Virtual Reality Becoming a Useful Tool for Interior Design Students

Interior design majors are learning to use virtual reality tools earlier than ever, with sophomores and even first-year students here at NJIT working with the technology as a way to gain an edge for their careers.

The crux of the plan involved 14 sophomores in a design studio course developing virtual walk-throughs of cafés this semester throughout the entire design process, as instructed by School of Art + Design Director Glenn Goldman, with each student using an Oculus Rift headset and a high-end desktop computer.

Students use Autodesk Revit software with Enscape, a real-time rendering and virtual reality program. In addition to headsets, they use handheld controllers to teleport through a space by pointing at circles scattered around the environment. (Click here for a mouse-controlled demonstration where you can press 'H' on your keyboard for navigation tools, designed by student Melany Mayorga, of North Bergen.)

Mirka Cruz, from Union City, found that using virtual reality helped her discover design issues which she wouldn't have found as easily using conventional 3D video walk-through software. She was able to virtually walk up and down a flight of stairs and noticed that the landing was too narrow.

"It's better for seeing spatially. Just looking at the screen, I probably wouldn't have seen," Cruz explained.

Another student, Okhyun des Lauriers, of Glen Ridge designed a tube for people to slide down instead of taking stairs at all. "She turned the whole project into a playground," Goldman said.

The technology isn’t perfect. Sometimes it causes a user to get headaches or motion sickness, Des Lauriers said. Nearly everyone found the need to erect physical barriers before putting on their headsets to move through virtual reality, because wearing a headset means you can't see physical objects. They learned from their instructor's mistake. Goldman explained: "The first time, I didn't bother to set up the boundary and I walked right into the desk!"

Also, the computer requirements are steep – a Lenovo Thinkstation 520c workstation equipped with VR-ready Nvidia RTX graphics card, Intel Xeon processor, 64 gigabytes of RAM, Microsoft Windows 10 Pro/64 and a minimum of 1 terabyte solid-state storage – which in total costs a couple of thousand dollars. First-year students had to share headsets with each other due to equipment cost. Wiping down the headsets as if it's gym equipment is a good strategy.

But it's worthwhile, Goldman said, because these computers will remain viable for the latest software through student's college careers. It puts students on par with what is being used right now in the design industry, he added.

Goldman himself is an unapologetic techie. He was a leader of the school's early foray into computer-aided design in 1985, kept pushing for improvements and still has a stack of 5.25-inch floppy disks in his office from which he hopes to extract old data files one day. He's also attended the last 32 consecutive years of ACM SIGGRAPH conferences, sometimes bringing students along who participated in the competitive student volunteer program.

Students took their headsets home for NJIT's current remote learning period, although Goldman said there are challenges due to the system's high bandwidth requirements. They found that even a wireless mouse was a source of frustration because its responses are too slow compared to a wired one.

Goldman is working on plans for how to use virtual reality in future editions of his course. "I've always been looking at technology and ways to help the designer do more and do better," he said. "This has been a continuous ramp for 35 years now."