Spatial Augmented Reality Visibility and Line-of-Sight Cues for Building Design

Despite the technological advances in building design, visualizing 3D building layouts can be especially difficult for novice and expert users alike, who must take into account design constraints including line-of-sight and visibility. Using CADwalk, a commercial building design tool that utilizes floor-facing projectors to show 1:1 scale building plans, this work presents and evaluates two floor-based visual cues for assisting with evaluating line-of-sight and visibility. Additionally, we examine the impact of using virtual cameras looking from the inside-out (from user’s location to objects of interest) and outside-in (looking from an object of interest’s location back towards the user). Results show that floor-based cues led to participants more correctly rating visibility, despite taking longer to complete the task. This is an effective tradeoff, given the final outcome (the building design) where accuracy is paramount.