Do you want to see something really cool? A partner company, Worldviz, has been working with Bentley's Applied Research group to bring you what is probably one of the coolest demos you have ever seen: virtual reality. Worldviz provides VR solutions using high end equipment, and will let you experience virtual immersive walkthroughs of infrastructure models, using a head mounted display. I tried it last year, and believe me, it is really immersive...

Modeling from point clouds is hard. Last year, we presented a solution that involved a 3D stereo monitor and a 3D pointing device. That made the modeling process easier and faster, but there was still room for improvement. Here is a quick glance at our latest work on the project: Wnat to see more and to try it? Come and see us at the BE Together 2012 conference! Stéphane

Ever wondered where is that drawing related to in the actual building? Ever made a mistake building the wall at the wrong place? Here is a quick glance at a solution we proposed: See this protoype in action, and more, at the BE Together 2012 conference! Hope to see you there! Stéphane

Those who have seen our research work presented during the past BE Together conferences know that we work on augmented reality (AR). The potential of AR for infrastructure engineering is immense, and finds potential applications in monitoring, inspection, design, maintenance, etc. One of our latest work is related with the visualization of subsurface utilities. You may have seen my blog post on the subject. Since we published the post, we have improved...

Augmented reality (AR) is a hot subject. Every day, we see more applications of that technology. At the moment, AR finds applications mostly in marketing, tourism, and wayfinding. However, progressively we see research and industrial groups being interested in other, more complex applications of AR, such as medicine and engineering. In those demanding areas, accuracy is important. For instance, decisions taken by engineers often have a major impact...

Augmented reality (AR) is for sure a hot subject. Several AR applications are already available on smartphones: real estate, tourist info, restaurant/shop location and reviews, subway stations location, games, etc. It is just beginning, as AR technology could be leveraged to many more areas – imagination is the only limit. Of course, one application area of high interest for us is infrastructure. Potential applications of augmented reality for...

In a previous post ( CAD Models in 3D (stereo) ), I described some of our work on the use of 3D stereo for 3D CAD model visualization. During that project, we developed a 3D stereo prototype running on MicroStation and tested it using several 3D models. We concluded that 3D stereo does indeed improve depth perception for 3D CAD model visualization. Near the end of our experiment, we tried our prototype on a model containing a point cloud. At that...

Twenty five years ago, brand new PCs were usually delivered with tiny 14-inch monitors. Nowadays, 17 inch is a minimum, and generally new PCs come with 19, 21, 24 inch monitors - or even more - and often in a panoramic format. Using a large monitor, users can see more and be more efficient (naturally this is true up to a certain point, and as long as there is enough room on one's desk...). Many graphics cards can accommodate more than one monitor...

The 3D models that we create and visualize are 3-dimensional. Unfortunately, when viewed on a standard monitor, those models are projected on the 2D surface of the screen, therefore one dimension is lost in the process - 3D models become flat. Consequently, we must use our prior knowledge and experience to interpret the 3D shape of the model. That can generally be done easily, but the viewing experience is not as good as viewing real 3D objects. When...

Creating 3D models using CAD software is not ideal. Although the model is 3D and the CAD software is also 3D, the model is displayed on the flat 2D surface of a monitor. Moreover, to manipulate the model, we use a mouse, moving it on a 2-dimensional surface. By using 2D devices, we lose some of the richness of our 3D models. Moreover, our 3D models are small - so small they fit into a 21-inch monitor. I admit a model is just a representation of reality...