Metaverse One

It's a wrap, the AEC Hackathon 1.2 just concluded! Held in Seattle, Washington at University of Washington's Pacific Northwest Center for Construction Research and Education, it was a fun weekend of hacking to improve the built environment with plenty of high-tech and innovative solutions in the house. As always, I was amazed at what the AEC Hackers made over the course of the weekend. In addition to the projects created, some of my more memorable highlights from the event include: 1. Drones for architecture and climbing a tree to get the drone for team Revit My Drone . 2. An awesome smart table  touch screen device thanks to SmartUse . 3. Plenty of Virtual Reality for AEC represented including a full immersive VR setup thanks to the team at VRcade . 4. Multiple  Web3D applications that used WebGL and more. 5. FTW (For The Win): seeing alumni that have started companies from projects started at past AEC Hackathons. Video of the team p...

As part of a presentation I have next week that focuses on mixed reality, I built an augmented reality application for viewing various 3D CAD models. For the time allotted to this project I kept it simple and sweet. I decided to use a traditional marker here as the scene had too much visual noise for image recognition with all the foot and car traffic. Markers on my iPod Touch load different levels of detail 3D models of this one building. Clicking on the model binds it to a viewpoint so the marker is no longer needed. The example in the video is built on a 'mixed reality' framework that allows interactive models to be accessed by virtual and augmented reality applications. I will be sharing more of my work, application examples, and videos about this framework in the coming months.

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...