Development of Suntool prototype for sunlight/shadow study in architecture immersive visualization

Abstract

Visualization of sunlight and shadow in architecture scene enables architect to understand, evaluate and control the interrelationship between building form and the sun. Currently, tools to calculate sun-position based on three essential variables (location, date, time) are only available in CAD and lighting simulation software. It is not yet available in any virtual reality (VR) software, where lighting is merely used to illuminate the scene and shadows as additional visual effect without considering accurate sun-position and path. The objective of this thesis is to develop a tool, called SunTool prototype, for sunlight study purpose in stereoscopic immersive virtual environments (IVE). It provides user-interface for input of location, date and time; and contains calculation script (in Jscript) to accurately calculate the sun-position and roughly estimate sunlight-colour. The SunTool prototype was developed from architecture point of view as a proof-of-concept and thus is a prototype tool for other stereoscopic VR software.