Submitted by TIFUstorytime t3_11c4jyz in Futurology
Maybe it’s happening now in very niche areas but I haven’t heard of it. But what would stop the implementation of a VR version of what a proposed construction project would look like? Is it not economical? Is it not efficient for every project? Would advances in the technology make it more feasible?
That would be sick. We have this interactive 3D model of our plant you can virtually walk through, click on shit, see part numbers and wire numbers. It wouldn't be to far of a jump to go virtual reality or, even cooler, augmented reality.
Happening already. Check out how the vehicle industry uses it as an example. Some cool YouTube videos on it
In construction, almost certainly not. I work in the the industry and many companies are barely competent with cad
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Some home designers use AR for this. Design a new kitchen, show the client how it will look in their house, using AR glasses. Pretty niche for now but there's a tech startup in my city doing it.
I think it could be good for design in the sense of looking at how a finished product will look in a more human perspective, but for the actual design really all VR does is make your camera angle turn with your head and that's not super useful for most things. Your plain old monitor and mouse will be just as good for design. Better software is really a lot more important than if your interface is monitor/mouse vs VR/VR stuff.
VR is really just a display and input technology. It doesn't add much ability to computers that isn't there with a monitor and mouse. If you had head tracking software that moved the monitor image with your head you would get most of the wow factor of VR just like that.
I worked at an engineering company doing IT. I don't see how VR would help them. It's a lot of number entering and checking measurements against other records, dual monitors are nice and many still use paper and have to do field work and then bring that data into the design tool like AutoCAD. Soo VR seems like it would just get in the way of multitasking so bad it would suck for most real productivity uses. Like if you think about how most any office works.. VR sucks for that.
Right now, no. In the future, yes. I like the idea of humans working with AI architects and building engineers to build and test buildings in VR space where they have unlimited creative freedom. The systems can also then have individual components for the buildings produced in 3D printing factories so when the build time is ready a lot of it will be assembly vs human made bespoke pieces.
The construction industry is extremely resistant to change though and this would need to come from outside startups.
I don't know what the advantage of using VR would be. You can certainly create realistic 3D CAD models right now and the person driving the keyboard can take you through it, cut cross sections, zoom in and out, with the result shown on a big projector screen. I suppose it might serve some gee-whiz factor for selling clients if they can be immersed in it but I don't see it serving an engineering purpose. Seems like a solution in search of a problem.
This is what Hololens are used for atm, and I know Lenovo has a similar product for entreprise markets. Meta also advertised for this use case on their new Metaverse thingy, but it's still not widespread ('look at how many construction companies struggle with CAD) it's gonna take a while to become a normal usecase
That depends what part of construction you're talking about. Excavators gets 3D-models imported to the onboard computers and they restructure the ground according to it.
Electricians is a different story.
We already do BIM 3D models I can’t imagine there isn’t someone looking to integrate this with already existing VR tech. We can do some quite cool things with matterport that give a similar effect too
I agree with you on the construction industry being resistant to change. Namely that it puts an added cost on any project. Unless an innovator came into the market and totally started disrupting the proposal game with their technology, I assume there will be many who will try to maintain the status quo. Some other people mentioned AR and I think maybe that would be more well utilized than VR in most situations, I had forgotten about AR
When a new technology comes along, the legacy industries that fail to adapt never hold on for long. The demand for traditional construction will plummet. Even if these folks can hold in a few marketplaces, elsewhere will have his huge advantage.
People also seem to think that this will just allow people to do the same type of work that the legacy industries used to do, and charge the same exact price, just keep more profit. That might happen, at first, but once several firms start doing this the prices will eventually crash.
I always bring this up. When Gutenberg invented the printing press in Europe, his original plan was to mass produce bibles and sell them at hand written prices (which were roughly 3 years wages for a clerk per copy). However, once the technology was revealed, book prices crashed and the business model went from producing high dollar items to high volume.
