Liminal 360

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In the past couple of years, we have seen virtual reality go from an intriguing concept to a full-fledged strategy for <a href="https://www.urban.com.au/new-apartments">off-the-plan property sales</a>.

This is due to VR’s unprecedented ability to bring projects to life by recreating environments to scale and placing a potential buyer inside a building that has yet to be built.

There are many challenges to selling off-the-plan properties compared to established properties. One of the most significant and obvious challenges is that some people simply do not trust what they are going to get.

By making the intangible tangible, virtual reality provides an opportunity to de-mystify the buying experience for this subset of investors and it is already making a huge impression in the sale of properties all over the world.

We know from studies conducted by neuroscientists at Nielson that viewing content in VR compared to a 2D screen generates 27% more emotional activation, and that this emotional activation lasts 34% longer. In other words, people have a trust and acceptance of virtual reality environments which creates an emotional affinity with the what they are experiencing.

From a property sales perspective, this is powerful. The ability to take a person through a property virtually and activate them emotionally is hard to ignore. It also allows the sales agent to adopt approaches that are much closer to the tried and trusted techniques that real estate agents adopt when selling established properties.

<h2>What are the options?</h2>

Liminal 360’s CEO, Damian Moratti, has <a href="https://www.urban.com.au/news/melburnians-flock-to-virtual-reality-and-property-marketers-are-taking-notice">previously written</a> for Urban.com.au about the different kinds of experiences we have created to assist with the property sales process. These kinds of experiences include:

<ul>
<li>downloadable mobile VR lead generation and sales apps displaying photo-real rendered apartments; and</li>
	<li>highly immersive experiences on more advanced systems such as the HTC Vive to showcase masterplans and to allow people to customise the interior of apartments.</li>
</ul>
We have even re-created heritage buildings such as the <a href="https://www.urban.com.au/news/melbourne-centrals-iconic-shot-tower-reborn-in-vr">Coops Shot Tower</a> for Melbourne Central.

<h2>Adoption rates continue to grow</h2>

Meanwhile, adoption rates and interest in VR continue to grow in Australia.

Google Trends data suggests that Melbourne and Sydney continue to be in the top 5 cities displaying regional interest in “virtual reality”.

Additionally, according to Telsyte’s Australian VR &amp; AR Market Study 2017, Australia is a world leader in VR adoption, with household penetration of headsets set to reach 22.3% by 2020.

Part of the reason for this continued adoption is a better user experience due more advanced GPUs allowing for higher fidelity graphics and improved hardware.

Mobile VR is getting more comfortable, higher resolution, and more interactive. The leading mobile headsets are Google Daydream and Samsung’s Gear VR are both under $130 and both come with their own bluetooth controllers. The ability to utilise mobile phones provide for a more compelling and flexible means for sales agents to deliver and enhance the buying experience.

We are also about to see even more degrees of freedom emerge from the HTC Vive (the world’s most advanced VR system), which is about to go wireless!

This will provide a more elegant solution for property developers to showcase their vision in display suites.

With VR's emergence as a standard part of the armoury for any property developer, off-the-plan properties are now open for inspection.

Nick Busietta is the managing director at <a href="http://www.liminal360.com/">Liminal 360</a>.
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nbusietta

Off-the-Plan Properties are now Open for Inspection

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Melbourne’s architectural landscape is a wonderful juxtaposition of modern and Victorian architecture. Although the CBD has been peppered with many skyscrapers, its historical structures have won Melbourne the title of “Australia’s most European city”.

Perhaps the most striking example of this juxtaposition between old and new is the Coops Shot Tower situated within Melbourne Central and enclosed by a magnificent 20 storey glass cone designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa. Although an icon of Melbourne for locals, the rich history of Coops Shot Tower is unknown to many tourists.

Built in 1890 at the peak of a period known as ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, it once stood as one of the tallest buildings in the city.

As part of Melbourne Central’s 25th birthday celebrations, <a href="http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Whatson/Festivals/FashionandDesign/Pages/9303c839-1048-4263-9629-72406e760e7e.aspx">Rewind ’91</a>, Melbourne Central and Melbourne-based virtual reality company Liminal 360 have collaborated to use the latest in VR technology, the HTC Vive, to create an immersive and interactive reconstruction of Coops Shot Tower.

During the experience, users are treated to a private tour through material from the State Library archives by historian Dale Campisi, before venturing into the Shot Tower to experience it for themselves. The tower is 50 metres tall and was used predominantly to create lead shot for shotguns.

The shot maker would melt lead bars in a cauldron furnace and scoop up the molten lead with an enormous ladle, carefully pouring it into a large, perforated colander to create ‘drops’. Molten lead would rain down the height of the tower, forming perfectly spherical and aerodynamic shot on the way to be cooled and solidified by the water below.

Today, shot is made with industrial machines and the process is largely automated; the days of standing inside a tall tower in a dimly lit room and manipulating molten lead by hand have been lost to the annals of history.

However next month, history will be reborn and visitors to Melbourne Central will have a unique opportunity to go back in time to experience a taste of life as a shot maker!

