Virtual reality (VR) once seemed like a bizarre plot from a sci-fi movie, but over the past 12 months, the technology has gained traction in some unlikely industries, such as real estate.
Jason Salter, head of newly formed company Real VR, became involved with virtual reality for real estate when a client approached him when they wanted to sell apartments off the plan in Sydney.
“One thing led to another and I said, ‘We can project manage this for you,’ and we agreed to that,” Salter said.
He also offered to do it using virtual reality.
Just weeks before the new client came along, Salter had been introduced to a new virtual reality company.
“Essentially the VR guys had a company that was able to build a render or an image of a property that hadn’t been built in such a way that we were able to put it into a program that enabled a purchaser to walk around or teleport within that image,” Salter said.
Salter said the VR experience differs from computer-generated images that are typical in marketing campaigns in that they allow the purchaser to see things more in-depth, such as on either side of the property, behind it and above and below it.
With a willing client and the right technology, Salter said the building blocks were put in place for the first VR real estate experience in Australia, and possibly the first in the world.
“We took the property to market and the reaction from the purchasers was really amazing,” Salter said.
“We had buyers who were happy because they were able to view the property in a more detailed and immersive way, and it was easy to navigate [and] easy to work their way around the menu.”
This ease of use was a vital aspect to ensure it was successful. Prospective purchasers also needed to be able to take the experience away with them, so it had to be easy to install on their smartphone so they could use it at home on the Google Cardboard.
“When you’re setting up a program like this and a person puts their headset on for the first time, you’ve got to put yourself in their position,” Salter said. “The ease of operation is probably the biggest challenge because it hasn’t been done before.”
Salter wanted users to be able to self-navigate around an image and move to any aspects they wanted to see in more detail. The design team also ensured the menus would load in such a way that a buyer would only have to look at the menu to load it, rather than having to use external equipment like a mouse.
This meant people with disabilities could also use the technology.
“Another innovation was we dropped in the view of what those levels would look like by sending a drone up to the various levels that we have images for,” Salter said.
The virtual reality experience was so popular that Salter attributes it to a six- or seven-fold increase in the number of people enquiring about the property.
Teleporting people
The experiences took about eight weeks to complete. This included designing the menu to ensure every experience was loaded, ‘hotspots’ that allowed people to teleport to a different part of the apartment, ensuring views weren’t too close to the edge of a balcony so users wouldn’t become dizzy, and ensuring a sufficient number of experiences that provided access to a range of areas, from the kitchen and living room to the bedroom and balcony.
“The challenges that we had were making sure that we could adapt the technology so that simple questions were answered by the experience for a buyer,” Salter said.
“That, to me, was probably the most important thing – a buyer-oriented experience that was compelling, immersive and one that they’ll always remember.”
Some experiences included being able to open doors and cupboards and pressing buttons for lifts.
But because the technology was so new at the time, Salter said he was somewhat limited by what the technology could do, and Real VR is now working on other developments, such as building further content.
Another potential opportunity is allowing purchasers to directly talk to a real estate agent in the experience to ask questions, instead of breaking out of VR.
“Our sister company has already developed a compelling cinematic experience. VR Noir is a cinematic experience where there are conversations one-on-one with two characters, but you being one of the characters, you’re able to choose a number of questions that you ask the character,” Salter said.
Real VR is also developing technology to allow purchasers to get in touch with an outside contact, such as a real estate organisation, solicitor or finance broker, by using triggers that are available in the experience, possibly eliminating the need to leave the VR experience.
But while some people have dismissed virtual reality as a fad, Salter said the amount of investment in the technology over the past 12 months says otherwise.
For example, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, recently announced an additional US$250 million investment in developing VR content. The social networking company has already invested $250 million in content.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested so far and nearly every major commercial top 500 business is looking at it. We know of a number of large organisations that have adopted VR, not only in the real estate space but in the banking space, in health care, and in tourism,” Salter said.
[Image: A VR view of the EDGE 28 development in St Leonards from a view point in the sky, enabling buyers to look back down on the future development from a vantage point in the sky.]