Comparing daylight brightness perception in real and immersive virtual environments using perceptual light maps

Abstract

Abstract While Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) are essential for pre-construction investigation of daylight perception in buildings, current daylight studies show limitations in achieving adequate immersion and interaction levels in IVEs, driven by the speed constraints of traditional light simulation tools. Therefore, it is necessary to examine whether using new real-time simulation tools can offer better interaction while maintaining accurate daylight perception. This study validates the accuracy of an interactive method to investigate daylight brightness perception in IVEs, through comparing collective perception visualizations (introduced as Perceptual Light Maps) across reality and an identical IVE based on real-time rendering in a game engine software. The results show strong consistency between perceptions in reality and IVE. The findings accentuate the adequacy of the proposed method as a surrogate to real environments in investigating brightness perception in daylit spaces. Furthermore, they encourage further investigation towards adopting game engines as a validated daylight simulation tool.