Resolve, a new VR collaboration app for the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries, makes it easy for firms to view massive 3D models, up to 500 million polygons, on Oculus Quest without manual prep work.
VR is an excellent tool for visualizing complex 3D models, but Quest’s smartphone-level CPU, GPU, and RAM aren’t a great match for the massive BIM models often used in the AEC industries. For those interested in using Quest for BIM visualization, that often means lots of manual work to slice, dice, or decimate the master model down to a size that that headset can handle.
InsiteVR (which also offers a PC-based app of the same name) has revealed a new VR collaboration app called Resolve which aims to make it easy to visualize massive BIM files without giving up the convience of Quest.
According to the company, AEC visualizations have been limited to models around 1–3 million polygons on Quest before performance would drop to unacceptable levels. With Resolve, that limit is purportedly tossed right out the window—the company claims the app allows Quest to handle BIM models up to 500 million polygons. As for file sizes, InsiteVR says it has tested the likes of a 1.6GB Navisworks file and a 10GB Revit file, though Resolve supports 70 other file formats supported by BIM 360 Docs.
Without that barrier, InsiteVR says, AEC firms using VR for collaboration & visualization will save heaps of time that would otherwise be spent manually preparing models to fit within the constraints of Quest. Instead, Resolve offers a one-click automatic process, directly integrated with Autodesk’s BIM 360 app, to ready the model for viewing on Quest. Inside the headset, users can even inspect the model’s BIM properties and issue tracking.
But how does it work? Clearly Quest’s fundamental rendering and memory limitations are still a bottleneck. Unlike some other approaches, InsiteVR says Resolve doesn’t rely on video streaming or offloading rendering to a host computer. Instead the app intelligently streams the model’s geometry to Quest on the fly, rendering only what’s needed for the user’s current view.
On top of being able to load and visualize huge 3D models on Quest, Resolve also allows multiple users to connect and view models together, including a range of collaboration tools like speech-to-text annotations, sketching & measuring, and a non-VR companion app to allow anyone on PC to join the session.
Resolve is currently available in early access to select applicants; you can request access from the official site.
