So this past weekend I went to Seattle to participate in the first ever Holographic Hackathon. This event sponsored mainly by Microsoft gave a select number of lucky individuals the opportunity to work with the Microsoft HoloLens device. As an organizer of hackathons for the past few years I was beyond excited to be a participant for a change. True this weekend was not the first chance for me to be around the device, we had several at our AEC Hackathon last month in SoCal, but it was the first time I had an uninterrupted weekend dedicated to developing for it.

For those that are not familiar with this augmented reality headset, see the video below from Microsoft’s Build 2016 keynote.

Hackathon Day #1

The Holographic Hackathon was held at Fremont Studios just north of downtown Seattle. The venue was a super cool open space with blue lights and black curtains along the walls.

The crowd was an interesting mix of software & Unity developers, audio engineers, artists, and non-technical professionals from various industries. I was pleasantly surprised to see several folks from the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, & Construction) space present and over a dozen others that have participated in either the VR or AEC related hackathons I help organize in Seattle. This diversity of skill sets and knowledge excited me more about the weekend.

The Friday evening started off with a networking mixer and then with an introduction from the Microsoft HoloLens team, Seattle VR, and Windows Holographic User Group Redmond (WinHUGR) Meetup groups. They laid out the agenda for the weekend, shared with us some great resources to help our hacking, and then opened it up to team formations. People wrote their ideas on a huge paper tablet and either stood at their table or walked around looking for team members or teams to join. While I came with a team of three, none of us are pro Unity developers (the main developing environment for HoloLens) so we actively sought someone who could assist our project. After giving the pitch to a few visitors to our table, we finally nabbed a Unity developer named Nicholas Abel that was excited to help us with our construction related application. After teams formed, HoloLens were distributed two per table and wasting no time we setup and begin holo-hacking away.

Our Application
The goal of our team’s weekend project was to create a HoloLens version of a building application my tech team at IDEAbuilder has developed for VR (video) and browser based web3D using the Kinect (Wired article). This application uses digital fabrication ready 3D models of building components to 1) give the user/general contractor the ability to place these items in a scene to build a structure and 2) provide them a price of our material and machine time costs for fabrication at our factory. Think of the application like a Lego builder app but with pricing information and other data for building real houses.

Getting Started
As stated, I am not a Unity developer. Sure I can do basic things in the game engine but as a open standards web guy with a focus on real world industries, it is not my tool of choice. While the rest of my team got hacking away at the project, I began building up my knowledge of the tool for HoloLens development via the tutorials at Microsoft’s Holographic Academy website. Hands down this site is among the best resources I have ever accessed for learning anything tech related online. The video and text tutorials were very clear and gave step by step instructions on how to develop for the HoloLens. These tutorials are so well put together that I feel anyone, even if completely new to Unity, can get up and running with development for the device in no time. I was so excited about the progress I was making with the device that time flew by. Knowing it was going to be a long weekend, I called it quits a little after midnight.

Day #2

By mid-day I had created a few different HoloLens examples and even had time to show some others how to build for it as well while the rest of my team cranked away at our project. One application I made showed the digital fabrication model of a home IDEAbuilder helped build in Tahoe AR’ed into the room. Seeing this model in the HoloLens impressed the hell out of me as it is a lot of polygons (750,000+) to render in any mobile AR device. While not accurate in its scale, the model still took up a huge amount of the venue’s space. The video below of this app was recorded with the HoloLens’ video record feature.

I continued my HoloLens education for the rest of the day and night when not helping my team members with items related to finishing our project. I was having so much fun learning and building that 8:00 AM Sunday morning snuck up on me. This is when I realized I should probably nap for a few hours since I pulled an all-nighter and I face planted on a big super comfy beanbag chair.

Day #3

I awoke a couple hours later to jump back into it with my team. The energy of the room was intense as everyone was getting their projects and presentations ready for the hackathon deadline. At little after 1:00 PM the presentations started and what a variety of projects they were.

