Virtual reality in real estate

Matt, I have a lot of audience here today. We would like to talk a little bit about our perspective on VR. I think it's a little bit different from what we've had so far, because we are much in a selling situation instead of the designing process and so on. But first of all, short introduction. Michael is here today. My name is Rune, and we are both partners in CapnSign. Michael is the head of production, and I'm running the sales department. So, just very brief. We were founded back in 1994. That gives us 22 years of experience. We are located just around the corner. We have a headquarter here in Aarhus. And actually, we started back in 1994 working for architects only. But the financial crisis teach them how to do 3D images themselves. So, it's not much we're working for architects anymore. But we have around 60 clients. And we have an international profile. So, more than 50% of our turnover is outside Denmark. We have a subsidiary in Germany, Karlsruhe, in the southern part. And then we also have the sales offices in the UK. But a lot of customers across Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, France and so on that we manage here from Denmark. We do have three main services. It's the 3D still images. So, everywhere you normally use traditional photo, we do it in 3D. And then we put into motion and we do 3D films as well using the same technique. I'll show a couple, just the image examples. And then we have the last department, what we call interactive. And that is, again, in point of sale situation. It could be an interactive product configurator. In the kitchen, showroom and something like that. Just short about our virtual reality experience. Because we also tried to hit the last wave 10 years ago or 15 years ago actually. So, we started using turn tool as some of you might know. An old technique. I don't think it exists anymore. But that was, you know, with a good old workstation. And we put one man into a job and he spent three months. And it was almost looking good. But quite heavy cost. And, yeah, it was never a success. Then we turned to another technique some years later called Quest. More or less the same. Workstation and so on. Not in glasses but just... We were trying to do it as an online experience. But it was too heavy. So, we skipped it back then. I think it was in 2006, something like that. And then around one and a half year ago we started doing some projects in Unity. But not using virtual reality actually. That was only in September last year. Where we saw these Samsung VR glasses for the first time. And we thought that might be interesting for a company like Hatch Design. So, I think it was in October or November last year we did the first project. And that was like the ketchup effect. Because we have an international sales organization. We have ten people across Europe that has a lot of new business meetings. So, we started out buying one set of glasses. And quite fast it became a fight who should have the glasses this week. So, we bought an extra pair. And now, of course, everyone in the sales department has one. Because it's really a game changer at a meeting. I think in eight out of ten meetings... People run out and get some other people into the meeting room. Because it's such an immersive experience. So, it's really a dramatic change. So, we actually had to change the process where we show the glasses last. Because if you show it first, then they don't hear anything else. And seriously, we had to find that it's only in the last ten minutes we can put up the glasses. Because otherwise, our total agenda would be spoiled. So, five minutes in the closing ten minutes. Five minutes in the closing time is your own. But so far, we have delivered six projects. And we have five more in progress right now. And we have many more requests. Because this is really something that is exciting. So, I totally agree with what the sub-unit talked about there. Just some examples within what we call residential development. Because we do a lot of these. Like here in Aarhus. The Havnehund project. And the East Bialy-Greisberg project. We have done the total marketing material. Website brochures and so on. But also, of course, the 3D images. And this is just some of the examples from different projects. I think the one in the middle. Okay, that's from the Setufe. They're nice as well. And the same we do in motion. We do a lot of different films using CGI. Kitchen TV commercials. But also for industrial companies. And Grundfos and Velux building construction and so on. And the interactive department is, of course, virtual reality. And actually, the one in the middle. The Grundfos case is actually building unity. But it's like an interactive solution. Microsoft Connect and so on. And then a lot of interactive customizing tools and so on. Yeah, we work for different segments. But, of course, one that we will showcase here today is the residential development market. That's where we are talking buildings. But, Michael? Yeah. I joined the show today. Because I was just... I was supposed to be technical support. But a lot of the other guys will talk a lot about the technical stuff. And I know Jesper is going to talk a bit more about it later. But just to say that our platform is also the Samsung. There's a very good reason for that. It's that we have a strategy when we do all of our productions. It's that if we can do one platform and reuse it on a lot of different platforms, then it's really good. And the clients really like that. So you don't have to pay twice or pay twice or whatever. And the case with the VR is that it's really, really easy. If you do the fixed points, it's just an image. It's no... You don't have to jump into the virtual game world or anything else. So it's really, really accessible. And the glasses are really, really cheap. And Samsung is really pushing them over the table. So, yeah. So our platform at the moment is that. It's Samsung. But, of course, we have also had requests for more technical stuff where