Designing, implementing, and evaluating intuitive & interactive lighting simulation tools

Abstract

The architectural daylighting interface allows users to model architectural spaces with small scale physical primitives and projects simulations of daylight in the virtual space from six or more projectors. A series of user studies revealed that designers found the language of the physical primitives to be simple, expressive, and powerful. Users gained significant intuition about daylighting, but experienced specific difficulties while using our early system. Users experienced problems judging physical scale and evaluating lighting intensities.

Through user evaluations, this thesis evaluates the advantages and usefulness of SAR and TUIs. Continuing with implementation and feature design, this thesis explores how to design an intuitive system, and how to design, implement, and evaluate features.

The observations from our user study shaped the evolution of the system features designed in this thesis. I present improvements that address the needs of designers including alternate visualizations to better communicate physical scale, overillumination, underillumination, and glare. The light simulation rendering algorithm in the system was replaced by a GPU photon mapping solution specifically adapted to allow lighting from multiple viewpoints and to gather light across areas of interest. In addition, I move the system from simple one machine architecture to improved system architecture utilizes three desktop machines to run the complete system. The architecture of the system allows other applications besides daylighting such as an augmented reality game to be run on the tabletop system with minimal system modifications. The architecture provides the potential for many fun and educational tools to be developed.

Tangible User Interfaces allow users to interact with computers using their hands in intuitive ways. Spatially Augmented Reality is an exciting way to add relevant information to physical objects in the real world. This thesis explores the confluence of these two fields as it applies to two very different applications: architectural daylighting and board games.