There were close to 20 teams and HoloLens apps for medical, storytelling, shopping, and more. There were even a few AEC related apps by AEC Hackathon alumni. Cody “Kick-ass” Nowak’s team made a cool AR measuring app and Willard “the Wizard” Williams showed what architects can do with the device. I could write a whole post on what all the teams created but recommend you check out what they have shared on Twitter using the #HoloHacks hashtag and here at the HoloHacks Facebook page. I hope the Microsoft team puts the videos of the presentations online as well!

This video shows some presentation slides and video footage taken in the HoloLens of our Wall Builder project.

Although our team didn’t win any of the three categories and receive the Unity Pro license prize, we all feel the weekend was a huge win and success in itself. I have much love for my team members Chris, Nicholas, and Greg. Thanks guys for all the hard work and awesome time. We really pushed up the bar for innovation in one of humankind’s oldest industries.

I learned a lot, made new & saw old friends, and am definitely excited about developing for the HoloLens. Our team is going to polish and take our app much further. I will publish the hackathon version of the Wall Builder app to the HoloLens store in the next couple weeks and update this post with links and make announcements on social media for those interested in trying it.

I thank Dona Sarkar, the Microsoft HoloLens team, and other organizers that made this the best hackathon I have ever participated in as an attendee. I look forward to participating in future HoloHacks and using this device to augmented and improve my reality. Now I just have to get my own to keep the innovation going.

At its Build Developer Conference in San Francisco today, Microsoft provided some new details on its HoloLens virtual reality device it announced back in January. HoloLens is a head-mounted, holographic computer with a depth camera that provides a mixed-reality experience for a range of applications. I briefly covered the HoloLens in a previous post and was hoping Microsoft would share more about the unit today. It seems someone in Redmond was listening to my geek prayers.

Today Microsoft showed off various HoloLens applications that work with Windows 10 and even one that controls a Raspberry Pi robot. They also announced support of HoloLens by the Unity3D game engine.

The Verge has a great recap of the day’s announcements and HoloLens in the video below.

Another demonstration today during the Build Conference keynote session showed the integration of HoloLens with Trimble’s SketchUp 3D modeling software and the Trimble Connect collaboration platform. While these applications are still in development, it really gets one thinking about the HoloLens use in built environment related industries. It will be exciting to see what AEC Hackathon hackers create with this device when it is made available to developers.

I will be following HoloLen’s development as Microsoft has definitely made this an exciting time for augmented reality.

From the website:
“REAL is both an exclusive executive summit, REAL TALK, & a world’s fair of cutting-edge 3D demos, REAL LIVE.

REAL is new and different: an immersive, hands-on, high-level gathering in a historic venue with a unique program.

REAL is real people, doing real-world work with reality tech.

REAL is Reality Computing.

WHO
REAL is 500+ leaders and innovators — professionals from across industry, investing, research, and media.

REAL brings together real work spanning disciplines from:
Architecture to Art,
Engineering to Entertainment,
Manufacturing to Media,
Heritage to Health, and
Sports to Science…
REAL is executives & engineers, developers & designers, inventors & investors, architects & artists, makers & meteorologists, surveyors & scientists, entrepreneurs & educators.

WHY
 From drones to autonomous cars, industrial robots to major engineering works, and game consoles to tomorrow’s mobile phones, 3D sensors are suddenly everywhere. And several decades after first grabbing headlines, VR and 3D printing are hot again, attracting billions in investment, and moving beyond early adopters to professionals. But it is the sum total, where sensing meets making, where big change is brewing.

While the ‘Internet of Things’ grabs headlines, a 3D revolution is quietly building.”

Although I only was there for one day, this was quite the event and I rank it among the best I have ever attended. Yes it had cool exhibitors and great speakers, but my high marks come from it bringing together communities that normally don’t mix, even though they are complementary and or share technologies. Most parts of the ‘3D life cycle’ were present.

Autodesk pretty much owns the 3D modeling tools space, so 3D creation from that standpoint was in the house if not directly represented on the expo floor. Most, if not all, of the 3D creation was from scanning and capture technologies and companies like Leica, Matterport, Occipital, and Floored.

Companies like Arup and Autodesk showed off interactive 3D and VR applications while immersive technology companies including IrisVR and Metaio dazzled folks with virtual and augmented reality demos.

