Nic Fonta leads XR at Autodesk, where architects, engineers, and designers collaborate in virtual reality to catch design problems before construction begins. The math is stark: $280 billion spent globally every year on rework and material waste on construction sites because of poor communication and misalignment. Workshop XR (autodesk.com/workshopxr) , Autodesk's immersive collaborative platform, lets teams put on VR headsets and walk through their designs at full scale before a single brick is laid.

His background is surprising for someone leading a design collaboration tool: Nic is a software engineer who started in flight simulator technology working on a $35 million MIG-29 cockpit simulator. After hesitating between architecture and engineering in university, engineering won—but he ended up serving architects anyway. His entire career has been in real-time rendering and simulation: flight simulators, gaming at Electronic Arts, and now helping the AEC industry see what they're building before they build it.

The magic happens when an architect puts on a VR headset and realizes they missed a design flaw for months—something twisted in the geometry that appeared broken in VR but was invisible in their 2D design tool. That moment changed everything for Nic. He knew XR could transform how people work.

Today, Workshop XR helps teams find problems earlier, reduce material waste, increase engagement during design reviews, and identify safety hazards before workers hit the site. The next frontier: integrating AI agents into the immersive space so they learn from spatial relationships and how humans understand and feel design decisions.

Episode Highlights:

• A $35 million MIG-29 flight simulator cockpit sparked a career in real-time simulation that led to serving architects instead—because Nic chose engineering over architecture in university but ended up designing tools for both.
• Workshop XR reduces $280 billion in annual global construction rework by helping teams find design problems earlier when they're cheaper and faster to fix.
• One architect walked into VR, spotted a twisted geometry in the main entrance, and realized months later in his 2D tool that he'd missed the same flaw the entire time—that moment proved XR transforms how people see.
• Safety reviews emerged as a second use case when construction teams used the same immersive experience to identify hazards before workers reached the site, reducing accidents and rework.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube.

About Nic Fonta

Nic Fonta is a Montreal-based technology and product executive with over 25 years of experience driving innovation at the intersection of real-time rendering, simulation, gaming, and XR. Since joining Autodesk in 2014 for his deep real-time expertise, Nic has played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s XR strategy. 

He led the development and go-to-market of Revit Live, managed the 3ds Max product line, and now serves as General Manager for XR

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