Measuring the impact of immersive virtual reality on construction design review applications: Head-mounted display versus desktop monitor

Head-mounted display (HMD)-based virtual reality (VR) applications can potentially facilitate various visualization-intensive tasks in the construction industry, such as design and constructability review. However, the lack of quantitative validation on the theoretical benefits of VR has impeded its industry implementation. This paper designed four construction design review-related tasks and performed user tests with 24 construction engineering novices and 24 industry experts. Participants were randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, performing four tasks via HMD-based VR or desktop-based VR, respectively. Experimental results and statistical analysis show that users' performance was significantly enhanced by the HMD in detecting design errors and planning for construction sequence. The scale of performance improvement varied from 18.22% to 59.01%. The implementation of HMD-based VR applications should be intentional because its benefits are only significant in specific use cases. The intellectual contribution of this paper includes quantifying the impact of HMD to the tested VR applications and developing the technology assessment framework. Meanwhile, the findings from this paper can facilitate the implementation of effective VR applications in the construction industry.