A little light on the ‘Make’ side, the event did showcase some digital fabrication art installations with Fathom and a few other companies demonstrating how 3D and scanned data can be used for digital fabrication (mainly 3D printing).

Topping things off on the last day, Matt Sonic and the San Francisco Virtual Reality Meetup group had their eighth meeting at the close of the REAL event that included thought provoking presentations and VR devs showing off some VR demos (unfortunately none related to the theme of the conference).

This event was a great #1 and I can’t wait to participate in the whole event next year to see what 3D technologies they invite next. This is definitely an event that as it grows, the world of 3D is going to get very REAL.

image from blogspot.com

The idea of immersing ourselves deeper into an augmented and or virtual reality has captivated many of us thanks to sci-fi books like Snow Crash and Rainbows End. It has also created an explosion in growth the past few years of Head Mounted Displays (HMD) and augmented reality glasses projects. AR glasses and HMDs have been around for some time but people really started to get excited about augmented reality headwear when Google announced Glass back in 2012. So let’s start the review here.

Google Glass:

Before the recent announcement of it being discontinued but now “graduating” from the Google X experimental projects incubator to become its own independent division (that will report to Nest’s Tony Fadell), Google Glass was a $1,500 type of wearable technology with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD). It was developed by Google with the mission of producing a mass-market ubiquitous computer. Tailored mainly to work with Google products, Google Glass displays information in a smartphone-like hands-free format.

The Promise:

The Reality:

Despite the public backlash to Google Glass as seen in the Daily Show clip, there is an increasing number of HMD and AR glasses coming onto the market. Sony debuting Morpheus and Facebook buying Oculus Rift for a couple billion certainly got folks serious and interested in the subject and it seems lately everywhere I look some company is releasing or someone is Kickstarting a HMD unit or AR glasses. Let’s take a look at the head gear currently available, coming soon, and in the future.

Oculus Rift:

The poster child for VR headsets, the Oculus Rift is a VR success story and by far the most popular HMD not yet on the commercial market. With an original goal of raising $250,000 on Kickstarter back in 2012, the Oculus team raised over $2.4 million with that campaign and then were acquired by Facebook back in March 2014.

Dev Kit 1

Dev Kit 2

I was a backer of their Kickstarter campaign and that got me a DevKit1. The DevKit2 is now available to developers but it has been reported the commercial unit will not ship until February 2016. Facebook has not said what they plan to do with Oculus yet, but recent VR related acquisitions and these comments by Mark Zuckerberg keep the excitement strong for what is coming next regarding immersive technologies and the world’s largest social network.

CastAR:

Technical Illusions’ castAR is another Kickstarter success story I have reviewed before. According to the Technical Illusions team, castAR is mixed reality mode glasses, allowing for social Projected Reality and fully immersive Virtual Reality.

The castAR system is available to developers for pre-order starting at $345. This package includes the castAR glasses with its built in tracking system, a magic wand, and the 1 meter by 1 meter surface. No date has been set for when a commercial product will ship.

Samsung GearVR:

In collaboration with Oculus, Samsung developed their own HMD called GearVR, which they released to developers late last year. GearVR is a $199 cordless head mount that turns any Samsung Galaxy Note 4 into a virtual reality headset. I personally rate this one as the best mobile VR unit to date.

Atheer One

Atheer Labs is the creator of Atheer One, a pair of AR glasses that are supported by their platform called Augmented Interactive Reality (AiR). Their SDK is built upon the Android APIs and supports 3rd party toolkits such as Qualcomm’s Vuforia SDK and the Unity3D engine. Claiming to be the only portable and immersive smart glasses supporting natural interaction, the One and AiR platform combines immersive 3D augmented reality with natural gesture-based interaction for AR that you can touch.

Vuzix

Formed in 1997, Vuzix has been in the HMD and AR glasses space for a while and has a variety of glasses products. Currently, Vuzix is under contract with DARPA to design and build a next generation heads up display for military ground personnel.

OSVR:

With primary focus on the gaming industry, OSVR (Open Source Virtual Reality) is an initiative to bring open source VR to the masses. Comprised mainly of hardware vendors, it is an ecosystem that strives to be fully open-source with their OSVR Hacker Developer Kit schematics and drawings for the headset available for download so one can quickly build their own or improve on existing VR-Glass designs. OSVR software supports multiple operating systems, plugs into leading game engines and is freely available under a Apache 2.0 license.

