PhotoTwinVR: An Immersive System for Manipulation, Inspection and Dimension Measurements of the 3D Photogrammetric Models of Real-Life Structures in Virtual Reality

Photogrammetry is a science dealing with obtaining reliable information about physical objects using their imagery description. Recent advancements in the development of Virtual Reality (VR) can help to unlock the full potential offered by the digital 3D-reality models generated using the state-of-art photogrammetric technologies. These models are becoming a viable alternative for providing high-quality content for such immersive environment. Simultaneously, their analyses in VR could bring added-value to professionals working in various engineering and non-engineering settings and help in extracting useful information about physical objects. However, there is little research published to date on feasible interaction methods in the VR-based systems augmented with the 3D photogrammetric models, especially concerning gestural input interfaces. Consequently, this paper presents the PhotoTwinVR -- an immersive, gesture-controlled system for manipulation and inspection of 3D photogrammetric models of physical objects in VR. Our system allows the user to perform basic engineering operations on the model subjected to the off-line inspection process. An observational study with a group of three domain-expert participants was completed to verify its feasibility. The system was populated with a 3D photogrammetric model of an existing pipe-rack generated using a commercial software package. The participants were asked to carry out a survey measurement of the object using the measurement toolbox offered by PhotoTwinVR. The study revealed a potential of such immersive tool to be applied in practical real-words cases of off-line inspections of pipelines.