We are developing virtual Melbourne street scenes for a virtual reality bike simulator. The scenes created for this simulation are based upon set of original 3D models that reflect the idiosyncrasies of Melbourne architecture, road infrastructure, fencing and street vegetation in the suburban streetscapes nearby the Monash campus.

We developed procedural generation tools to populate our virtual streets with modular sets of buildings and animated and sonic stimuli relevant to the experience of cycling, such as walking pedestrians and cars parked on one or both sides of the road. Traffic was another critical stimulus to represent the cycling environment, and we designed a custom system where A.I. drivers were able to break behind the slower moving bike and calculate whether they could overtake the cyclist in the distance between them and any oncoming traffic. The simulation is embodied through a physical bike trainer connected to a game engine, where the participant wears a virtual reality headset and navigates (pedals, steers, starts & stops) through a dynamic virtual environment.

This Virtual Reality Cycling and Suburban Street Simulation is part of a collaboration with A/Prof Ben Beck (Sustainable Mobility and Safety Research) and his co-investigators on ‘ACCESS’ – a project funded through a National Health and Medical Research (NHMRC) Ideas Grant. The project seeks to develop novel and validated tools to measure people’s experiences while riding a bike by developing an Australian-specific bike riding simulator, and the capture of user perceptions to inform the types of bike infrastructure that are needed to enable a diversity of people to ride.