MoverioSmart Glasses:

Japanese electronics company Epson (Seiko Epson Corporation) has had a pair of Augmented Reality glasses on the market for a few years now. According to Epson, “The next-generation Moverio BT-200 smart glasses are designed to change how you experience the world around you. With new and improved features and a more compact size, these innovative smart glasses are setting the new standard in Augmented Reality.”

Meta’s SpaceGlasses:

Meta claims its initial product, called SpaceGlasses, is meant more as a tool for app developers than as a gadget you’d want to actually wear. Like other AR glasses, it needs to be physically tethered to a computer in order to work. It includes a see-through projectable LCD for each eye, an infrared depth camera, and a standard color camera, as well as an accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass. The Meta 1
Developer Kit is available for $667.00.

Cardboard HMDs:

By far the cheapest option for a HMD on this list, cardboard VR units turn any supported smartphone device into a virtual reality headset. It was with the debut of Google Cardboard at Google’s I/O conference that got others looking at this low cost alternative and it didn’t take long for other cardboard clones to hit the market. Based in San Francisco, DODOcase has entered the VR space by manufacturing a line of their own cardboard units and with a successful Kickstarter campaign for DIYVR (Do It Yourself Virtual Reality).

Sulon Cortex: (Not yet released)

Sulon Technologies released at CES 2015 its Cortex AR/VR headset. Though it’s still early days for the company’s standalone Cortex AR/VR headset, it’s managed to merge immersion and augmentation in some pretty fascinating ways. When it releases to developers, it plans to cost $500 a unit.

Microsoft HoloLens:  (Not yet released)

Microsoft recently debuted their entry into the AR glasses and HMD space with a device they have named HoloLens. It is great to see them get excited about immersive technology and I highly recommend a visit to this article on the Verge about their first hand demo with the unit.

 

 

Magic Leap: (Not yet released)

Saving the most mysterious for last, Magic Leap is making waves in the augmented reality space with their recent raising of $542 million dollars and hiring of Sci-Fi author Neal Stephenson as their ‘Chief Futurist’. Magic Leap has been secretive about how their system works technically, but a plethora of disclosures in their filings provide the broad outline. A lightweight head-mounted device will house a tiny projector comprised of bespoke prisms and lenses that will beam images onto the user’s retinas creating a “dynamic digitized light field signal.” Infrared positioning cameras, GPS modules, and multi-axis accelerometers will assist in blending images and video with the real world. Let’s hope it lives up to the promise.

Quite the list and this is by no means all the headgear devices and HMDs coming soon or available to developers now. While it is still too early to say which devices will reign supreme, it can be said that with this many HMDs and AR glasses coming to the market that our digital and real lives are about to become a lot more immersive and much faster than most anticipate.

The base system (like I/O of devices, image processing, sound processing) are written in C++, and the contents (like graphics, sounds, motion, effects, and interactions) are written in Lua. This App uses default audio device, and sampling frequency is 22050Hz. OpenGL to used to draw all graphics. Tools and Technology used: Visual Studio, C++ language, Eclipse, Lua language, Intel Compiler, and OpenCV.

Double bonus to Shunsuke for the great LEGO table in the video. Other winners of the contest categories can be found at the Intel Perceptual Computing Challenge site here.

Have you seen the game trailers for Watch Dogs? In the game, the player is a cyber-vigilante that explores a connected ‘smart’ city and accesses its 2D and 3D information like a high tech Batman. As an example of this, the game even has a website called We Are Data that shows real geo-located information about Paris, Berlin, and London from social media sites and public government datasets. The game seems like a glimpse into a distant future but believe it or not, we have the technology to make this notion of a ‘smart’ city happen now.