we partner up with... with Viper Health, for instance, with Unity Studio Works and other partners to do the more technical stuff. But right now, it's Samsung. That's the way to go, in our opinion. Definitely. Yeah. And I also think it's because, as I said, most of our stuff is in the point-of-sale situation. It's in the kitchen showroom where you're interested in buying a kitchen. Or it could be in what's called the beauty market where you're buying and building materials and so on. If you want to choose the right fit. If you want to choose the right floor or something like that, then you put on the glasses, you can see the different rooms with all the different types of floors and so on. So it's a good way of showing different products and so on. Yeah. So the quality aspect is also very important for our clients. If you have somebody who sells kitchens, for instance, they want their product to be showcased as it's showcased in real life. If you have floors, if you have windows, whatever. It needs to be as it is. In this case with architecture, you're looking at volumes and spaces and all that stuff. So it doesn't necessarily have to be photo real to understand what's going on. But if you're selling, as we'll say later on, if we're selling an apartment, we sometimes, the people viewing it and seeing it, to get them not to be ripped away from reality, it needs to be very high level in the quality that we do. And just with the, if you need to do the very high level with real time, it's really expensive. Yeah. That's the issue. Yeah. Oh, and lastly, we work in three-duty maps. Okay. Great. Yeah. Okay. But the case that we would like to show today, we brought two sets. Some of you saw it in the break before. But it's a residential development project placed in Copenhagen. And our initial contact was with the real estate agent. And I remember quite clearly the news meeting I had with them because I couldn't bring my glasses home. Because they wanted to have them. So it actually, they kept my glasses for one week. And that tells a little bit about how impressed they were. And they had this project with their clients called Take-Home Development. And we already had agreed that we should do the normal 3D images for print and the website and so on. But then again, we teased them on this technique and they were quite impressed. So we tried to do it for them. So we tried to do it for this. So in these situations, it's a greenfield development project. So there's construction site. It looks quite terrible for a lot of years. And especially in the situation where you actually are going to buy the apartment. So you come to some kind of an open house event. But you cannot see anything because they didn't start to build it most times. So by using these glasses, the potential buyer can... get into the apartment and get a quite immersive experience. Because, yeah, like a lot of you have talked about so far, the spatial feeling and so on is quite unique. And again, our focus is the really top level of photorealism. And as we have already done the images in really, really high quality, because that is like our perspective on CGI, absolute photorealism, then it's just actually an extra camera angle that we are exporting to the client. So if you haven't seen it yet, you should try it afterwards. Because I think it's top level quality. And so far, it's been used for one and a half month by ESA on this project. And the feedback so far is extremely positive. I think you talked to them. That's actually how we got in contact. But so far they've said that this is definitely going to be used in other projects as well. It's really a nice element. And this is actually the three images that we have done in 360. So they're in the glasses and you can look all around. And it's the same quality as you see here. Another case is done for one of our Norwegian clients. It's a company called Sigtel Kitchen Manufacture. And we've done the images for them for the last six months. Seven or eight years. And then a couple of months ago we were about to do, I think it was 20 new kitchens for them. For the new brochures, new cut-locks. And then we said, why not put them into the glasses? Because then once your potential clients come into the showroom, normally you don't have any, you don't have all of the kitchen, you don't have the complete product range presented. Because it might be a small showroom or something like that. So if you only have like 50% of the products, why not put all of them into the glasses? And then you can put them on the potential customer and they can see how each of the kitchen feels like. That was all ridiculous. I think it was 23 complete kitchen scenes that we put into glasses. And then it's distributed to each of the kitchen showrooms in Norway. I think it's 20 stores or something like that. And a bit of backstory on this, if you don't know it already, is that pretty much every, all the major kitchen companies, when you open a catalogue, it's not a picture, it's 3D. So it makes really good sense to add some value to it when we've already done the 3D. Exactly the same story with the apartments. Exactly. So a little bit about perspective and possibilities. First of all, as for now, we do it in a very simple way. We do the 360 image and then we just actually put it into the Samsung stand-up menu that comes with the glasses. But, there are frozen counters where it's the cheapest way of doing it, but it's not the best experience. So one of the things that we're looking at now is to somehow build a small menu so that you can stand in front of the building, then you can see some different hotspots, and then when you look at it, you actually activate a hotspot, and then you switch camera position. So it's not like walking around, but it gives more or less some feeling because you can switch between different points of interest. And then, I think I can remember who talked about it, but this is the situation where it's a single user experience because only one people is wearing the glasses. But we're