Identifier Other","values":["vt_gsexam:34037"]},{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/10919/110059"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Virtual Reality has been growing in popularity and demand as technology has been substantially improved and become more readily available to the general public in the recent years. Similarly, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries have benefited from these advances and extensive research has been performed to adopt and streamline its utilization. An example of this adoption has been the use of Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) as a representation of the built environment for different purposes such as building design and occupant behavior studies in the post construction stage – i.e., Human Building Interaction. This research has investigated a workflow for different alternatives of reality-capturing-based technologies that have been tested to generate a more realistic representation of the built environment regarding HBI. One of these alternatives considered was 360-image based IVEs. This alternative in particular was tested and compared by the means of a preliminary user study in order to evaluate whether it is an adequate representation of the built environment regarding HBI, and how it is compared to commonly used benchmarked Graphical based IVEs. Ultimately, participants of this user study reported a strong feeling of immersion and presence in the 360-image based IVE and showed a better performance in cognitive tasks such as reading speed and comprehension. In contrast, participants showed a better performance in object identification and finding in the Graphical based IVE. The results of our preliminary user study indicate that 360-image based IVEs could potentially be an adequate representation in the study of Human Building Interaction based on these metrics. Further research with a larger sample size should be done in performed in order to generalize any findings."]},{"key":"dc:description.abstractgeneral","label":"General Abstract","values":["Virtual Reality has been growing in popularity and demand as technology has substantially improved and become more available to the general public in the recent years. Similarly, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries have benefited from these advances and extensive research has been performed to utilize this technology. An example of this adoption has been the use of Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) as a representation of a building for different purposes such as design and understanding of the way occupants interact with a building. IVEs rely on using special digital goggles (called head mounted displays or HMDs) that help users immerse in a virtual environment and experience it. For this reason, our research has sought to explore different alternatives to possibly generate a more realistic immersive virtual environment that relies on immersive image-based technologies to test how humans behave, respond, and interact with a building. One of these alternatives considered was 360-degree cameras and their associated images. We sought to study whether these technologies provide an improved experience for users compared to the environments that are created through computer graphics. This thesis explains the processes that were investigated to understand the creation of an IVE, and the different alternatives available in the market to generate a 360-degree image based IVE. Then, one of these alternatives was tested and compared to a classic IVE through an experiment in order to evaluate whether 360-degree image based IVEs can be an adequate representation for building occupant interaction studies."]},{"key":"dc:description.degree","label":"Dc Description Degree","values":["Master of Science"]},{"key":"dc:format.medium","label":"Dc Format Medium","values":["ETD"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Towards Immersive Virtual Environments using 360 Cameras for Human Building Interaction Studies"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor.committeechair":["Jazizadeh Karimi, Farrokh"],"dc:contributor.committeemember":["Garvin, Michael J.","Afsari, Kereshmeh"],"dc:contributor.department":["Civil and Environmental Engineering"],"dc:creator":["Amezquita Radillo, Esteban"],"dc:date.accessioned":["2022-05-12T08:00:15Z"],"dc:date.available":["2022-05-12T08:00:15Z"],"dc:date.issued":["2022-05-11"],"dc:description.abstract":["Virtual Reality has been growing in popularity and demand as technology has been substantially improved and become more readily available to the general public in the recent years. 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This alternative in particular was tested and compared by the means of a preliminary user study in order to evaluate whether it is an adequate representation of the built environment regarding HBI, and how it is compared to commonly used benchmarked Graphical based IVEs. Ultimately, participants of this user study reported a strong feeling of immersion and presence in the 360-image based IVE and showed a better performance in cognitive tasks such as reading speed and comprehension. In contrast, participants showed a better performance in object identification and finding in the Graphical based IVE. The results of our preliminary user study indicate that 360-image based IVEs could potentially be an adequate representation in the study of Human Building Interaction based on these metrics. Further research with a larger sample size should be done in performed in order to generalize any findings."],"dc:description.abstractgeneral":["Virtual Reality has been growing in popularity and demand as technology has substantially improved and become more available to the general public in the recent years. Similarly, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries have benefited from these advances and extensive research has been performed to utilize this technology. An example of this adoption has been the use of Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) as a representation of a building for different purposes such as design and understanding of the way occupants interact with a building. IVEs rely on using special digital goggles (called head mounted displays or HMDs) that help users immerse in a virtual environment and experience it. For this reason, our research has sought to explore different alternatives to possibly generate a more realistic immersive virtual environment that relies on immersive image-based technologies to test how humans behave, respond, and interact with a building. One of these alternatives considered was 360-degree cameras and their associated images. We sought to study whether these technologies provide an improved experience for users compared to the environments that are created through computer graphics. This thesis explains the processes that were investigated to understand the creation of an IVE, and the different alternatives available in the market to generate a 360-degree image based IVE. Then, one of these alternatives was tested and compared to a classic IVE through an experiment in order to evaluate whether 360-degree image based IVEs can be an adequate representation for building occupant interaction studies."],"dc:description.degree":["Master of Science"],"dc:format.medium":["ETD"],"dc:identifier.other":["vt_gsexam:34037"],"dc:identifier.uri":["http://hdl.handle.net/10919/110059"],"dc:language.iso":["en"],"dc:publisher":["Virginia Tech"],"dc:rights":["In Copyright"],"dc:rights.uri":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dc:subject":["Human-Building Interaction","Virtual Reality","360 Camera","360 Panorama","Immersive Virtual Environment"],"dc:title":["Towards Immersive Virtual Environments using 360 Cameras for Human Building Interaction Studies"],"dc:type":["Thesis"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Civil Engineering"],"thesis:degree_level":["masters"],"thesis:degree_name":["Master of Science"],"thesis:institution_name":["Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:20:20Z"}