The USA's Federal Highways Agency (FHWA) is pioneering the application of virtual reality (VR) to the process of designing and constructing new roads. As a result of this work, which began in 1995, engineers will be able to produce much safer roads. The techniques supporting VR reduce the effort and money needed to develop a simulation model, and broaden the applications that such models can support. VR can use data from a computer-aided design (CAD) model, and allow its objects to be viewed in 3D, as if on the ground. The FHWA project is initially emphasising the dynamic visualisation of road geometry within the framework of the Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM). Its chief goal is to determine and specify image quality and realism. Its team will identify and analyse design decision requirements, and recommend a minimum amount of detail, visual quality and realism to go into the IHSDM. It has demonstrated VR implementations of: (1) the Twopas traffic simulation model, which has already proved useful to highway engineers; and (2) traffic control plans for handling traffic through a specific road or street construction process. The VR model includes controls that enable its users to explore model output effectively, in ways that cannot be done using only numerical tables and summaries of data.
Samenvatting