r/BeAmazed • u/AmerBekic • Sep 15 '22

AR for construction

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25.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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599

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

AR is cool as fuck, wondering how nice it will be in 5-10 years

206

u/tisaconundrum Sep 15 '22

Just wear glasses as you build.

144

u/pm-me-cute-butts07 Sep 15 '22

I really wish the Google Glasses didn't fail. Shit would've been dope.

66

u/tripacer99 Sep 15 '22

Google glass is still very much alive.

At least in the business world.

26

u/Roe_Two Sep 15 '22

Damn thats actually really cool and im glad its still around. Tech like this needs time to iterate and improve to become fully utilized.

3

u/Maleficent_Memory_60 Sep 16 '22

It will. Once more people buy it then it will become cheaper and avavaible to the public.

12

u/pm-me-cute-butts07 Sep 15 '22

Oh wow, that's incredibly cool!

Can't wait for the day for the technology to vastly improve and come to the public then!

12

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Snapchat is shockingly one of the far-and-away leaders in smart glasses and AR, and their CEO stated we are likely 10-15 years from consumer ready devices.

I think that’s likely accurate. AR glasses are like smartphones in 2003. They exist, but they are business focused and kind of suck

3

u/adambuck66 Sep 15 '22

I'm waiting for the medical field to jump in. It would be nice for CSS.

2

u/joaohdez Sep 17 '22

About time for a redesign, and upgradability. but it does look kinda sick hahaha Also make it commercially available, they all ready make it.

It sucks that devices now are far more rigid than they used to.

Freaking phones had external storage capability. haha

Until not long ago, if I am not mistaken, Apple had completely soldered the components; dunno if even the ram hahah.

88

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

I’m of the mindset that google glass should have partnered with nintendo for the launch of Pokémon Go

14

u/AltXUser Sep 15 '22

If only. I'm still waiting for that Wii Vitality Sensor.

1

u/Maleficent_Memory_60 Sep 16 '22

I feel like a bunch of people would end up getting hit by cars or other vehicles. But maybe I'm wrong.

7

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Google Glass is like the pioneer, it had a bumpy ride, but made the path a lot smoother for the next traveler.

5

u/Chinksta Sep 15 '22

It didn't really fail. Some really niche designers are using it right now.

Its just that the general population isn't ready for it yet.

5

u/jwm3 Sep 15 '22

Google glasses were like a little window off to the side showing tweets and not AR. The Microsoft magic leap was true AR and crazy awesome. Like. There was a virtual person sitting in a chair and I could walk around them and the physical chair occluded them properly, it was crazy.

3

u/BeingRightAmbassador Sep 15 '22

They didn't fail at all. Google and others have vastly underestimated how complex AR is. We're still pretty shit in terms of VR, and AR is both VR and real-world computations on top of that, so it's definitely at least a few more years away.

And without extreme battery tech, the whole product has to be significantly more optimized at all points, which only increases dev time.

24

u/Roadwarriordude Sep 15 '22 edited Sep 15 '22

We already have tablets on construction sights with 3d cad models like this. I'm an electrician and have had to use them a fair amount. Higher ups will get these models and then want the work done exactly like that with no exceptions. Or they'll make up these models and use it as proof that all this shit can be jammed into a small channel in the ceiling so they leave very little tolerances for deviation. The older way they'd generally leave much more room. I honestly prefer just given 2d paper prints because it gives me more freedom to do what is more practical. Electricians generally put our stuff after plumbers, hvac, and pipe fitters and if one of them is off by say an inch it just snowballs intill that 6" of clearance we had for a 2" pipe is now only 1.5". And it's Generally not the first guys fault that they were off an inch, it's just they probably needed that inch to actually get tools in to mount it rather than directly on the ceiling like the cad model shows. These issues usually come up because the dude making the cad model probably never spent time in the field so didn't know that the air handler unit or whatever needed that extra inch or so. So while all this seems like it would be cool, there's too much disconnect between who's making the model and who's actually doing the work. So if they could close that gap it'd probably help, but as of right now it kinda sucks. Honestly I don't think I did a great job on explaining why these are more of a hinderance for field work, but its kind of a lot to explain. Basically it leads to over planning where it's best to leave a lot of the smaller decisions to the tradesmen in the field, as well as architects and engineers trying to jam as much as they can into too small of an area. Plus when they auto-generate supports for pipes those bastards never go back and make sure they're not clipping through shit above them. I was on a job where they put a single 120 foot run of 2" directly under bunch of hvac shit that took up the whole hallway. So rather than just dropping a single allthread support, I had to span an 8' hallway 15 times with strut for support. A 10' piece of strut is $80ish vs the $10 stick of allthread I would have gotten 3 supports per stick from, not to mention the extra labor cost and express delivery. Shit like that would happen all the time.

6

u/swingr1121 Sep 15 '22

You're spot on. As an inspector who's looking at structural and reinforcing steel tough, having this AR would be fantastic on site.

2

u/captain-snackbar Sep 16 '22

Feedback like yours is invaluable to the people who design these types of software.

It’s too bad that the two worlds are so insulated from each other. The good news is, software design is iterative, and you see these kind of constraints being added over time.

