4D Pipeline - Visualizing reality, trends and breaking news in 3D, CAD, and mobile.

I'm someone who generally hates shopping but yet I happen to have purchased items on fancy.com. I was hence pleasantly surprised to see their nice little Glass App.  

If you haven't been following all the Google Glass news, take a look at the video, you'll get a really clear picture (hehe pun) of the Glass experience.

I'm looking forward to developing some first Apps for Glass.

Design topic.

Ok since the world has gone iOS7 mad :-) Here is a link to the most interesting design review that i have found. Matt writes about colors vs borders, light, and content first. It's a really nice design overview. 

You spend months working on your Apps design, you finally think that you've got it perfect and you send it to the wild. Then you look at your analytics and find that people are not using it as they should - how dare they!

Save yourself a lot of time, prototype, first on paper, and then with simple UI experiments, test it with users. Record it, watch them struggle, watch them not click where they should, most important watch them show you what needs to be improved. It's humbling, and it's extraordinarily valuable. 

However, sometimes, you just can't ask your customer to come into the office or you don't have everyone in the one location, whatever. 

This is a great idea from a friend and a member of the 4D Pipeline team. Mark has made a simple mobile "sled", it simply positions a camera to record the users experience, where their fingers go, what they click on, etc.

Simple, useful.

Have your pilot customers and QA departments use it. Simple, effective.

Great idea Mark! Awesome job.

Also outstanding to see the reviews by Disney Interactive and ESPN!

Very nice end demo showing what can be done by overlaying a BIM model with your building "reality". 

This example seems to use computer vision (point clouds, 3D reconstruction, 6DOF feature based tracking) and then combines this with best location information (WLAN and HAIP locaitoning).

The result looks great. Very good example of the end goal. You can imagine the usefulness of such technology - for construction, architecture, facility management, consumer interaction, ...

Now if only we can make it work on a standard iPad! (which happens to be one of the things we are working on at 4D Pipeline  :-))

PS #AWE2013 starts today - see us there!

Bold article, well thought out strategical analysis by Anton Wahlman. I love reading such a fresh viewpoint. 

I would even add further to the authors big conclusions. 

I would add that Google Glass and it's vision (hehe - pun) of AR and visual search for the masses requires:

4) Great computer vision - everything should be searchable, and everything happens to be in 3D.  - Cloud computing with Nvidia GPUs is not an option it's a must. E.g. See a car you like, look at it, see everything about it.  Also applicable for Google Goggles.

5) Great visualization/rendering - the Augmented part of AR requires state of the art 3D visualization. This means overlaying 3D information on the "reality". Tegra's are going to again be musts but again, we are going to rely on the heavy lifting being done in the cloud with GPUs.

Disclosure - NVIDIA is a customer of 4D Pipeline's. 

Awesome, simply awesome summary of why if you are not thinking mobile (and mobile first at that) you are going to be left behind.

We live in buildings.

Our homes, workplaces, universities, museums, hospitals, etc. 

Companies spend millions making their new building campuses and attracting talent to them (see Facebook, Apple, NVIDIA, ...)

In sci-fi's we see people using 3D maps all the time to pull up useful information but in 2013 we barely do this...

And the crazy thing is that we often have these 3D/BIM models from the building process, and if we simply used them downstream there is so much more we could do.

By having a 3D/BIM model in our pocket, on our mobile, we can see where our colleagues are (see WifiSlam), find where a room is, see which meeting rooms are free (and where they are), find faulty equipment, do inspections, navigation, visually see where team members are located, get help navigating a museum, hospital, or university campus, etc, etc. 

I really am looking forward to seeing more great Apps which utilize 3D/BIM for downstream use, be it field management, facility management, or occupant interactions. 

It's 2013 - let's live in the future!

My favorite conference of the year is on (actually it's tied with my other favorite NVIDIA GTC).

If you are planning to attend Siggraph shoot me an email, let's meet up (jed[at]4Dpipeline.com).

If you don't know Siggraph you should, if you are reading my blog then you will love the show. 

Ok I can't really see this taking off :-) But who knows!

That said, it too good a picture not to scoop it, and it's one step closer to the Star Trek holodeck :-)

Great short history on Solid Kernels and good overview on the new one from Russia - C3D.

The author talks about Spatial’s ACIS, owned by Dassault, and Siemens’ Parasolid. It's also worth noting the open source Open Cascade kernel (although this is still less proven than Parasolid and ACIS).

The answer is Yes :)

And it's also Yes for manufacturing in general.

Or at least Glass is a catalyst for this. It is worth noting that, as it stands now, the Glass API has no support for AR at all.

That said, it's only a matter of time, AR Glasses are coming.

If we can hook up Augmented Reality (which will require Cloud computing (or low power mobile GPU computing) for the computer visions and visualization/rendering) then there is a wealth of possibilities in not just architecture and navigation like experiences but much more - like being able to see useful information (show me what part of the building is going to be worked on tomorrow, etc).

It's also a huge enabler for manufacturing. Imagine being able to recognize your product (requires good 3D computer vision but we are getting close now, eg Google Goggles). For example, take a look at a car in the street - "oh i like that one, what options are available for it?" - Bam - i see the options, prices, and related information overlaid on the car. 

The future is not only mobile, it's visual!

BTW; some other posts you might find interesting:

http://sco.lt/6vDWVN - BIM, augmented reality and collaboration;

http://sco.lt/6FGPxZ - Augmented Reality 3D tracker (Ford Ordinary Maintenance);

http://sco.lt/8MmoWP - Google Makes 3 Big Bets on NVIDIA;

http://sco.lt/68Bnov - The Power of 3D: Using BIM for Facility Management;

http://sco.lt/7Zxs4v - 3D BIM for downstream users in field and facility management;

http://sco.lt/8buoHB - Augmented Reality for Construction Drawings.

Don't hesitate to ping me if you'd like to talk further on this topic jed[at]4Dpipeline.com

The only surprise I had was that it was only an hour a day. I wonder if it counts "while eating dinner", "while laying in bed", or "while have quality conversations" :-)

In response to Ford Sync (an open App approach) - GM moves forward with it's App strategy. 

As mentioned previously, there are so many solutions that really fit well for an in-car experience. The key for the App developers is to make compelling Apps that make sense and work well from within the car. 

We can hopefully expect to see Apps for radio/entertainment, finding a place to park, locational/GPS services, smart telematics, car service/repair, traffic management, weather/environmental reporting.

More can be found about Ford Sync at http://sco.lt/8zw26L

Just in case you had any doubt. Great article and interview with real-world examples of how CAD + Mobile can save weeks "This is a huge cost saving when we look at how quickly the drawing is produced – using the “point-shoot-done” principle within a week the surveyor can be measuring 400-500 square metres, make that 750-1000 square metres in 3-4 weeks and as much as 1500 square metres for super users!"