Real-time porosity using computer gaming technology

‘Porosity’ describes the publicly accessible spaces within privately owned parts of the city. Any mixed use building is necessarily Porous; for example, clients must be able to visit their dentist's surgery on the 14th floor, their lawyer on the 5th floor, or a restaurant on the roof. A building's porosity is a measure of the quantity and quality of pathways to a given destination. The authors have developed and tested two prototypes that translate the movement of a person in the real world into the virtual environment of a computer game; note that the pedestrians' participation is entirely passive (i.e., they are not knowingly playing a computer game; they are simply going about their business). The movements of a Non-Player Avatar, standing in for the pedestrian, are then represented with a range of textures, geometries and behavior. The authors call these representations of movement and time ‘Porosity Lenses.’ In one lens the movement of the avatar constructs a facsimile of a space as sensors passively capture a person's movement through the real one. The paper compares the lenses developed with recent representations of movement over time to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the approach. Finally, the paper describes preliminary testing of the system within a scientific research facility.