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In the built environment, the emergence of Internet of Things and the Smart Building paradigm increase the amount of networked systems that produce data from their environment. 3D user interfaces can help users cope with these systems. A 3D representation of a building can operate as a starting point for creating these interfaces. We experimented with creating a 3DUI for sensor network data visualization in two cases, testing both a manually created game engine model and a BIM model as a basis. Solutions were compared in terms of performance. While BIM model captures both the 3D geometry of a building along with its structural properties, some limitations were encountered in using it for online 3D application development.

Abstract-In this paper, we present design and implementation of a system for adding and visualizing social media content in an immersive street-level 3D virtual city environment. The system enables its users to add banners anywhere in the virtual 3D environment, typically on building façades, walls, or on the ground. The banner's owner is then able to edit the banner and select the social media platform to load the content from, thereby creating a social media content banner with a specific ID. The system supports four social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Flickr. Users can also customize banners' position, rotation, and the visual elements such as text, images and colors. To evaluate our system's usability, we conducted an iterative usability evaluation with 12 participants. Each evaluation round with three participants indicated improvements to the system, which were implemented before next evaluation round. Finally, after the last modifications, system was found to be easy to use by average users and only a little help was needed for nonexperienced users. We believe this system could provide added value for the business owners and users by enabling social media content to be add on the 3D virtual city and use it as a marketing platform.