Details of Research Outputs

Energy consumption is a global issue which is closely related to human behaviors. Virtual Reality environment is an ideal tool for people to learn energy management skills which is easily to use even for the aged. Various studies have been done to visualize the energy which is difficult to imagine and quantify but few methods provide an immersive 3D virtual world for energy. Meanwhile, ensuring the accuracy of the energy consumption presented in the virtual reality environment is a challenge.

This paper presents a way to build a high immersive virtual reality environment for end-users to sense energy. Proposed virtual reality environment is based on Building Information Modelling (BIM) and a popular game engine. BIM are used to create the 3D model and simulate the energy consumption. The application of BIM enhance the accuracy of the model and energy performance results comparing with traditional 2D CAD method. The BIM data can be transferred into game engine automatically. A person can experience realistic first-person situations and control the appliances. The timestamped power consumption data of every facility and every room will be provided which educate the users a better usage of the appliances and thus help change the residents' usage patterns. It expected to allow the users adding or reducing the appliances. Moreover, the usage pattern can recorded and sent back to the designers automatically for a better design. A further study is to test this system in a pilot project.