BuildEnVR: An Immersive Analysis System for Environmental Field

Amidst global warming and escalating extreme weather events, indoor environmental quality’s impact on human health and public hygiene gains prominence. Environmental parameters exist essentially as fields, which are characterized by high dimensionality, density and complexity, and contain massive amounts of information in space. To facilitate visualization and analysis of indoor environmental field, we design and implement BuildEnVR, an immersive analysis system by virtual reality, enabling remote analysis of real-time and historical environmental field data. Grounded in user needs and cognitive psychology, three visualization modes emerge: the Virtual Sensor mode enables users to access perceptual data in real-time at any 3D coordinates in ambient space, the 4D Heatmap mode visualizes spatial variations and trends over time in environmental field data, and the Synaesthesia mode realizes the fusion display of multi-dimensional environmental field data, allowing users to quickly understand the overall condition of the indoor environment with a low cognitive load. Extensive user surveys validate BuildEnVR’s intuitiveness and precision, and it is suitable for both experts and general users.