3D MODELS AND VIRTUAL REALITY VIDEOS FOR LEARNING ROAD GEOMETRIC DESIGN

Landform understanding and infrastructure fitting in environment is relevant for designing civil infrastructures with lower environmental impact. In addition, in transport infrastructures such as railways and roads, users experience should be taken into account. These users see a dynamic perspective along their routes. In these cases, a 3D visualization of designed infrastructure from their users’ point of view is very important during design phase. However, traditional geometric design of roads and railways is done in 2D (horizontal, vertical and cross section). Students should fully understand relation between 2D geometric design and 3D results. Also, they should learn how to use software that helps doing these 3D analyses. In this paper 3D models and virtual reality based videos used in a road design course taught in two master degrees of the Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos (Civil Engineering School) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid are described. Shortcomings in 3D perspective can cause a false road understanding by drivers. These problems are caused by a lack of proper coordination between horizontal and vertical layout. In order to show these problems and how to solve them during infrastructure design phase, three study cases have been developed. They correspond to real roads and exhibit the three most known perspective shortcomings: hidden dips, optical breaks and false perceptions of inflections. Virtual reality videos showing what a driver circulating by these roads sees have been made. Some videos show the existing design while others show what could be seen if the design were changed. These videos are available through optical label linking web pages. So, students can see these videos using their mobile devices. They could, also, be seen through the website. In this website, additional information such as initial and end designs or how to solve study cases is available.