Assessment of the virtual reality approach to the shading design considering occupants visual comfort and energy analyses

Predicting the occupants' behavior and their spatial perception of a room in the first steps of the architectural design is an influential phase on the study of buildings performance and users comfort. As Covid ۱۹ affects access to human behavior directly, the virtual reality approach would be beneficial in architectural design and pre-evaluation of buildings performance. In this research, an experimental study is performed in a south-oriented daylit office room in Tehran, Iran, considering real and virtual environments. In which thirty specific users were employed to answer the questions in three different times of a day, ۵ blind types, and three positions for working with laptop activity in a survey study. The Oculus headset was used for the virtual reality survey and the room was parametrically modeled in Rhinoceros software. In this process, the impact of daylight on their visual comfort was surveyed in ۱,۳۵۰ different illuminance levels which was manually recorded and utilized for the simulated model validation. The calculated DGP simplified index was adopted for Daylight and Glare evaluation using ۵phase method in honeybee-plus for long term analyses. The window and blinds are modeled in Window LBNL software, imported as an XML file of BSDF (Bi-directional Scattering Distribution Function) material in Honeybee-plus. The results showed that the occupants' perception in virtual reality was almost exaggerated comparing with the satisfaction rate in actual reality. However, the results were similar in usual conditions except for sunrise and sunset times depending on the blind state. Accordingly, the occupants' position and daytime were two important parameters in evaluating occupants visual satisfaction by virtual reality approach. Also, subdivided shadings were effective on energy saving besides visual comfort.

کلیدواژه ها:

Window design ، WWR ، Occupants visual satisfaction ، virtual reality ، Shading control ، blind strategies