Augmented Reality - the next big thing?
Virtual Reality (‘VR’), that entirely replaces the user's view with a simulation, is gaining traction for design development and review in the AEC sector. But does it’s ethereal sibling, Augmented Reality (‘AR’), where 3D graphics are overlaid onto reality like floating holograms, have even greater potential? And what might happen if AR explodes into the mainstream now that Apple’s plans for AR have started to emerge?
A version of this article was first published on Archiboo.com
VR’s ability to transport the viewer into an entirely different world is ideally suited to exploring unbuilt space, but it’s not without its drawbacks. It’s blinkering headsets are isolating. By replacing VR’s opaque displays with transparent ones, AR allows users to maintain a connection with those around them and ‘share a vision’.
AR hardware comes in a variety of flavours. £500 consumer ‘smartglasses’ will look like conventional spectacles, while more sophisticated £3000 headsets are intended for the workplace. Apple is rumoured to be developing products in both categories.
In the context of design development, smartglasses are limited in use, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t play a role within the wider AEC workflow. Primarily intended for streamed content, they are restricted to overlaying text and simple graphics like email alerts and weather reports - but they will allow the playback of 360-degree videos. The potential for collaborators to remotely review a model, using their own personal smartglasses is compelling, in the same way you can be confident today that they will be able to read a jpeg or pdf sent to their phone.
By contrast, the likes of Magic Leap (backed by Google) and Microsoft’s HoloLens are professional headsets. They differ from smartglasses in that their greater bulk can accommodate the array of cameras, sensors and processors necessary for designing immersively. In this way, AR software like ‘VIM’ on the Magic Leap platform takes BIM collaboration to the next level. However, currently the battery life only lasts a few hours, and the displays aren’t yet sharp enough to replace the traditional desktop monitor.
Beyond the studio, AR has great potential within construction. Headsets like the HoloLens can be used on-site to guide the hands of the contractor. Australian company Fologram have demonstrated how relatively unskilled labour can be enabled to lay complex brickwork just by following the virtual guides in front of their eyes, without the need to interpret detailed drawings or establish complex setting out.
Counterintuitively, perhaps RIBA Stage 7 ‘In Use’ is where we’ll see the mass impact of AR into AEC. Real-world spaces are increasingly spawning counterpart ‘digital twins’ in the virtual world, teeming with data, whether that’s a visualisation of the BMS, or more public services like virtual signage, wayfinding and branding. And that’s where ubiquitous smartglasses could come into their own.
It has been said that data is the ‘new oil’. And smartglasses are the drill bits to access that lucrative intangible resource, making the invisible visible. Smartglasses may conjure immense new value from the built environment in unexpected ways. But this risks creating a schism in society between the augmented ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. And do we really want to deplete our reserves of precious materials to produce billions of additional devices?
Caveats aside, AR offers further intriguing possibilities. Firstly, with AR’s ability to drape a computer-generated ‘look and feel’ over the real world, we could each reshape our view of our surroundings, to our own individual tastes. AR as a customisable ‘skin’ on reality. One person might walk down the street with their smartglasses on, and choose to map a Victorian-gothic look over the existing built fabric, while someone else could be simultaneously wandering through a parametric dream world.
All of which might prove to be a highly efficient placebo in lieu of us squandering precious resources creating human-pleasing forms and facades, as we do presently. Instead, might we use AR to virtually aestheticise the austere ‘flexible sheds’ that may be all we can afford to construct, given the new climate imperative.
And AR also offers another tantalising prospect. For if we were able to shunt all of the ephemera of modern life (advertising, signage, decoration etc) onto a digital layer, there exists the possibility that we could - just by removing our smartglasses - turn it all off.