Unfortunately the building industry is currently very change-resistant and far behind almost every other industry in adopting new technologies, despite the fact that it has potentially the most to gain from interactive data visualization technologies and the Internet of Things. The technologies also already exist to model our buildings and communities in extremely high levels of detail, including fabrication-level data that is both extremely accurate and ideal for efficient fabrication of buildings components and large assemblies.  This same data can then be used by almost everyone to manage the facility and enable interaction with the occupants, both locally and remotely.  The lack of change is therefore not primarily a technology problem  (and the technology is getting better at an accelerating rate) but rather entrenched change resistance and silo thinking among architects, engineers, fabricators, builders, real estate developers and owners. Sure there is a growing use of 3D by both the geospatial and building communities, but the idea of intelligent interactive 3D cities seems more far fetched than a vacuum tube that shoots people from La to SF in 35 minutes.

In addition, currently we are seeing wearable tech becoming more common with devices like Google Glass, the Pebble watch and other tech that allows us to know things around us as well as letting other systems know that we are there. Yet most buildings are only smart enough to know when to turn a light off and on or other very basic functions. There is far more we can do, but the industry is risk averse and most building owners are unaware of how best to use these innovations. Someone needs to hack this…

Using advanced technologies, we can collaboratively design, manufacture and construct  innovative and high-performance buildings far less expensively and faster than by using conventional processes; but legal concerns, mindsets, domain wars and stubborn change-resistance is holding the industry back and delaying the inevitable democratization of the built environment through open digitization and automation. This has to change!

Imagine using an Oculus Rift to walk through a building to see proposed design changes and its surrounding area, accessing building data via a Google Glass to assist with onsite construction, controlling the systems of a building touch free with haptic devices like LEAP Motion, or having intelligent building systems that interact with occupants via wearables and mobile devices. All of this is possible now,  but who is going to build it? We need a group of cutting edge designers, builders, coders and other change agents that are looking to disrupt the current status quo.

The biggest hurtle is really mindset. But this is not like the issues faced when web 2.0 was proposed, HMD’s for gaming, driver-less cars, even smart watches. Yet here we are. So to combat this, we have to hack it.  The goal of this event that will be held at Facebook’s campus, is to try to kick start the imagination of people in and out of the AEC community to realize there is a lot we can do with the tools we have now.  Imagine using a 3D printer to print out a new facet.  Why not?  Pipe broken, print a new one. Want to add that extra room to the house?  Call your local prefab house builder, send them your house’s digital files and everything is created exactly to fit your existing. Want some new wall art? Put on a Google Glass like device and load up some designs.  The computer already knows about your building so it can match up anything you want to see.

We are starting to see small starts in our smart buildings.  You can buy systems that allow you to turn lights on and off, change the temperature, smart fire alarms, and a few other small things from your mobile phone, but this is barley the tip.  If we can connect smart people with the right data, there is far more we can do.  Hopefully over the next few AEC hackathons, we will see a few hints of that future.  And who knows?  It’s possible something very cool, very fundable will come right from the event. Perhaps something the next version of Watch Dogs will incorporate as we build beyond what even the game proposes for our future.

It all begins seven years back to when I was working in downtown San Francisco with one of the legends in my field. On a day like any other, I see our boss come into the office chatting with another guy that introduces himself as a home builder. This builder goes on to share how he is using game-like technology and robotic manufacturing to improve the home building process. Wait, did he say video games and robots to build houses?

Before SF, I spent 15 years in Dallas, Texas. Here is where I got bombarded with construction sites due to the ongoing suburban sprawl, constant road construction, and land redevelopment. I am among the ranks of many that have become familiar with how construction is done solely through observation.

It didn’t take long to see the theme in what I know can’t be only the Lone Star State. Sure what I am about to say could be construed by some as an extreme generalization. I saw job sites of low wage day labor, crews of various races though the majority I swear only speak Spanish, shovels that help prop people up, the occasional ‘2/3 watching  while 1/3 working’ rule, and a number of other ‘?’s that are a part of how things get built. So here’s this builder in our office saying things can get built this way. Only in SF I am thinking, but yeah how can I help.

That decision started me into the new world of where web3D meets digital fabrication for building in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction Industry. Over the years I’ve worked on the development of various applications that provide services to our team, partners, and future home owners. I have been around the world and seen the latest in AEC technology from R&D labs, practitioners in the field, startups, and colleagues at work.

