Creating an Interactive Urban Traffic System for the Simulation of Different Traffic Scenarios

The social and political efforts to fight climate change have contributed to a re-thinking of traffic systems, especially in urban areas under constant transformation. To simulate and visualize planning scenarios of urban traffic systems in a realistic way, the possibilities of virtual 3D environments have regularly been used. The modern potentials of (immersive) virtual reality, however, still require exploration, evaluation, and further development. Using the game engine Unity, an immersive virtual environment was developed to visualize and experience dynamic traffic conditions of a highly dense urban area. The case study is based on the characteristic model of a Central European city (not a representation of a real city), which brings together the specific considerations of urban traffic, such as mirroring the complex interplay of pedestrians as well as individual and public transport. This contribution has an applied methodological focus and considers possibilities as well as difficulties in the design of a reliably running (open-end) traffic system. The applied tool for the creation of a modular and customizable traffic system in Unity resulted in a traffic system that is capable of reacting to the individual behavior of the user (including the individualized motion of the avatar), without leading to accidents or uncorrectable traffic jams. Therefore, the tool used could be a valuable option for any developer of immersive virtual environments in Unity to equip these immersive virtual environments with a traffic system, without the use of additional third-party software.