Why Virtual Reality’s ‘Democratization’ Could Transform the Construction Industry
Date Posted: February 29, 2016
Posted In: Ideas,
From ConstructionDIVE: From science-fiction movies, to video games, to real-world applications like flying a plane or driving a car, virtual reality is the ultimate immersive experience. Even among the notoriously late-to-the-tech-party community of construction, virtual technology in some form is grabbing hold.
Many companies use building information modeling (BIM) daily and are even starting to input data in new ways — like 3-D laser scanning and drone-collected imagery — to create detailed, easily manipulable 3-D pictures. For many people, especially owners, the culmination of the design experience is to be able to take a virtual stroll through their house, hotel lobby, skyscraper— even the tank of a giant aquarium — before one shovel hits the ground.
The construction and design industries have been trying to give the owner or design team a virtual look at projects ever since paper scale models. Michael Gonzalez, preconstruction director at McCarthy Building Companies in Phoenix, said the construction industry’s road to virtual reality has been need-driven, all the way from pencil and paper to computer-aided drafting (CAD) to 3-D modeling, in an effort to better coordinate the construction processes.
However, the current implementation of virtual reality is a different story, according to Gonzalez. “It’s used for design as well as for coordination, and it’s gone from a 2-D effort to 4-D and even 5-D,” he told Construction Dive. The fourth dimension involves applying a schedule to a virtual model, and the fifth dimension is applying the costs to it as well.
“If you have a 3-D model today, you can now apply the schedule and costs and, in real time, an owner can look at their building, ask you to change something and determine the effect on the timetable and budget,” Gonzalez said.