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...