Highway Design and Perception
During the 2008-2009 school year I worked with Dr. Xiao-chun Qin from GuangZhou University who was interested in understanding how highways could be designed to cater to a more scenic and/or pleasurable experience while on the road. Dr. Chun’s background in highway engineering and China’s growing highway development prompted her to collaborate with Dr. Mike Meitner (and subsequently myself) in designing computer-generated videos that could control for many of the effects individuals perceive while on the highway. I provided the support in basing the data on GIS and also conducting the rendering for most of the videos. Furthermore, we developed a new method for measuring aesthetics in a dynamic landscape.
Our results are currently being submitted for publication, more information to come. In the meantime, below is an example clip from the several videos we created for this research project (please forgive the poor quality, these were significantly downgraded for the web).