Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a promising tool for assessing instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) in older adults. However, the ecological validity of these simulations is often compromised by simplified or low-fidelity environmental design that fails to elicit a genuine sense of presence. This paper documents a reproducible Reality-to-VR pipeline for creating a photorealistic environmental simulation to support a study on cognitive aging in place. The proposed workflow captured the as-built kitchen of the Aware Home building at Georgia Tech using Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) for sub-millimeter geometric accuracy, followed by point cloud processing in Faro SCENE, geometric retopology in SketchUp, and integration into Unreal Engine 5 via Datasmith with Lumen global illumination for high visual fidelity. The pipeline achieved photorealistic rendering while maintaining a stable 90 Hz frame rate, a critical threshold for mitigating cybersickness in older populations. The environment also enables instantaneous manipulation of environmental variables, such as switching between closed cabinetry and open shelving, providing experimental flexibility impossible in physical settings. Participant validation with 17 older adults confirmed minimal cybersickness risk and preserved sensitivity to the experimental manipulation, supporting the pipeline's feasibility for aging-in-place research and establishing a benchmark for future comparative studies.

翻译：虚拟现实（VR）已成为评估老年人工具性日常生活活动（IADLs）的有效工具。然而，这些模拟的生态有效性常因简化或低保真度的环境设计而受损，难以激发真实的临场感。本文记录了一种可复现的"真实到虚拟现实"流水线，用于创建逼真的环境模拟，以支持一项关于认知老化的原居安老研究。所提出的工作流利用地面激光扫描（TLS）对佐治亚理工学院"感知之家"建筑的现有厨房进行捕捉，实现亚毫米级的几何精度；随后在Faro SCENE中进行点云处理、在SketchUp中进行几何拓扑重建，并通过Datasmith集成至采用Lumen全局光照的Unreal Engine 5中，以实现高视觉保真度。该流水线在保持稳定90 Hz帧率（缓解老年人群晕动症的关键阈值）的同时实现了逼真渲染。该环境还能即时操控环境变量（如将封闭橱柜切换为开放式搁架），提供实体场景中无法实现的实验灵活性。对17名老年人进行的参与者验证证实了极低的晕动症风险，并保留了对实验操作的敏感性，从而支持了该流水线在原居安老研究中的可行性，并为未来比较研究建立了基准。