sensors Article Mixed Assessment of Virtual Serious Games Applied in Architectural and Urban Design Education David Fonseca 1,* , Janaina Cavalcanti 2, Enric Peña 1, Victor Valls 1,Mónica Sanchez-Sepúlveda 1 , Fernando Moreira 3,4 , Isidro Navarro 5 and Ernesto Redondo 5 1 Architecture La Salle, Universitat Ramon Llull, 08022 Barcelona, Spain; [email protected] (E.P.); [email protected] (V.V.); [email protected] (M.S.-S.) 2 Instituto de Investigación e Innovación en Bioingeniería (I3B), Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, 46022 Valencia, Spain; [email protected] 3 REMIT, IJP, Universidade Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal; [email protected] 4 IEETA, Universidade de Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal 5 Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 08028 Barcelona, Spain; [email protected] (I.N.); [email protected] (E.R.) * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +34-93-290-24-72 Abstract: The creation and usage of serious games on virtual reality (VR) and/or interactive platforms for the teaching of architecture, construction, urban planning, and other derived areas, such as security and risk prevention, require design processes, studies, and research that lead to further consolidation expansion. In that sense, this paper presents two main aims developed: the improvement of a virtual navigation system through the results of previous user studies and mixed research (quantitative and qualitative) improved based on the user perception for educational and professional uses. The VR Citation: Fonseca, D.; Cavalcanti, J.; system used is based on Unreal Engine programming of the HTC Vive sensor. This study is related Peña, E.; Valls, V.; Sanchez-Sepúlveda, to the GAME4City 3.0 and a broader project focused on gamified visualization and its educational M.; Moreira, F.; Navarro, I.; Redondo, uses in architectural and urban projects. The results reflect great interest, good usability, and high E. Mixed Assessment of Virtual motivation for further usage for all types of users. However, an apparent resistance to deepen its use Serious Games Applied in continues to be perceived in academia. Based on the research results, weak points of educational Architectural and Urban Design gamified systems have been identified, and the main differences and needs in user profiles’ function. Education. Sensors 2021, 21, 3102. With these data, progress regarding implementing this kind of system at the teaching and professional https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093102 levels must be pursued. Academic Editor: Carina Soledad González-González Keywords: virtual reality; interactive systems; serious games; mixed assessment; user experience; user profile; usability; learning implementation; architecture and urban projects; decision making Received: 18 March 2021 Accepted: 27 April 2021 Published: 29 April 2021 1. Introduction Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral We are in a time of changes present at all levels, i.e., social, relational, technological, with regard to jurisdictional claims in educational, etc., many of which have been reinforced by the world crisis related to the published maps and institutional affil- COVID-19 pandemic. Before the confinement (March 2020), the presence of many activities iations. was obligatorily adapted and forced to migrate to adjust to the new situation. Formal aspects of face-to-face interactions linked to physical content have been replaced overnight with digital content. This replacement has generated the necessity to adapt these physical formats to new user profiles and technologies [1–4]. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Education was one of the sectors that have been changing increasingly abruptly [5]. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The forced migration from face-to-face to online contexts has transformed how teachers This article is an open access article transfer their knowledge to students and deal with content and subjects for their compe- distributed under the terms and tency validation. Digital systems, especially interactive systems, together with online work, conditions of the Creative Commons allow a much faster, cheaper and more sustainable workflow than traditional methods. Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// The printed plans, panels, models, and physical deliveries of architecture, urban design, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ civil, and building engineering studies have been in crisis due to students’ confinement 4.0/). Sensors 2021, 21, 3102. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093102 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors Sensors 2021, 21, 3102 2 of 28 and dislocation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The identified advantages of virtual strate- gies are clear and have been extensively documented [6–9]. Nevertheless, their degree of implementation at the educational level is perceived as low, even when the technologies or methodologies are of interest to the end-user or necessary for professional use. This paper’s novelty lies in identifying and improving (based on the results of previous phases of the project) the critical aspects that affect the usability and space comprehension in the user’s interaction with VR environments applied to architectural and urban design. Vir- tually exploring scenes that in reality would not be possible (for example, non-constructed building and/or urban environments) stimulates the student to understand better and mem- orize the academic content (in the architecture framework, the relation of the proposal with the scale of the environment, the materials, textures, illumination, etc.) [10–12]. However, from programming with Unreal Engine for a visualization system based on the HTC Vive sensor, those negative aspects that diminished comfort and satisfaction in its use have been improved: the feeling of sickness, the quality of textures and materials of the virtual elements (critical for architecture representation), the selection of interactive elements through a new menu, the improvement of the handheld sensor information for decision making, and the relative position of the virtual avatar without changing the real-physical position of the user between the optical sensors of the device. Other actions have also been redesigned and optimized, such as selecting and placing elements on the space, access to the object library, and the manipulation of urban elements through user interactions [13]. In this sense, the HTC Vive device consists of a headset with two controllers and two infrared laser emitter units for tracking called Lighthouses. The two hand-sensors have different buttons that can be programmed. Visual aids have been integrated so that when they are displayed within the VR environment, they have information about their actions. On the other hand, two 1080 × 1200 pixel displays updated at 90 Hz cover a nominal field of view of around 110◦, and the laser units are two boxes that alternately send out horizontal and vertical infrared laser sweeps spanning 120◦ in each direction. The difference in time at which the laser hits the various photodiodes allows the recovery of the position and orientation of the headset [14]. The HTC Vive is designed to track an observer who freely moves through a space of up to 4 × 4 m2, a larger space than offered by the other widely used VR system, Oculus Rift. This approach is novel insofar as it is applied to enhance the training of students in architecture, an educational field with very few ongoing experiences in the use of VR and gamified approaches to support continuous learning [15–20]. This area has historically been poorly evaluated, unlike in other educational fields such as medicine, science, and even engineering, where user studies with students and/or educational innovations are frequently assessed. In this framework, the few existing types of research usually use quantitative approaches on specific case studies. However, given the growing need for digitization and interaction with complex models, our work identifies critical aspects of programming and the user’s perception of the proposed models combining quantitative and qualitative data, following our innovative previous research [21,22]. The well-known mixed assessment methods bring a degree of novelty to our study when applied to architecture and urban studies, where the academic usability and as- sessment studies are not usually performed [23]. The mixed approach has allowed us to obtain greater precision in analyzing the data collected, inviting a deep reflection on the users concerning the technology evaluated and its use [24]. Identifying the different perceptions according to the user profile will allow us to personalize virtual environments better, optimize the user experience, and, ultimately, the academic processes. In conclusion, we are faced with an approach to educational analytics processes from mixed research in an academic environment undergoing deep and ongoing organizational change. Starting from the idea that the Game4City 3.0 project seeks to implement new gamified virtual models for learning and understanding architectural and urban projects, this paper aims to solve the following Research Questions: Sensors 2021, 21, 3102 3 of 28 • RQ1: What are the main problems in VR sensor programming using the main videogame engines such as Unity or Unreal? • RQ2: Are there differences in use, perception, satisfaction and/or expectations of serious games implemented in VR systems in the function of the user’s profile? • RQ3: Why are the immersive and/or gamified systems poorly used in architectural