Enhancing Stakeholders’ Understanding and Decision-Making in Early Energy-Efficient Building Design through Virtual Reality Visualization
Jafarinezhad, Mohammadreza (2025)
2025
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025100625606
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025100625606
Tiivistelmä
As global energy consumption continues to rise, and buildings account for approximately 40% of this usage, the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector plays a critical role in promoting energy-efficient building practices. Despite advancements in building performance simulation (BPS) tools for early-stage design, their outputs often remain non-intuitive and challenging for stakeholders, particularly those without technical backgrounds, to interpret, comprehend, and use effectively. This thesis examines the integration of building information modeling (BIM), energy-efficient design, performance simulation tools, and virtual reality (VR) to address the output limitations of BPS tools in early-stage energy-efficient building design .
This study explores the use of Unity3D as a game engine for developing a walk-through VR prototype that presents BPS output data in an intuitive and immersive environment. Autodesk Insight 360 was selected as the BPS tool for analyzing a Revit model of “Building E,” located on the Wilhelminenhof campus of HTW University, due to its ease of use and graphical output capabilities. The VR model, developed in Unity3D, was evaluated by an expert using a semi-structured interview framework focused on five domains: usability, educational value, immersion, technical performance, and suggestions for improvement .
The findings demonstrate that the VR prototype has strong potential to improve stakeholders’ understanding of energy performance, particularly energy use intensity (EUI) data, by simplifying BPS outputs and enhancing visual clarity. It successfully addressed several key limitations of traditional BPS tools, such as being non-intuitive, unsupported for ASHRAE 90.1, difficult to interpret and compare, overly detailed, overly textual and tabular, and not architect friendly. While further improvements such as clearer explanations of standards and more interactive elements are needed, the study highlights VR’s strong potential to support informed decision-making and increase stakeholder engagement in early-stage energy-efficient building design.
This study explores the use of Unity3D as a game engine for developing a walk-through VR prototype that presents BPS output data in an intuitive and immersive environment. Autodesk Insight 360 was selected as the BPS tool for analyzing a Revit model of “Building E,” located on the Wilhelminenhof campus of HTW University, due to its ease of use and graphical output capabilities. The VR model, developed in Unity3D, was evaluated by an expert using a semi-structured interview framework focused on five domains: usability, educational value, immersion, technical performance, and suggestions for improvement .
The findings demonstrate that the VR prototype has strong potential to improve stakeholders’ understanding of energy performance, particularly energy use intensity (EUI) data, by simplifying BPS outputs and enhancing visual clarity. It successfully addressed several key limitations of traditional BPS tools, such as being non-intuitive, unsupported for ASHRAE 90.1, difficult to interpret and compare, overly detailed, overly textual and tabular, and not architect friendly. While further improvements such as clearer explanations of standards and more interactive elements are needed, the study highlights VR’s strong potential to support informed decision-making and increase stakeholder engagement in early-stage energy-efficient building design.