The Beginning of IDIVE: Interactive Design in Immersive Virtual Environments

Abstract With the advancing technology in the field of immersive reality, bringing the whole world closer is getting easier. For projects that involve multiple stakeholders, the IDIVE (Immersive Design in Virtual Reality) is a system in which a complex CAD model is placed in a virtual environment, which helps one understand the requirement gathering of the displayed model’s nature and its objective. The impact of using extended reality in early design reviews is that it supports accelerated iterations, quick testing, informed decision-making, simulations, and cost savings. This enables designers to assess various aspects of the design’s functionality and performance in the early stage of the project. We also represent a toolchain for developing a virtual environment using a game engine – Unreal Engine. The method briefly describes the basic principles and best practices for the development of a suitable location-based virtual environment for the model from initial study to implementation. Stakeholders can utilize a head-mounted device, allowing them to immerse themselves in the virtual environment, enabling each person to form their unique assessment of its merits and shortcomings. We ran a pilot study among homogeneous graduate students, this paper describes the existing tools and capabilities for each of these steps and highlights instances where further toolchain development is necessary to produce a useful design environment for distributed collaboration through an immersive design virtual environment.