Realistic visualization of bridge structure in a Virtual Reality environment

Final Year Project, CIVL4102 Final Year Project

Project supervisor: Dr. S.H. Lee (Department of Civil Engineering)

Project information

Project descriptions

Efficient collaboration of data is essential for successful project delivery of Building Information Modeling (BIM), which mainly relies on its visualization performance. VR technology can extend the advantage to create a more engaging and realistic environment for every stakeholder. As a large number of software for BIM and VR computing are available on the internet, it is vital to find the most effective workflow to transfer the project from modeling tool to the VR engine. In this project, we would explore the performance of different software and hardware to find the best solution to BIM-VR collaboration workflow.

Team information

Project leader: Zhong Pei Qi, BEng(CivE)

Project arrangements

Dr. S.H. Lee (Department of Civil Engineering)

‘Realistic visualization of bridge structure in a Virtual Reality environment’

The topic of this project is to develop a realistic virtual reality (VR) model of a bridge structure and visualize it in a fully immersive VR environment such that a player can interactively experience the bridge from various perspectives such as bridge visuals and engineering behaviors in different conditions.

The student explores VR technologies and techniques/applications for advanced visualization of bridges in a VR environment. Then, the student develops and visualizes a virtual model of a bridge that is meaningful/interesting to civil engineering students with necessary features and effects such as textures and animations based on numerical analyses.

The student will learn fundamentals of the VR technology and obtain hands-on exercise of how to best utilize the technology for Civil Engineering projects such as design review, engineering analysis simulations, construction simulations, and trainings. 

Advanced computing technologies that enable engineers to realistically visualize different kinds of civil infrastructures has gained increasing attentions and been used in the current practice. Many engineering design, simulations and analyses such as numerical simulations of structural behaviors under extreme loading conditions are used and the results are visualized for civil engineers to better understand and develop best design solutions. By conducting this project, the student exposed to the technologies early and equipped with the necessary skills will be well-prepared for this current engineering practice.

This project requires intensive modeling techniques and basic knowledge on computing such as programming skills and software design, which most students in Civil Engineering do not have. The student needs to be able to understand how a VR model is created and successfully apply the knowledge onto civil engineering projects.

There can be different levels of “reality” in a virtual model in terms of its behavior as well as its esthetics. In order to be a good project, the model should not only look as close to the actual structure as possible, but also it should be able to demonstrate the behaviors of the structure as accurately as possible.

Project poster
Project video
Project images
Media links