Virtual Reality in AEC: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

It's been 25 years this summer since I was first turned on to the idea of Virtual Reality (VR) as the "holy grail" of design visualization in architecture, thumbing through inspirational musings and essays published in magazines like Cadence and Cadalyst (yes, they were printed on real paper in 1991!). Indeed, VR took hold of many an imagination about that time, as popular media glimpsed into bleeding-edge work by pioneers in research labs like MIT's Media Lab and the Human Interface Technology Lab ("HIT Lab") at the University of Washington. Sadly, VR failed to live up to the hype as it rarely breached the Ivory Tower and into common industry use, and interest in VR largely waned after the 90's like so many Beanie Babies.

That's not to say there weren't valiant attempts to embrace VR in architecture and construction: for decades, VR has captured the imagination of creative professionals seeking the ultimate experience for design and creation. Unfortunately, those visionaries were…