Architecture: Daylight Gaming Engine

Finally releasing some video of my ongoing work at NBBJ:

From the archives, a video of an early version of a daylight gaming engine that I developed for the Google Campus project (not pictured here, or anywhere). In the latest versions I have developed a pretty sophisticated cost model, limited interoperability with Revit, and a series of other analysis modules, including a view analysis engine and aggregate shortest path calculations.

The biggest breakthrough in the development of this system was the early decision to use daylighting guidelines (from Harvard's publications) as a generative tool, rather than attempting to do full-scale iterative analysis. This allows very rapid iteration with a degree of accuracy appropriate for Concept Design level explorations. (The video is captured in real time, no editing to speed up response times.)

I am now adapting this system (and smaller subsets of the system) for other markets and project types within the firm, as well as adding functionality to improve the value of the tool.

Note: This programming project won NBBJ Project of the Year (Ideas) in 2011. To see the winner of the NBBJ Project of the Year (Ideas) for 2010, please see Architecture: Realtime Physics for Space Planning.

Music by Ratatat.