The cartographers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum use virtual reality (a so-called "Unity" game engine) to recreate urban scenarios in 3D and highlight possible structural effects. Julian Keil and Marco Weißmann from Prof. Dr. Frank Dickmann's team have developed a kind of innovative laboratory construction kit that enables virtual simulations of traffic and the surrounding area. This allows planned changes to be visualized directly, for example how road traffic behaves or whether conflicts arise between pedestrians and cars.
The researchers also want to use virtual reality to find out what influence urban planning could have on residents. For example, residents living near a noisy street could have a higher stress level, even if they may not be consciously aware of the noise. In VR simulations, test subjects experience various scenarios while indicators such as skin conductivity are measured at the same time.
The studies have already shown that an increased volume of traffic on a road triggers stress in the test subjects. Future studies are to include further measurements such as heart rate, blood pressure and pupil size. The 3D modeling project was funded by the Ministry of Schools and Education of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Source and further information: news.urb.de
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