working on a solution where we have a tablet that works as a controller, which means that I can give five people, a whole family, each their glass, and then I'm the one as a real estate agent that is controlling what they're looking at. So I can tell them, okay, now I'll take you into the bedroom, and then everybody's looking. And I can watch on my tablet what they're looking at. So it gives kind of better control. That's a big issue in sales situations, is that you don't know what's going on in the glasses. You can't see what they're seeing. And we can also mirror it on a large screen as well. And then customizing in mirror glasses. Actually, last week we sold the first project for a Norwegian floor manufacturer. They have, like, 70 different floors. So we're doing a lot of different rooms in a nice photo-realistic quality, as we normally do. But then we put them into glasses, and the customer can look at the room and change the floor. And change the floor can be quite a dramatic change from a really light floor to a really dark one and so on. And now they can experience and they can look around to see. And sometimes this will help them in the decision-making process of buying the product. So that is really exciting. And also, of course, putting films into the glass. So far we did our last project in January for Danfoss, as some of you might know. They had a big conference. 600 people were invited to New Orleans, and they wanted to show something special. And the production time was quite short. We only had four weeks, so we couldn't do everything in 3D. So we had a special rig where six cameras were placed. Seven actually. Seven, yeah. That were filming traditional film, but in 360 degree. So we went to four different locations and filmed in 360. And then we put it together, and we actually added some 3D on top of it. So you put on the glasses, and you could be brought to Carlsberg Brewery in Fallachia, or you could go to Marseilles wastewater treatment plant and two other locations. And watching a nice film, but you can actually look wherever you want. So it was really a great experience. And then we put some elements on top of the film in 3D. And we put speak and so on, so it was a total experience. So, yeah, much more fun. We are getting really a lot of exciting requests every time we show these. Of course, we try to stick to, you know, let's just start through films and images and so on, because we know how we can do that now. But people are really interested in taking this to some further steps. So, yeah, our experience so far is nuts. The future is right now, and we are selling it a lot actually. So, great feedback from our customers so far. Yeah. That was actually modest what we planned to... Yeah. Yeah, you spoke a little bit about VR, but what about AR? Some people say that VR is kind of a bad until AR comes in. Because AR kind of brings the whole immersive experience on top of the mixed reality. Yeah, exactly. We see a lot of potential for VR, but we don't really... We don't have the products yet, and we can't really test it yet. I'm sure Jesper will also talk a bit about that. But we have requests for it, and what we do right now is we substitute it for the VR instead, and tell them that the AR is coming later. But it's moving really, really fast, all this technology stuff. So, you just have to keep pace. Yeah. Yeah. What you talked about was the virtual showrooms. When will you be able, as a consumer, to take these 360 images of your living room or kitchen and bring that to the kitchen manufacturer and put in the kitchen that you'd like to buy into your existing account? Well, normally you say like five or ten years, but reality is probably three years or something like that. But with the Microsoft AR stuff already, this, a project like that, for low ease and low cost, So it's not that far away. But it's quite technical with the kitchens, because you think it's simple, but all the options, all the cabinet sizes and all that stuff, it's really a complex solution that you're talking for kitchens. But for furniture and stuff like that, it's really, really easy. In my opinion, it's strange that it isn't out there yet. I mean, we're talking to our clients about it, but if you go back a few years, we've been playing with this for quite some time, and the technology has, I think, matured now to a point where you can actually do this stuff and use it. If you go back three years, it was all buggy, and I know some furniture companies tried it, but it wasn't all that good. Yeah? Any other questions? No? You spoke about how fast the technology is maturing right now, and that might also be a problem. What do you do to kind of get ahead in that kind of way, so that, for example, Samsung VR is going to be ancient in two years, and 3D Max, I can imagine, it's in cloud software and so forth, so kind of follow along. But what about the hardware? I mean, we can't be buying really high-end hardware and replacing it a year later, right? That's a big issue. But if you're a company like ours, you need to invest in it really quickly, or you'll just be passed over by somebody else. Do you do licensing deals with Samsung, for example? No, not directly. Somebody asked me when we were showcasing it before, if we borrow the glasses to people. No, we don't, because Samsung is so cheap that most of our clients just buy them themselves. Of course, we have some good suppliers where we can get some good discounts. Sometimes we get the glasses free, like average consumers as well. But all the products we've done, we've sold the glasses directly to the clients. They take them home because they want to take them home. And in a store situation, the store needs to have something as well. And a smartphone plus one glass is only 4,000 plus VAT, so most companies think that's quite affordable compared to Oculus, Workstation, and so on. I think we talked about the usability as well. The Samsung is really easy to use. If it doesn't work, you take it out and put it in again. Then it works. Thanks a lot.