I have also been educated to and exposed to inefficiencies and problems that confront the industry in residential and commercial. The industry is super wasteful (materials and data), projects usually are over time and budget, it’s hyper litigious, and the list goes on. I will never forget the moment I learned that the norm is to low bid a project and make up costs and margin in the inevitable change orders due to the ambiguity of the design. Yes there are plenty of honest professionals out there and projects that come in on time and even under budget, but take your own poll with home and building owners. Needless to say, there is plenty of room for improvement.

Luckily, this multi-trillion dollar industry is approaching an interesting point in its evolution heavily influenced by technology, economics, the need to be more sustainable, and a cultural shift as it welcomes in the next wave of AEC professionals. Technology is changing the way structures are designed, fabricated, built, marketed, and run. A quick visit to AEC-Apps will provide numerous examples of how software is being integrated throughout a building’s life cycle while groups like the Digital Fabrication Alliance are using tech to improve manufacturing and building processes. Buildings and even cities are becoming ‘smart’ as more networked systems connect with them and the Internet of Things. There are even events like McGraw Hill Construction ENR’s Future Tech conference that focus on the intersection of technology and AEC.

Yet technology integration has its own challenges. For both small and large firms it is a serious investment of time and resources. Steep software learning curves, problems with data exchange, solutions that don’t perform to expectation, and a growing number of new problems make going back to the old ways not a hard thing to consider. At least there one knows what to expect to go wrong and how to fix it quickly. It also doesn’t help that the industry is constantly approached by technologist and startups selling services and products with no knowledge of industry problems or sensitivity to industry data standards. Plus where are the futuristic building apps that I see in movies or those that use innovative tech like augmented reality or interactive 3D?

It is these reasons and more that prompted me to act upon the idea of a hackathon for the AEC Industry. I can’t think of a better environment where AEC professionals and technologists can come together to build community and create solutions for the industry by those in the industry. And not just as a one time event or to build another iPhone app, but take it up a notch.

Let’s provide hackers with access to the Oculus Rift, Google Glass, LEAP Motion, Kinect, and other innovative hardware. Offer them workshops to learn the latest in API’s, SDK’s (e.g. Intel), web, and interactive 3D standards. We’re raising the bar to ‘AEC goes Iron Man/Tony Stark’ type applications and all tailored to solve real problems.

Thus began my quest to round up a posse and it didn’t take long to get great people on board. Initially stepping up to the challenge were Greg Howes (builder & fabricator), Christopher Peri (architect turned techie), Justin Quimby (game developer rockstar now in AEC), Paul Doherty (architect & smart cities guru) and Michael Shaw (The Digit Group). We have grown into a bigger team of all stars and what an event it is going to be.

For attending tech devs and UX/UI designers, it will be an opportunity to connect and create solutions for those building our real world. For AEC professionals it is a chance to have their voice heard and paint the bullseye for what tech solutions are needed. For those that don’t want to participate in the hack but want to learn something new, we have workshops for them also. Workshops for AEC will cover geo-design, digital fabrication, big data, ‘smart‘ buildings, and other design-build processes and technologies that are changing the industry.

We also have the team at VRcade that has proposed coming down from Seattle to demonstrate some relevant applications in immersive virtual reality for all to experience first hand!

But what would an AEC hackathon be without actually building something? So with that said, there is planned a digital fabrication project that will be happening during the hackathon. The DF Project, as it is currently named, is a showcase project that combines different forms of digital fabrication (including 3D printing and robotic manufacturing) with the latest in web and mobile technology.

This project will be located at Laney College in Oakland and serve as an educational resource that showcases a digitally fabricated structure in addition to digitally fabricated objects housed inside the structure. This project will be a demonstration of how these technologies and others complimentary to the design/build process work together for event attendees and serve as a learning resource for students and AEC professionals both at the college and online. The digital assets of this structure and objects will be available data sets to tech designers and developers at the event to hack with.

Additional proceeds from the event will go to the Wounded Warriors Project and Vets in Tech as we believe in supporting our veterans however we can. Extra proceeds from the Digital Fabrication Project will go to Laney College to support their new digital fabrication course coming next year. What good is having an event like this if you can’t help others along the way?

