  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.
