Design considerations
Before building a Scene, you should consider what type, timeliness, and nature of data supports the end purpose of the user experience. In your wind-farm use case, you'll build a Unity Scene to help place wind turbines in a wind farm, then connect them to operational data and take action on operations events. To build an immersive experience that's realistic and meaningful, you'll need to provide contextual information in addition to the wind-turbine model assets.
Satellite imagery
Satellite imagery is one type of data that can provide contextual information, providing realism and helping to drive decision making. In building a Scene, you'll need to consider the size of your study area and how much data you want to retrieve and integrate into the Scene. There's a balance between data quantity, quality, and performance. The higher the data fidelity, typically the larger the data sets, which can degrade performance. The placement location of 3D assets might seem trivial, but it plays an important role in the overall immersive experience. A few considerations to keep in mind are listed in the following table.
Design considerations
| Design considerations | Logic |
|---|---|
| Size/scale | Assets should be of realistic size relative to the rest of the Scene. Depending on how you've set up your Scene, you might need to scale your assets to provide realism. |
| Proximity/density | Assets should be placed with realistic proximity to features and other assets to permit operability, particularly concerning moving parts. Density of assets should be realistic. If the Scene is too crowded, consider removing assets or expanding the Scene to an appropriate overall scale. This project uses a combination of near and far manipulation to interact with assets in the Scene. Some assets lend themselves to one method such as a collidable fingertip press of a button asset, while others benefit from the application of both near and far. For example, use far manipulation to pick up a turbine using a directed ray, placing it in a distant point of the terrain and then combine this with near manipulation where the user can continue to move closer to directly manipulate (move/rotate/scale) the turbine using affordance-based manipulation. |
| Relativity | Assets should be placed at an appropriate elevation (z) in the Scene so they lock to the appropriate surface (for example, floor, ground, workbench, and so on). |
| Asset animation | Many Digital Twin solutions contain assets that move. You need to consider asset spacing and proximity in consideration of parts collision and ensuring realism. Movement and collisions are dictated through logic and the physics engine you use. |
| Navigation | Users move through Scenes in various manners. You need to consider if the user will navigate your Digital Twin experience through teleportation (that is, a fixed path), via free roam (that is, unbridled movement), or a combination of the two. |
| Asset fidelity | If users are expected to experience detailed information, then your assets should be of high fidelity. You can be creative around your experience to dynamically load higher-fidelity assets when in closer proximity. Asset fidelity can impact performance, so it's always a design/performance balance that you need to consider when selecting appropriate fidelity for your models. |