While it is still a work in progress, the AEC Hackathon is shaping up nicely. We have some great sponsors already (Khronos & Web3D Consortium) and more coming on board that will be announced soon. I truly am honored to be working with such a great team and sponsors to be a part of an industry first that is long overdue. If you would like to support what we are doing, there are ways to get involved. We still need assistance getting the word out to the tech and AEC communities, and additional sponsors means we can have a better event, provide the community with the digital fabrication learning resource project, and have more to contribute to very worthwhile causes we are supporting.

So if you’re a tech developer, UX/UI designer, game programmer, building owner, land developer, city/government official, AEC professional in the office or in the field, and interested in improving the built environment come join us. We need your passion and talent on this journey for creating better tools for those building us a better world. Where will you be Nov 8-10 when the world watches AEC get hacked?

So I just got back from the ESRI User Conference 2013 in San Diego and wow, what a trip.

Founded by Jack Dangermond, ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) is an industry leader and international supplier of Geographic Information System (GIS) software and geodatabase management applications. The company has an installed base of more than one million users in more than 350,000 organizations, including most US federal agencies and national mapping agencies, all 50 US state health departments, transportation agencies, forestry companies, utilities, state and local government, schools and universities, NGOs, and commercial business.

The user conference brought 15,000+ ESRI users from over 130 countries. Keynote presentations included Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information, Infrastructure, and Innovations Sam Pitroda and an inspiring discussion with pop culture icon Will.i.am. For the record I am a B.E.P. fan but this interview was something else.

This was my first time to attend the ESRI User Conference and I was amazed at the number of sessions, expo size (entire convention center floor), attendance, and diversity of the show. As an attendee pointed out, “GIS is everything” and it seems everything was represented at the event. Among what I saw on the trade show floor were a variety of mapping applications, LIDAR services (remote sensing technology that measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser and analyzing the reflected light) and drone data collection devices.

I am not a geo-specialist but I did recognize a few things I am familiar with. Among those was:

City Engine – a procedural modeling tool for rapidly creating large urban environments

Geoloqi – a platform for building location aware applications with geotriggers and realtime location capabilities.

Metaio – an Augmented Reality platform provider

One ESRI invited exhibitor was building company IDEAbuilder. IDEAbuilder uses geospatial data for a variety of uses in the building process and were showcasing a new application the company tech team has built that combines interactive 3D and digital fabrication with some ESRI tools and services. This was a great demonstration of how 2D/3D building data can connect with geospatial data to create highly intelligent interactive scenes.

The application that was shown was the virtual reality version of their Performance Shell Configurator or PSC. The PSC application is a green building tool for their builder partners that provides the builder the ability to go into an interactive 3D scene and snap together the shell of a structure from a library of digital fabrication ready components that can be robotically manufactured. These metadata rich components provide their partners with information useful to the building process. I posted several months back the web3D and Kinect version of this app that got covered on Wired.com (thanks Bruce Sterling!)

Some features of our Oculus Rift virtual reality version include Razer Hydra hand controller support, the ability to import a blueprint image to use as a guide to build on top of, a live top down map so you can see where you are on the blueprint, a total structure cost calculator, elevated cherry picker view, a virtual ‘AR’ view where staring at a panel piece displayed part information including cost, and free navigation of a City Engine city that acts as the 3D backdrop to the PSC building space. There will be an official post with more information about the PSC app on the IDEAbuilder site so stay tuned over there.

The application was a huge hit and really helped visitors experience new ways of interacting with data. While most people were unaware of the Oculus Rift or have never had a virtual reality experience before, there were those that were more than ready to get started like John Bormann. In addition to the PSC app, they also shared an Xbox 360 controller controlled architectural visualization Oculus Rift scene created by real life architect, web3D supporter, and IDEAbuilder friend Jon Brouchoud.

In closing, I would like to thank the IDEAbuilder team for this cool virtual reality experience, everyone I met at the event that helped me understand more about GIS, and the people at ESRI for the opportunity and everything they did to make it a super ‘geospecial’ time. See you next year!

Kudos marketing team, I can’t believe you did this ship.