Metaverse One

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 somethin...

  Here I show an application developed by the IDEAbuilder Tech Tools team. The team created an application using actual digital fabrication models (the same 3D computer aided manufacturing models that drive our CNC machines) combined with a 3D city model created with ESRI's City Engine tool  and viewed using the Oculus Rift head mounted display for an immersive virtual reality AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) experience.

So a few days ago I posted the following about an online hands free home configurator developed from a partnership between IDEAbuilder Homes and SpiralConcepts. Here is the original post  and the repost  by sci-fi author Bruce Sterling on the Wired Blog. When out in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley tech scene it is not the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) industry I hear about leading the charge in technical innovation. It is the chatter of the millions given and insane evaluations of those either in the cloud, selling user data, social, gaming, or insert buzz word here. Yet more and more construction companies are incorporating technology to improve various areas of the building process. I observe all around SOMA how construction companies like Swinerton  and  Webcor  are using data from the BIM (Building Information Modeling) process to build better. I applaud Skanska 's  use of tablets  and  experiments with augmen...

In Dallas this past March was the first ever augmented reality event in Texas. Scheduled over two days, the event looked to help Texas augmented reality enthusiasts understand the latest in AR technology and the current state of the industry. The purpose of the Friday March 16 workshop was to introduce AR to decision makers and owners of digital content, including 3D models and geospatial data, explaining the business cases and the new ways their assets can be utilized and visualized in real time. The purpose of the Saturday March 17 workshop was to share with developers how they can use the latest tools and techniques for developing high quality AR "experiences" for their audiences. It was a great event with a rather intimate turnout at Cohabitat , a co-working developer space in the Uptown area of Dallas. Many thanks to Christine Perey, of  Perey Research & Consulting  and founder/chair of the International AR Standards Community, who helped organize the e...

Augmented reality has become quite the buzz word recently since mobile apps and print marketing are increasing the implementation of the technology to the mainstream. Well documented open source toolkits are allowing developers to create a swarm of AR applications that bring this way of accessing information to everything from your Android/iPhone to your Flash-based website. As with any emerging tech, there comes the time that the community (developers, hobbyist, entrepreneurs, businesses, academia, governments) has to come together to address and solve the issues needed to further advance the technology. So on December 5, 2009 was the first ever Augmented Reality Developer Camp held at the HackerDojo in Mountain View, California. " After nearly 20 years in the research labs, Augmented Reality is taking shape as one of the next major waves of Internet innovation, overlaying and infusing the physical world with digital media, information, and experiences. We believe AR must be f...

This past weekend was the second iteration of Metaverse U put on by Henrik Bennetsen at Stanford University. The Metaverse U conference took place at Stanford University on May 29 th and 30 th . The goal of this years conference was to explore the cutting edge applications of virtual worlds and the open platforms that drive them. Henrik gathered an impressive lineup of speakers and I will embed their videos here once they go online. Some highlights from the presentations: Sirikata , Stanford's open source platform for virtual worlds, had a high representation this year with a demo that showed some of its editing features. Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Stanford University) talked about cultural heritage with virtual worlds stating "museums are the original 3D world" and the need to embrace (inter)active models of educational programming with an emphasis on bottom-up counterparts to traditional top-down approaches. John Hurliman (Intel) presented Cable Beach, a service based a...

As of late, I have been witness to an explosion of interest in the web3D open standard by the Green community. Beyond the work our group is doing to promote green with Architecture For Humanity, I am constantly approached by those in the green space from both the design and manufacturing wanting to migrate to the 3D web. Many see the high barriers to entry for using virtual worlds, their platform limitations, and don't really need avatars. "I want to show how my building or design is Green", is a growing theme. Even in a recent issue of 3D World it was covered that a study by Autodesk and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) said clients are driving architects to green design. The Autodesk/AIA Green Index , which measures how architects are practicing sustainable design, reports that 42% of their clients are asking for green building elements on the majority of their projects. The Green Index also found the 66% of the architects surveyed said that this client deman...