MP chatted with Harrison Montgomery, Head of Growth and Marketing at Aireal. Montgomery joined Aireal two years ago after spending ten years in the sports television industry.
Aireal is a geospatial augmented reality (AR) platform that can place AR content anywhere in the world based on geospatial coordinates with millimeter-level precision.
We were founded in January of 2013 and have seven global patents, with an additional six pending.
Aireal’s mission is to empower people to form an emotional connection to the world by designing realities that, in turn, design them.
We believe that through the use of technology, we can build a better world for everyone.
A geospatial AR experience is an AR experience tied to a physical location in the world.
This matters especially for real estate because when people want to visualize their new home in the lot they are looking to purchase, they can lock that AR home on the lot and see their real-world views out of the window.
In horizontal development that begins with stakes in the ground, AR can help ensure that the original locations of those stakes is where construction takes place so that even when a stake gets knocked out of the ground, rather than guessing where it was, you can keep it in its precise location.
Connecting experiences to real-world locations drives so much more data about how we, as humans, interact with the world around us.
AR and the Metaverse are tied together as complimentary of one another.
While there is no one set “Metaverse,” and users can create multiple metaverses that people can visit, AR is a constant experience.
The Metaverse and subsequent metaverses utilize AR and VR to create immersive experiences, while AR uses the metaverse as a medium for those experiences.
AR is helping breathe new life into existing pieces of real estate by creating digital twins of current environments. This not only helps maintenance of buildings but also can sell future visions. Whether that be for renovations or to sell the idea to new tenants from anywhere in the world.
Some of the existing limitations are that AR has been considered a novelty for the longest time. Hence, education must overcome adoption limitations and create good business use cases.
Another one is that the wearables hardware is far behind the Metaverse platforms. The field of view for wearable devices is not good enough yet to have mass adoption. However, using devices that people already have, like their phones and tablets, can be the crossing of the chasm for wearables once they become viable.
Through human behavior data, AR can help businesses understand their customers' wants, needs, and patterns more efficiently, offering products that are more aligned with what problems consumers simply want to solve.
AR in the real estate industry will help people imagine better and build more efficiently.
On average, 18% of capital expenditure is wasted on change orders and re-work. By implementing an AR technology during the design and planning phase, companies can bring that number down drastically as everyone in the process, from the developer, architect, contractor, zoning committee, and the eventual consumer, will all be on the same lens of what is to be built and how it affects the current environment.
The limitations to this come down to the adoption of new technology in an industry that for hundreds of years has not been used before.
Therefore AR companies have to do a great job of informing end users how a tool like AR can impact their business.
That there is this one big digital world for everything. In reality, the Metaverse is infinite, and augmented reality can help facilitate experiences in every metaverse.
However, with augmented reality, you are superimposing digital content over the real world, creating less escapism and allowing people to interact with the world in many ways.
For the Metaverse to succeed, the focus must be shifted towards long-term viability, sustainability, and, most importantly, intentionality. The Metaverse has quickly become a buzzword at the surface, but the real value is under the hood enabling the possibilities.
Responses provided by Harrison Montgomery, Vice President of Marketing at Aireal.
