Urban design is a highly visual discipline that requires visualization for informed decision making. However, traditional urban design tools are mostly limited to representations on 2D displays that lack intuitive awareness. The popularity of head-mounted displays (HMDs) promotes a promising alternative with consumer-grade 3D displays. We introduce UrbanVR, an immersive analytics system with effective visualization and interaction techniques, to enable architects to assess designs in a virtual reality (VR) environment. Specifically, UrbanVR incorporates 1) a customized parallel coordinates plot (PCP) design to facilitate quantitative assessment of high-dimensional design metrics, 2) a series of egocentric interactions, including gesture interactions and handle-bar metaphors, to facilitate user interactions, and 3) a viewpoint optimization algorithm to help users explore both the PCP for quantitative analysis, and objects of interest for context awareness. Effectiveness and feasibility of the system are validated through quantitative user studies and qualitative expert feedbacks.

城市设计是一门高度可视化的学科，需要可视化来做出明智的决策。然而，传统的城市设计工具大多仅限于缺乏直观意识的二维显示。头戴式显示器 (HMD) 的普及促进了消费级 3D 显示器的有前途的替代方案。我们引入了 UrbanVR，这是一种具有有效可视化和交互技术的沉浸式分析系统，使建筑师能够在虚拟现实 (VR) 环境中评估设计。具体而言，UrbanVR 包含 1) 定制的平行坐标图 (PCP) 设计，以促进高维设计指标的定量评估，2) 一系列以自我为中心的交互，包括手势交互和把手隐喻，以促进用户交互，和 3) 一种视点优化算法，可帮助用户探索用于定量分析的 PCP 和用于上下文感知的感兴趣对象。该系统的有效性和可行性通过定量用户研究和定性专家反馈得到验证。