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/um_image_2.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Users can relive the life of a shot maker, albeit temporarily. Image: Liminal 360"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="318" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/um_image_2.jpg?itok=SwBuyUyW" title="Users can relive the life of a shot maker, albeit temporarily. Image: Liminal 360" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Users can relive the life of a shot maker, albeit temporarily. Image: Liminal 360</figcaption></figure>Lachlan Sleight, Liminal 360’s CTO and Lead Developer collaborated closely with local historian Dale Campisi, and was given exclusive access to the tower, taking meticulous notes, measurements and photographs of the heritage listed building and dilapidated machinery within. The result is a historical reconstruction of unusual authenticity, and the use of virtual reality technology makes the experience a benchmark for historical brand activation in Australia.

<blockquote>
This was an exciting project and we went to great lengths to accurately recreate the Shot Tower as it existed back in the 1890s. This meant not just recreating the space visually but working closely with sound designer Darius Kedros fromSonic State Design to really bring the space to life.
<cite>Lachlan Sleight, CTO and Lead Developer, Liminal 360</cite>
</blockquote>

Leigh Dunn, General Manager of Melbourne Central, said the virtual reality installation will be a key attraction for visitors during the Rewind ’91 birthday festivities hosted throughout September and also exemplifies the centre’s commitment to providing an engaging retail environment.

The Melbourne Central Virtual Reality Experience will be located in Shot Tower Square, open Thursday to Sunday for the month of September. Following this, the experience will be relocated to the Shot Tower Museum as a permanent installation for visitors to enjoy.
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Damian Moratti

Melbourne Central’s iconic shot tower reborn in VR

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There is rising consumer appetite for virtual reality in Australia and property marketers are starting to pay attention. As of this writing, Google Trends has given Melbourne a score of 100 for ‘Regional Interest’ for the search-term “Virtual Reality”.

What exactly does a score of 100 mean? Well, explaining Google Trends data can be a little tricky but a rank of 100 effectively means that proportionately, people in Melbourne are searching for “Virtual Reality” more than any other city in the world with Sydney coming in a close second with a score of 96.

Regional trends are constantly fluctuating but it appears that Melburnians are among the most highly engaged people in the world right now when it comes to Virtual Reality.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/image34_7.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Data source: Google Trends"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="286" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/image34_7.jpg?itok=AkMR_QmM" title="Data source: Google Trends" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Data source: Google Trends</figcaption></figure>One reason why VR is rapidly rising in popularity is its accessibility. Anyone can now download an app on their smartphone and experience Virtual Reality content with nothing more than an inexpensive Google Cardboard Virtual Reality viewer.

If you have one of the latest Samsung Galaxy phones, you can go a step further and pick up a Samsung Gear VR for under $160 and experience the world’s best mobile VR headset right now. This accessibility combined with a great user experience makes mobile VR a very powerful tool for sales agents who can use it to place a person ‘inside’ a building or environment before it has been built.

A number of savvy property developers have taken note of this trend and are investing heavily in the technology. Innovative property developers like SP Projects and Future Estate have created a number of fully immersive, photo-real architectural visualisations to showcase developments such as Windsor &amp; Co and One Coburg Quarter.

<blockquote>
New developments, like our Coburg Quarter project, are really raising the bar in terms of its quality and design-led architecture. Until recently though, we’ve had to rely on renders and floorplans to communicate the many unique aspects of our projects.
Now with the advent of Liminal 360’s 3D virtual reality technology we can actually show our purchasers the quality of our projects in a really tactile, expressive way.
<cite>Ben Anderson, Founder and Managing Director, Future Estate</cite>
</blockquote>

Developer branded Google Cardboards are an easy way to share mobile VR experiences and are always a huge hit at launch events, expos or as gifts to prospective investors; they are also far less likely to be thrown out or misplaced in a sea of glossy brochures.

Mobile VR is an incredible tool to sell off-the-plan properties. Aside from the millions of Google Cardboards sold globally, this year Samsung is expected to sell around five million Gear VRs, but the number of prospective property investors using mobile VR is about to get much, much bigger.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/image35_4.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Providing the viewer with a unique perspective"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="227" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/image35_4.jpg?itok=gjbb77MQ" title="Providing the viewer with a unique perspective" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Providing the viewer with a unique perspective</figcaption></figure>Google plans on making mobile VR operate at “Android scale” and is launching the recently announced Daydream platform this spring. Working with all the major phone manufacturers to create smartphones optimised for VR, Google plans to introduce “hundreds of millions” of users to mobile VR within the next couple of years.

Property marketers have also been paying attention to the release of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive earlier this year and Liminal 360 is using this technology to bring to life not only individual houses or apartments but entire masterplanned communities using the HTC Vive.

<blockquote>
We are very excited about using the HTC Vive to enable home buyers to visit a developer’s display suite and walk around and view an entire community contextually and at a range of different scales.
<cite>Nick Busietta, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Liminal 360</cite>
</blockquote>

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/image36_2.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="The HTC Vive"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="357" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/image36_2.jpg?itok=rxuEy3ox" title="The HTC Vive" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>The HTC Vive</figcaption></figure>Tethered to a powerful PC, the HTC Vive allows a person to walk around in a Virtual Reality environment as they physically walk around in up to 4.5 x 4.5 meters of mapped out floorspace – such as in a ‘real world’ display suite. The user can also actively interact with the virtual environment with a pair of wireless, handheld controllers making the Vive experiences fun and strikingly immersive.

With all these exciting Virtual Reality experiences being built right here in Melbourne, it’s not surprising that there is such a buzz around town!

Daimian Moratti is CEO of Melbourne-based virtual reality company Liminal 360.
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