For my Honours project, I recreated the Saltire Centre, the main hub and library, at my University. I was evaluating the differences between traditional architectural visualisation using still renders and a newer method, using a game engine, in this instance, Unreal Engine.
I was also testing newer technologies such as virtual reality using the Oculus Rift. The Oculus worked well for the game engine, although people did find it a bit disorienting, which I attributed to the then current Oculus’s poor resolution.
To properly compare the VR experience, I also made a 360 degree still from both Unreal and a rendered still using 3ds Max and Mental Ray. I put both into a Photosphere, the same software that Google uses for its Street View Maps images. This, along with a VR headset that a phone could be inserted into allowed to properly compare the final images.
Photospheres
These are interactive! You can look around and zoom in and out. The top photosphere is the rendered image, the bottom are made from stills in Unreal stitched together in Photoshop.
