Your client has a dream. Whether it’s a house, office complex, hospital, hotel or convention center, it’s a vision fueled by personality, taste, lifestyle, desires, and any of a long list of intangibles. In the not too distant past, translating that dream into reality was a grueling process of trial and error, with a huge miscommunication potential.
Fortunately, today’s building professionals do not have to be psychics to guarantee client satisfaction. Instead, thanks to ever-evolving virtual and augmented reality apps for architects, they can easily collaborate with clients, engineers, and contractors to keep projects precisely on target, down to the last detail, before one stone is unturned—and valuable time and money are wasted.
Though many of these groundbreaking technologies are still in the developing stages, here a few that are already out there streamlining the architectural process.
ARKi
Compatible with any iOS or Android device, ARKi is a real-time augmented reality visualization service for architectural models. It supports for both the design and presentation phases of the building process by overlaying 3D models onto existing 2-D floor plans, and providing interactive functionalities including real-time shadow analysis and material selection. Custom views of models in both movie and 3-D still format can be captured, recorded and easily shared via email or social media.
Storyboard VR
Designed bridge the gap between designing and developing a VR experience, Storyboard VR allows users to pull in, arrange, scale and animate simple 2-D assets. To enhance project planning, architects can create and upload transparent drawings and environment maps to build virtual storyboards. Unlike traditional presentation boards that lose their impact unless shared in person, Storyboard VR creates presentation boards that are designed to be shared online.
Storyboard VR from Artefact on Vimeo.
Smart Reality
The virtual reality version of Smart Reality allows users to “walk” through buildings and experience interactive visualizations. This version is available for iOS,Android, Oculus Rift, and Epson Moverio BT-200 smart glasses.
Fuzor
The augmented reality version of Smart Reality uses a mobile device camera to overlay interactive, 3-D visualizations over printed construction plans. Users can zoom, expose structural layers with a touch, move through stages of a project over time and record video images of the experience.
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