Have you spent much time in VR yet?
Recently I’ve been trying out and testing different use cases for VR when it comes to remote work, engineering, design, and general day-to-day tasks.
I feel like VR and AR are much more commonplace in the major tech sectors and still flying pretty under the radar when it comes to construction and engineering. Over the last year though I’ve started to hear it come up in general work meetings and seen a few convincing demos that the tech is finally at or close to a point where it will start coming into our industry.
I asked this same kind of question on Twitter here and got a variety of responses, with many of them being in favor of using VR for productivity and remote work cases. I even posted this video below showing my personal workspace setup for Fusion modeling or general productivity and work within VR and I can honestly say I quite enjoy it.
Not only do you have the ability to work on multiple larger-than-life displays, but you can also instantly transport yourself to a warmer climate, a place with a view, or even just a meeting room with friends and co-workers that may be spread out around the world.
I honestly think these headsets as they get more and more lightweight are going to be the future of remote work and work from home allowing users to interact and still maintain social connections while being anywhere they would like in the world and being more productive with less Hardware to carry around.I couldn’t imagine traveling with multiple monitors let alone one monitor in addition to my laptop but I can easily see myself bringing a headset in my carry-on providing me that extra workspace when needed as well as a built-in home theater or gaming console.
I’ve currently been playing around with the affordable Quest 2 and for the price I honestly think it’s a must-have piece of tech for remote workers, it costs less than most monitors and packs a ton of features in a portable, wireless package.
I don’t know if VR is going to be the next big thing or if it’s going to fizzle out as new technology comes along, but it does seem like it’s starting to be talked about much more in an industry that’s typically not overly tech savvy like Construction.
I can definitely see a future for AR (augmented reality) in particular within design and construction.
Imagine being able to simply hold up your phone’s camera to a proposed site location or piece of bare land and see the conceptual design overlayed in real-time. Including layers and filters for underground utilities, support structures, and access roads. This would be a huge leap over carrying along sets of paper plans and even a big step up from looking at pdf drawings on an Ipad.
We may not be able to get to Ready Player One level in the short term but that’s not to say we shouldn’t start embracing some new technologies that could vastly improve our working experience.
Let me know what you think in the comments, has your company or job started using VR or even AR? Will you give it a try?
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Cheers and happy Drafting!
Also published on Medium.
