Apple Sent the Vision Pro to a building site inspections channel.

[_Miew]

Site Inspections is a YouTube channel based in Victoria, Australia that focuses on building site inspections. Given the rarity of Apple sponsorships, I was surprised to see in today's video that they sent Site Inspections a Vision Pro. But now I see why, this video really shows off the capabilities of the Vision Pro in a practical use case better than any tech review channel could. I found it particularly impressive when he would enter a house and come out to find a document still on the street where he left it.

 

So if you, like me, were wondering about a real practical use case for the Vision Pro, here it is!  

(on first impression, time will tell if the device sees continuous use on the channel)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPdCVVzh0DY

 

Edit: on further thought I have some safety concerns especially regarding the alleged poor FOV of the VP in combination with walking on roofs. 

Edited March 6 by _Miew
YouTube URL wouldn't embed properly, original post didn't address safety concerns.

[Poinkachu]

2 hours ago, _Miew said:

Site Inspections is a YouTube channel based in Victoria, Australia that focuses on building site inspections. Given the rarity of Apple sponsorships, I was surprised to see in today's video that they sent Site Inspections a Vision Pro. But now I see why, this video really shows off the capabilities of the Vision Pro in a practical use case better than any tech review channel could. I found it particularly impressive when he would enter a house and come out to find a document still on the street where he left it.

 

So if you, like me, were wondering about a real practical use case for the Vision Pro, here it is!  

(on first impression, time will tell if the device sees continuous use on the channel)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPdCVVzh0DY

 

Edit: on further thought I have some safety concerns especially regarding the alleged poor FOV of the VP in combination with walking on roofs. 

Dunno, all I see is paying $3000ish just so you don't have to hold papers, papers which you most likely need if you ever need to show someone a line in the paper.

 

Me, I'd just bring a tablet to view the papers and I can show it to anyone else if needed.

While wearing safety equipments for my eyes and head.

[DanKepke]

This might be the best video of the vision pro i've seen so far, in a professional usecase. Especially if you want to show someone what you are looking at together with stuff, in this case engineering drawings right there in your face. I guess if you can sync it with an ipad to have a companion device to show the non advanced humans around you, it could be great.

[denco101]

Pretty cool, but it seems like especially for the price you're probably better off just carrying a tablet. As others have said, seems like this wouldn't work if you need to show anything to someone else... Even if you could have it synced to an iPad or something, at that point you're needing to carry a tablet with you anyway.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Poinkachu said:

Dunno, all I see is paying $3000ish just so you don't have to hold papers, papers which you most likely need if you ever need to show someone a line in the paper.

 

Me, I'd just bring a tablet to view the papers and I can show it to anyone else if needed.

While wearing safety equipments for my eyes and head.

That's not quite what building inspectors do, it depends on the project size. Basically they go to the site and check that things are following code, not the building plan itself. If the plans were reviewed properly before construction, everything in the plan should match what's on the site. In massive multi-million dollar projects, you'd have opportunities for both the construction staff and city inspectors to use such devices.

 

If at some point building plans can be visualized in 3D, it would make using the Vision Pro, in theory, a real game changer because you could quite literately see the building plan overlapping the real world positions of every joist, and incorrect building materials because it won't line up what was required. When it gets to electrical and plumbing, even better, because theoretically now you can have an app that can actually "see" how it's wired/plumbed without potentially endangering yourself.

 

THAT said, clearly proper safety gear is difficult to wear with this, but it also needs to be said that the purposes of steel toed shoes and helmets is primarily for doing the construction/destruction work. Building Inspectors wear helmets, Eye protection, High visibility vests, Steel toed shoes, Gloves, and so forth because the site is an active work site. If the structure part of the building is largely already built (Eg all joists, studs, subfloors, etc) then you're in no danger of building itself harming you, but you are still in danger if other people are working in the same room. 

 

My big concern would be tripping hazards, stairs, and roofing. With a tablet or phone, you'd have your hands occupied when you should be hanging on to a railing or ladder.

 

My parent who was a civil engineer here in BC, has used photo cameras, video cameras, digital still cameras, and various other tools to take pictures of work sites over the decades. When I was doing work at the engineering company 5 years ago, a lot of staff were still using digital still cameras, Android and iOS smartphones and iPad's. 

 

So I do see how a the Vision Pro might be super useful because they can do their work hands-free, instead of needing multiple devices. But it's also not exactly going to be on every municipal building departments budgets. Some things are purely toys until a proper software package exists.

 

[LogicalDrm]

On 3/6/2024 at 1:27 PM, Poinkachu said:

Dunno, all I see is paying $3000ish just so you don't have to hold papers, papers which you most likely need if you ever need to show someone a line in the paper.

 

Me, I'd just bring a tablet to view the papers and I can show it to anyone else if needed.

While wearing safety equipments for my eyes and head.

@Kisai pretty much outlined what I was going to say. But...

 

My preface is that at the moment I work as GIS Engineer for city's urban planning department. We do close work with the building inspectors and infrastructure department. Previously, I worked as specialist for government run program to educate about the upcoming, government led change in legislation which would make digital planning whole country wide standard.

 

So besides what Kisai mentioned, this wouldn't be for common paper work. But it would be for checking on whether digital models for building and different subparts of it are following what was approved. Or if something has since changed, are those changes according to plans. For urban planners and architects, devices like this would help to visualize how their plans look in the proper environment. As we already do with digital 3D models that you can have on your tablet. AR is already part of those operations, but ofc holding heavy tablet is different task than having AR on your head.

 

As for price. $3000 is price of professional, 3D modeling capable laptop with expected life cycle of 3 service years. Laser scanners, which are most commonly used to make reference between building plans and finished building, or in city scale, map infrastructure for future plans and projects, are about 10x that. With expected life cycle of 10 years. If Vision Pro has decent, Apple-esque life cycle of 5+ service years, they could become industry-standard.

 

E: Adding to price thing. $3k is much if you are looking for leisure device you are using occasionally. But so is everything you think as leisure and with limited usage or service life. Paying $1k for GPU is outrageous, or it would have been 10 years ago. Paying $150 for something you use daily seems also be too much. But for business or municipality, its about how much savings or profit will this investment turn out during its lifetime. This is basics of any business. If Vision Pro can save 10 minutes per work site visit or even free-up one person for whole day to do other things. Thats paying itself back in couple of months.

Edited March 7 by LogicalDrm

[dilpickle]

On 3/6/2024 at 2:42 AM, _Miew said:

Site Inspections is a YouTube channel based in Victoria, Australia that focuses on building site inspections. Given the rarity of Apple sponsorships, I was surprised to see in today's video that they sent Site Inspections a Vision Pro. But now I see why, this video really shows off the capabilities of the Vision Pro in a practical use case better than any tech review channel could. I found it particularly impressive when he would enter a house and come out to find a document still on the street where he left it.

 

So if you, like me, were wondering about a real practical use case for the Vision Pro, here it is!  

(on first impression, time will tell if the device sees continuous use on the channel)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPdCVVzh0DY

 

Edit: on further thought I have some safety concerns especially regarding the alleged poor FOV of the VP in combination with walking on roofs. 

This is a very poor use of MR/AR. All you are doing is looking at desktop windows.

 

The real potential of this tech is to have a 3d overlay on top of the real building. I have yet to see anything like that for this device.