The real estate industry is expected to be one of the top industries transformed by virtual reality in coming years. Sydney company Inspace XR is using virtual reality to revolutionise the real estate industry allowing customers to step in and inspect a home, a shopping centre, an office or an industrial site before it even exists.   We talk to the young entrepreneur who is driving this innovation – Justin Liang.
Transcript:
Kevin:  The real estate industry is expected to be one of the top industries that will be transformed by virtual reality in coming years, if not now. Many within the industry are already employing the innovative technology in various dimensions, from digital staging to virtual showrooms, to turn the blank canvas of an empty apartment into something a lot more. Very spectacular. Stand by because here’s the next level.
Sydney company Inspace XR is using virtual reality to revolutionize the real estate industry allowing customers to step in and inspect a home, a shopping center, an office, or an industrial site before it even exists. Joining me to talk about this, the young, dynamic CEO from Inspace XR, Justin Liang.
Justin, thanks very much for your time. Congratulations on what you’re doing, too.
Justin:  Kevin, thank you very much for having me on the show.
Kevin:  It must be exciting times for a young company like yours, I believe been going for about 12 months.
Justin:  Yes, absolutely. AR and VR, what our company focuses on, is on the road map and agenda for every large real estate company, from architecture to construction to interior design. We’re very fortunate to have ridden that wave and gotten a lot of interest, both locally and internationally.
Kevin:  This technology, of course, has been around for a little while, but who is using it? Who is using it right now?
Justin:  We see the main industries adopting it first are education, healthcare, and real estate. It seems that businesses are picking it up first because for the high-end experiences in VR, it still has quite a high price entry point. You need a high-fidelity device and a high graphic-powered computer.
A lot of the times when consumers talk about VR, they’re talking about mobile VR. Mobile VR that comes with something like a Samsung Gear might have a few short experiences but it doesn’t really reflect the true quality of what VR can be used for.
Kevin:  Just talking about real estate for a moment, where do you see it going? Where do you think we’ll be using virtual reality in five or ten years’ time?
Justin:  Kevin, I think VR will absolutely be the future of architecture. For the first time now, architects can step inside their designs. For example, at Inspace, our product Riverfox turns CAD into VR in one click.
We see a lot of our architecture customers designing within VR now, getting into the space, sort of littering furniture and paint and audio and then communicating those designs down to the real estate developers as customers. Also, even for certain things like the council as well, we’ve seen cases where council approval has been provided based off a VR render.
I definitely think that VR is going to be in the sales display suite for every property project because right now, people are still buying based off a handshake and a picture, and I think in the future, consumers will definitely expect to see exactly what they’re going to get.
Kevin:  Just on that point, it is virtual reality, which means it’s virtual; it’s not reality. I really question whether people can actually trust this or whether they will trust it, Justin.
Justin:  At the moment, they’re buying it based off a picture anyway, so I think VR doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the developer is going to deliver on their promise – that’s a contractual issue – however, it gives a better representation.
It allows the customer to see all corners of a property, what it’s going to look like, to see what finishes are offered and what they might look like. It gives them a broader view of what it looks like, and again, it doesn’t guarantee that they’re going to get exactly that.
Kevin:  Just a final point, I have tried virtual reality – it was some years ago – and unfortunately, I got sick. It was a roller coaster ride. Is that quite a normal reaction?
Justin:  Yes, and that comes down to the quality of the VR, which is very important. Unfortunately, VR gets a bit of a bad rap because people have experienced these low-frame experiences that have come out on mobile. But it all comes down to the frame rate. For us at Inspace, we don’t release any experience unless it’s above 90 frame rates per second constantly.
The sickness comes from your eyes moving first and the pictures following after with some latency. I think that’s a problem that the industry is very quickly fixing, but it’s through hardware and through the software tools, like the type we’re producing at Inspace.
Kevin:  Great talking to you, and congratulations on the work you’re doing. Inspace XR, the CEO there, Justin Liang. Justin, thank you so much for your time.
Justin:  Thank you very much, Kevin.