“People were angry.”
Dr. Michael Duncan of Niagara College is describing the mood of a public meeting held several years ago in the town of Beamsville. The town was planning to widen one of its main thoroughfares, Ontario Street, and a group of citizens was up in arms about the potential effects. The meeting was designed to give the firm in charge of the project, Delcan Engineering, an opportunity to present its plans—and citizens an opportunity to air their concerns.
“Normally,” explains Dr. Duncan, “if people are mad at the beginning of a presentation like this, they’re still mad by the end of it.” But instead of relying on the usual abstract drawings, Delcan showed a three-dimensional, virtual reality model of the proposed new streetscape, created by Dr. Duncan and his colleagues at Niagara College—and funded in part by an investment from the Ontario Innovation Trust. The model allowed citizens to stand on their own virtual “door steps” and see what the changes would look like.
With this unique new perspective on the plan, residents were able to see that the impact of the project would be much less than they had feared. Within a short time, angry questions were replaced by happy conversation and even laughter. “When people can see stuff,” Dr. Duncan says, “good things tend to happen.”
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| Street Smart Virtual reality technology from Niagara College puts a powerful tool into the hands of engineers and planners. |
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Dr. Michael Duncan (centre) in front of a virtual streetscape, developed
with the assistance of Alex Krugel and Rob Teather. |
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The power of visualization wasn’t lost on Delcan either. “The effect on them was electric,” Dr. Duncan remembers. “They’d found a way to get past these kinds of presentations that normally didn’t go well for them.” The firm has subsequently employed the approach on several other projects, and has helped support further research and development at Niagara College.
The technology has also come a long way since Beamsville. The Ontario Street model was static, but now the software can incorporate traffic data to show realistic cars moving through a proposed intersection or along a highway. Planners and engineers can experiment with different options for road designs, and see the results immediately in terms of actual traffic flow. Dr. Duncan and his Niagara College colleagues are also pursuing new research, again partly supported by the Ontario Innovation Trust, that will enable them to add realistic people to their virtual reality scenarios, using pedestrian data. By finding a better way to put moving cars—and people—into a virtual world, Niagara College is putting Ontario onto the map in the very real world of the global information economy. Engineering firms like the American giant Parsons Transportation are becoming enthusiastic users of the new technology. “I can’t reveal the details,” Dr. Duncan says, “but we have a very, very exciting project going on in the U.S.”
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