ABSTRACT
Visual simulations play an important role in impact assessments of wind farm designs and are expected to serve as informative tools to aid laypersons in understanding design proposals. Detailed guidance exists for creating visual simulations of wind farm proposals to ensure their accuracy, yet there is no established method of evaluating their effectiveness in matching the final, built design.
This chapter presents photography as an analytical tool to conduct a comparative analysis of ex ante visualizations created during planning and design phases, with ex post photography of landscape and architectural projects. The case study for the chapter is Hardscrabble Wind Farm, a commercial wind farm project located in two towns: Fairfield, Norway and Little Falls, New York. For the Hardscrabble project, wind farm visual-impact simulations were compared with photographed views of the actual built wind turbines to discern the accuracy of the visual simulations.
The authors explore critical questions of the role of visual simulations in conveying the actual experience of a wind farm: what does a pixel represent in terms of spatial experience of an actual project? What do thresholds of accuracy between simulations and post-construction photographs tell us about how viewers perceive the validity of digital simulations compared to an actual built project?