If this technology comes around like how I think it will, where the AI Architects can do design work, engineering work, and building the components in a factory. It doesn't matter what the legacy builders think, they will not be the ones getting the projects. It will be outside players.
I think AR has a stronger value proposition for planning.
Definitely happening and not niche. Revit is used by many consultants and is a 3D modeling CAD software. When coordinating with the various disciplines you can use the software to move around the 3D model of the building. I assume someone is already using VR with this software.
It sounds like a good idea in general. But, I could see VR causing a lot of bad decisions. I can practically hear some CEO saying "I thought it would be fine" or "the model didn't look like that".
You can easily lose details like acoustic properties, sense of scale, etc.
AR might be better. Harder to do, but worth it.
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Would you happen to know the name of that startup? I’m wanting to know more.
Like you said it’s pretty niche right now just because VR glasses are expensive. But as an architecture student I would totally take advantage of it if I could. Scale is weird sometimes, and I’d love the opportunity to actually be inside of the thing I’m designing to make sure everything feels the way it should in the space. I’ve also seen on YouTube that certain shoe or furniture designers use it which makes a ton of sense.
This. Imagine scanning a site and handing your client a pair of goggles as you walk around they can see 3d overlays of the plans and you can adjust or make changes in real time to set the blueprints. Then as it is being built the ar glasses project the blueprints and lengths or angles directly on materials in real time.
They build ships with 3D model rendering so you can “walk through” and find the problem areas before they start making it. Then they just transfer the metal cut sizes to the giant CNC machine and print the blue prints that come with it.
Source: I was inspecting and reviewing shipbuilding for last 4 years.
Depends if you need the build to be repeatable. For giant projects VR and 3D modeling is big big. Also, huge money if you own a company that can do it on time and efficiently.
I’m the co-founder of one of the popular VR tools in the AEC industry: Resolve (https://www.resolvebim.com). If you own a Quest 2 you can download it on the Quest store.
VR has been available as a tool for the AEC industry since the new wave of VR started about 10 years ago. Initially, and still today, VR is heavily used as a marketing tool to help architects, engineers and contractors win new business. It’s only recently that VR has started to make an impact on actually improving the design and construction process. Marketing is fine, but the potential for VR to reduce design issues and build more efficiently and safely is huge. We have some videos on our YouTube channel where you can hear direct from Resolve customers about how VR is impacting their construction projects: https://youtu.be/rf_-VDtQHFw
The main problem that was holding back VR (and AR, but AR has additional hardware issues) was primarily the fact that 3D cad models of complex construction projects are very large, geometrically dense, files and they couldn’t run on wireless VR headsets without spending dozens of hours of extra work to clean up and shrink down the models. Additionally, you would need to plug your headset into a beefy computer and then make sure IT was on hand to troubleshoot issues. This basically made it so that VR was too inconvenient to use at scale or frequently on a large project.
It’s only been in the last 18 months that this problem was solved. Resolve is the first (and still only) company that built a rendering engine that is capable of rendering these large CAD files natively on the Quest 2 without the need for extra work, an external computer or fancy streaming technology from a remote server. Over the last 18 months we’ve seen headset deployments across large projects ($300M+) dramatically increase from the old paradigm (2 to 3 headsets) now to over 30 to 50 headsets per project. We have some customers with over 500 headsets deployed.
Theres still a long road ahead for VR and AR in the AEC industry but the future is bright. Looking into the future I believe that VR will allow for complex simulations of not only construction of the building but also operations, maintenance, training, recruiting, community engagement, event planning, security drills, legal reviews, etc. VR should help us simulate the future, replay the past, and remotely operate the present.
Thank you!
Maurauderr t1_ja1mk08 wrote
Using VR to showcase projects is already going on. When it comes to planning blueprints in VR I am not sure. However planning them as 3D models is already common practice in a lot of industries.
When it comes to using VR in the future for blueprints etc. I am positive that it will find usage.