A virtual reality front-end for city modeling

Abstract

Current tools for city modeling, including those supporting procedural techniques, have a steep learning curve and require substantial user input and/or skills to create realistic 3D models of cities. In this paper we propose a VR tool for the fast and intuitive creation of 3D models of cities through their main elements (buildings, blocks and streets). The key ingredients of our approach are: (a) intuitive creation of mass volume models for buildings, whose facades can be refined later on through procedural rules, (b) the ability to use arbitrary urban layouts, either created from scratch within the tool or imported from public map services, (c) algorithms to replicate and transfer user-generated blocks to arbitrary block shapes, so that a few template blocks suffice to cover the whole urban layout. The major benefit of our approach is that city design and inspection tasks are done simultaneously in a completely immersive environment.