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Ask HN: Anyone using augmented reality, VR, glasses, helmets etc. in industry?

81 points NewUser76312 | 1 comments | 25 Jun 25 15:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source

Since Google Glass made its debut in 2012, there's been a fair amount of hype around augmented reality and related tech coming into its own in industry, presumably enhancing worker productivity and capabilities.

But I've heard and seen so little use in any industries. I would have thought at a minimum that having access to hands-free information retrieval (e.g. blueprints, instructions, notes, etc), video chat and calls for point-of-view sharing, etc would be quite useful for a number of industries. There do seem to be interesting pilot trials involving Hololens in US defense (IVAS) as well as healthcare telemonitoring in Serbia.

Do you know of any relevant examples or use cases, or are you a user yourself? What do you think are the hurdles - actual usefulness, display quality, cost, something else?

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ugolino91 ◴[25 Jun 25 17:07 UTC] No.44379587[source]▶
I’m one of the founders @ resolvebim.com YCW15. We built a VR and (some) AR platform to help engineering and construction companies use HMDs in their everyday workflows to enhance their 3D BIM review workflows.

We post case studies regularly on our blog, so you can read about real world deployments there: blog.resolvebim.com

From my experience the hardware is still a hurdle simply because it doesn’t completely replace all pc based workflows right now and therefore has to be used selectively at the right moments alongside 2D monitors.

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NewUser76312 ◴[25 Jun 25 19:12 UTC] No.44380879[source]▶
Thanks for your response, that's certainly an exciting use case, and what I'd hope AR headsets could help with in the future.

From your company's landing page, I saw the video and it looks like you're working with in-office project managers and similar white-collar types.

Do you work with any products in the field, like on the job sites? Is that something that would be interesting or valuable? Some examples: letting workers be able to quickly share first-person recorded videos of issues, first-person video chat with supervisors, ability to pull up blueprints and instructions in their heads-up displays, etc? Assuming perhaps a different platform than the Meta, as I don't think fully covered VR would be appropriate for a worksite.

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1. ugolino91 ◴[25 Jun 25 19:38 UTC] No.44381110[source]▶
Some of our clients do take the quest into the field, but we advise them about the safety hazards. There are use cases where you can use the HMD while standing still and not moving to eliminate the risk of trip hazards. You can see one of our clients doing it here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tony-duan-6085021a4_bim-resol...

You can see in that video that you can markup the site virtually and yes you can record video, leave issue markers, pull up 2D plans from other tools we integrate with like Procore, ACC, etc. However, it still is primarily a stationary tool on site because of the field of view limitations.

There are some rumors about next gen MR headsets allowing for a "full field of view" by basically removing the head gasket altogether. We'll see.