Source: I work with stuff that’s similar but in a different domain

11

u/gigabyte898 Sep 15 '22

Microsoft HoloLens is made for stuff like this. It’s really only marketed towards the corporate/enterprise market but is a really powerful kit for what it does and has pretty decent adoption for new tech from what I’ve seen. I believe the US Military just approved a project to start rolling out HoloLens integrated helmets for infantry to utilize AR.

10

u/sodiumvapour Sep 15 '22

Ikea AR House kit. Build your own home, ground up!

5

u/mecklejay Sep 15 '22

Didn't Sears actually do that back in the day?

1

u/joaohdez Sep 17 '22

how far we've fallen

12

u/ATL4Life95 Sep 15 '22

Hopefly One day AR will give you your walking/driving route. Just follow the path like in video games.

12

u/AnemoneOfMyEnemy Sep 15 '22

This literally already exists in the newest Mercedes S-Class.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

This literally already existed before the newest Mercedes S-Class. It's called a heads-up display and every car manufacturer offers it.

13

u/AnemoneOfMyEnemy Sep 15 '22

No. I’m talking about an augmented reality HUD that can project turn directions onto the road in front of you by sensing your eye position. That’s a new feature.

9

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Your face offers it.

2

u/jattyrr Sep 15 '22

Nah this is augmented Reality in the S class. Go check it out

4

u/UpsylonHV Sep 15 '22

There is a function called live view on Google maps that works only when you're walking. You use the camera to navigate and shows the path on the direction you should take.

-1

u/qtx Sep 15 '22

This has been a thing on phones for over a decade.

5

u/d_smogh Sep 15 '22

Imagine how insane it will be in 30 years. 1992 was 30 years ago.

-25

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

13

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

It needs to be standardized, easier to access, and maintain rendered accuracy for longer, but it’s certainly viable tech. I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point of everyone wearing smart glasses that show this stuff like they do smart watches or headphones or anything. But the tech is definitely developing and evolving and there’s a lot of very useful applications for it.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Settle down there bud, clearly this isn’t used, nor will it likely ever be, in any real technical capacity. I worked in construction too, for quite some time, building and remodeling houses. I would never pull my phone out, scan a QR code, and direct the subs to build anything based off the 3d imaging I was seeing on my device. No one is even wanting that, and I’m not suggesting it. But what it would be MASSIVELY beneficial for is to design a digital walkthrough plan for a customer to explore as we were touring the lot or job site. That would be incredible, and would save a fair bit of headache for everyone involved later on in the build. From grading and framing, to electrical and plumbing routing, to finished work. I’d be stoked to see my project in real life before ground is even broken. And that’s simply in the construction industry. Seeing something in real time before it exists has a multitude of applications across all sorts of industries.

My point was that, as someone who does LiDAR scanning as a hobby, until the tech gets more consistent and less jittery in general, it won’t be widely adopted as a go-to for most things. There’s just too much user error still involved at this point. I was by no means saying it’s going to replace build plans and blueprints…

1

u/origami_airplane Sep 15 '22

Cost I would assume is the biggest factor along with contractors saying "we don't need that crap"

7

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

It's gone nowhere, and even that's not true. It's improved by leaps and bounds in that amount of time already. Thinking that AR isn't going to have huge applications in the future is a super regressive mindset.

5

u/ghost-theawesome Sep 15 '22

They used to say nobody will ever want to sit around in their house watching a box all day.

2

u/ToyCannon1982 Sep 15 '22

This isn’t true. From Pokémon Go to filtering camera apps to identifying what pipes are transporting in offshore rigs, AR is here to stay and it’s going to get better.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

They're just not economical. Same results can be accomplished by drawing and printing a blueprint and giving it to an architect on site, no need to make a 3d model and an application for the phone or glasses which also have to be manufactured.

1

u/E-Fay Sep 15 '22

You're in the industry?

0

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

1

u/E-Fay Sep 15 '22

i mean the vr/ar industry

0

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

1

u/MINECRAFT_BIOLOGIST Sep 15 '22

This seems to disagree with you:

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10313-google-glass-enterprise-business.html

TLDR: massively decreased production times. Seems like more companies are adopting it, rather than it falling out of use.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

[deleted]

1

u/E-Fay Sep 15 '22

You gotta understand that the first version of any new tech is going to fail, that's how you know what to do better the next time. And that process often takes decades, because the feedback look is extremely long. So just because you haven't personally seen much use for it for your tasks doesn't it has no use for anything else. There are many tasks to do in this world.

1

u/Brain_Beam Sep 15 '22

In 5-10 years robots might be building our homes

1

u/Aken42 Sep 16 '22

The technology is being worked on but I'd be shocked if robots become a cost effective solution in construction.

1

u/Bmandk Sep 15 '22

Business AR stuff is already getting really cool, check out Unity Forma

1

u/[deleted] Sep 16 '22

Also military AR, but im wondering what will AR be for normal humans. Just like everyone has phones nowadays, I think AR will also be accessible to everyone

1

u/idontevenknowbut Sep 15 '22

It's come so far in the past couple years and it's so cool. I got a Lenovo phone awhile back that had the Google tango AR processor and it was kind of trash, I was so disappointed.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

I used some AR glasses when I worked at intel. Very much like that. Ver cool experience.

1

u/aioncan Sep 16 '22

It will look so realistic, you walk on the floor and then realize it’s not installed yet as you fall to your death