Virtual reality tours lure investors

Virtual reality tours lure investors
By Zoe Samios


Virtual reality is a thing they use in video games…right?

It may come as a surprise, but virtual reality has made the leap from video games to a business tool.

In fact, technology company Georama is offering virtual tours of South Australia to help lure investors and potential trading partners Down Under.

Georama provides tours of South Australia using 3D virtual reality headsets to help market the state overseas and lure investors to the state.

Operations manager Chas Adlard said the company began creating full screen, 360-degree high-resolution displays of South Australia to help market the state as a tourist destination and highlight some of its key industries.

“As we move to an increasingly digital environment, the ability to adequately provide contextual data becomes more important,” he said.

“Virtual Reality is a completely immersive media, which is as close to reality as possible without actually being there.”

So how did they do it? 

Well, Georama’s project began in 2006 when they created virtual street walkthroughs of South Australia’s capital Adelaide.

Georama then travelled around the state and used gigapixel photography to capture panoramic images of bushland and wine regions.

All of the captured images are available by using virtual reality glasses like the Oculus Rift to view them.

This allows the user to walk through South Australia without having to physically fly there.

And who uses it?

Georama’s South Australian virtual tours are regularly viewed by potential tourists and school students in the United States, China and Hong Kong.

In 2015, the South Australian virtual tours had almost three million views world wide.

Adlard said the company had been focused on attracting more tourists to South Australia from its Chinese sister-state Shandong but was now expanding its reach to also target businesses and potential investors.

“People in Shandong can now take virtual tours through South Australia. Having seen it through virtual reality, we hope that many people will decide to come here in person and buy more of our products,” he said.

“Presentation of the environment via virtual reality media will have a direct impact on exports and also promote tourism.

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