This paper investigates the use of virtual reality and serious games as tools for evaluating the perceptual quality of architectural spaces through user interaction analysis. The research aims to understand how built environments influence human perception by comparing immersive experiences in digitally reconstructed scenarios. The methodology is based on the creation of two virtual environments representing different design phases of the Perugia Fontivegge railway station: the current configuration and an unbuilt nineteenth-century project. As shown in the workflow (pp. 660–666), users explore these environments in VR while their movements, head orientation, and eye-tracking data are recorded. A computational process projects visual cones onto discretized 3D surfaces to generate heat maps that identify areas of visual attention. The results reveal both similarities and differences in spatial perception between the two scenarios, highlighting how architectural form influences orientation, focal points, and user experience. The study demonstrates that immersive simulations can support design evaluation, enabling the analysis of both existing and hypothetical spaces and opening new perspectives for data-driven architectural design and user-centered planning.
Representation Advances And CHallenges association