Zero Latency uses Oculus Rift to kill zombies and help REA Group sell properties

The setting is post-apocalypse Melbourne. You and five others, each kitted with a VR headset, patrol for the undead.

Melbourne's virtual reality warehouse experience: Zero Latency

It’s called free-roam virtual reality, and it allows you to wander around a 400sq m warehouse in Melbourne, shooting zombies.

The setting is Melbourne after an apocalypse. You and five others, each kitted with an Oculus Rift headset and computer in a lightweigth backpack, patrol an area for undead threats, shooting whatever comes at you.

The game is operated by Mebourne startup Zero Latency, which charges $88 a person per hour. It is heavily booked. It is one of the few places in the world where you can experience a building-wide virtual reality.

But there’s more to Zero Latency than shooting zombies. The warehouse is also a test ground for an ambitious real estate project. For some time, online real estate firm REA Group has had its eye on Zero Latency and the way it implements VR, which conceivably can be adapted to showcasing properties.

“We’ve been their mentors and we’ve invested in their initial Pozible (crowd-funding) campaign,” REA Group chief information officer Nigel Dalton says. “That was their original funding. We jumped on board, they got a number of others on board, they got funded, built the first prototypes, and at the same time we had them working on a project for us.”

Big investors include $1 million from venture investor Carthona Capital. REA Group sees Zero Latency as addressing the same technical issues it faces in a new virtualised real estate experience.

“When they built the zombie game, they used components of walls and floors and rooms and rocks and vehicles and characters. When we build apartments, we use the same components.” In the end, it was “exactly the same software”.

NVirtual reality will help you pick the right home.

REA Group grew from realestate.com.au and these days employs 280 software developers and owns online property portals in Italy, Luxembourg, Asia and the US as well as Australia. It is majority owned by News Corp Australia, publisher of The Australian. The company’s software lets a user don a headset and virtually visit a house or apartment, room by room. Navigation is similar to “street view” in Google Maps, by clicking where to visit next.

REA Group is developing the program further so that buyers physically can walk around a property just as they do in the zombie game.

To bolster this capability, News Corp Australia has taken a majority stake in Diakrit, a Thai software company that also specialises in building 3-D models. REA Group’s dream extends to virtually walking through homes and apartments yet to be built that buyers can buy off the plan. They can try out modifications and move furniture around.

Dalton sees VR as a way for buyers to quickly shortlist properties they want to visit physically, and to eliminate those of less interest.

It’s all part of an enormous year for VR that will include the three most anticipated headsets coming on the market: Oculus VR, made by Facebook-owned Oculus Rift; Sony’s PlayStation VR; and HTC Vive. All can track you walking around at home with your VR headset on. But that could have you tripping over a coffee table, crashing into furniture or hitting a wall in the real world. That’s why a vacant warehouse such as Zero Latency’s may be perfect for an unimpeded VR experience.

As for where this goes, Dalton says drolly that the endpoint comes from science fiction, “which is we all live in a white cube where the environment is entirely painted by a headset”.

Melbourne's virtual reality warehouse experience: Zero Latency