AR for the construction industry

I am new to this world. Just bought a Rift. I've been making house plans for the past 10 years. I know that AR in the construction industry will be big. My question is - Is it possible to model a house or room in 3D, then bring a hololens into a real place in the world and have the device know where it is based on a previous scan? Or information from the model? So say for instance there is a job site. You could scan the site beforehand then bring that pointcloud or whatever into the computer - then build the house on the computer - then go back out and have the house be in your world, in AR.

Doing some research I've learned SLAM is a thing. And I've seen that google can approximate a phones location by matching up what the camera sees to street view photos. But is there anything I can start to play with now? Is Unity going to be the tool I use for this type of thing? Advice on where to pay attention or where else to post is appreciated. Thanks!

 

Its not "going to be" a big thing in construction, it already is. Not just the hololens either, the varjo and other enterprise headsets are used extensively. "AR" is the new "BIM" in AEC industry.

And yes the things you are asking if they are possible, apps like that already exist for the HoloLens.

Source: Was a HoloLens specialist for 2 years building apps for AEC industry including for construction of the UK HS2 project. Saw a ton of competitor products too at a bunch of trade shows etc

 

Wow I am way behind! Had no idea the Varjo even existed. Thanks.

Next question - Is there a way to use an ipad or phone as the device? I would imagine having some markers in the real world would be required but that is totally doable.

 

Yes that is built into the MRTK already, so if you wanted to do that with hololens you could there is examples in the MRTK etc.

This is MRTK and without it HoloLens development sucks: https://github.com/microsoft/MixedRealityToolkit-Unity

Its created by and maintained by Microsoft themselves, but supports other platforms than the HoloLens.

 

Awesome! I'll dig in when I get some time. Thanks.