I was at a family lunch this week and we got on to the topic of VR/AR headsets. Some of my relatives have the Meta Quest, but nobody has the Apple Vision Pro and nobody has even tried it. However, the comment was that the Meta one is already pretty convincing, so the Vision Pro must be that much more amazing. Like I do on this blog, I encouraged everyone to go and book a demo.
What is obvious, of course, is that Vision Pro is far from a mainstream product. Few people are buying it. It's too expensive. And I think most people can't imagine a world where it becomes part of their daily life. But as we were all talking, I was reminded that I'm dangerously close.
Here are 3 use cases that I'm already excited about:
Watching movies and doing work on airplanes. I love traveling. But sitting on a plane sucks. If I could watch immersive movies and bury myself in work, I think I might actually enjoy having my femur crushed by the seat in front of me. It would be an environment free of any distractions. Already I have found reliable in-flight wifi to be a game changer for productivity.
Experiencing live sports from seats I wouldn't pay for in real life. To be fair, I don't generally watch a lot of sports unless a Toronto team is in the playoffs. But selling an unlimited number of courtside seats (or their equivalent) to people via Vision Pro seems like an obvious use case. I would pay for this after experiencing Lebron dunk in my face in the demo, especially if it works with groups of people. And if it doesn't already exist, I'm sure there will be a way to stream live content.
Walking through the BIM model of a yet-to-be-constructed building. The construction industry needs this. I need this. I walk all of our sites at least once a week. But imagine if it were possible to do this before construction actually starts and costly mistakes are found on site. That's always been the promise of BIM, but alas, it hasn't solved the problem of poorly coordinated drawings and too many site changes.
The list of great use cases is endless. These are just 3 that immediately came to mind and that wouldn't require the technology to be significantly better to spur greater adoption. In fact, the technology is already there and convincing enough. I also don't think the above requires the hardware to be as small, or as fashionable, as a pair of sunglasses. It just needs to be cheaper, a bit more portable, and have a few incremental features.
At that point, I'll be ready to buy. What about you?
Cover photo by Bram Van Oost on Unsplash
We are living through an inflationary hard cost environment. In speaking with one of our cost consultants the other week, he was predicting that overall we could see another 9-10% increase next year here in the Toronto area. Now, who knows what will ultimately happen. But this is top of mind for everyone in the industry and it will continue to impact how and what we build.
One of the challenges with construction -- and this is will documented -- is that unlike the manufacturing industry, which has seen sustained productivity improvements over the years, the construction industry has seen relatively little productivity growth over the last half century. In fact, you could argue that it's been mostly negative in recent history.
The obvious thought is why not just apply what we've been doing in manufacturing to construction. There is, of course, a long standing tradition of trying to do this, with varying degrees of success. But at the end of the day, building a house remains different than building something like a car.
Probably the key difference is that every construction site has unique constraints and conditions and so the process is constantly changing. Whereas the innovations that Henry Ford pioneered were centered around interchangeable parts and a well-defined process that could be repeated millions of times to generate the exact same output.
From what I can tell, there seems to be two ways in which we can think about improving productivity. One, we can try to be more Ford-like and drive standardization. This means more off-site factory construction and more standardization. This is the typical "pre-fab" approach and companies like R-Hauz, as well as many others, are already successfully doing this. The trade-off is less design flexibility.
The second option has to do with better software and hardware. What if we had significantly better "digital twins" for our buildings such that we could see and experience it in 3D before it is physically built? I'm thinking strap on VR goggles and do a walkthrough with the team. This could allow us to pinpoint all of the issues before they actually happen on the job site.
In parallel to this, what if we had far better on-site automation and robotics to then execute on the above digital twin? Think 3D printing concrete instead of using traditional forms. This is all happening and being worked on, but it doesn't seem to be at a point where it is changing our industry. But it is exciting to think that it may one day.