The 4D age of property hunting: Chapman Green, Beecroft

Blue Star Group is using a new bespoke augmented reality marketing campaign to market Caxton Property Group’s Chapman Green development in Sydney’s Beecroft.

On 1-5 Chapman Avenue, Beecroft, the new development offers one, two and three bedroom apartments 200 metres from Beecroft train station. Penthouse apartments with views to the city are also available.

However, buyers now have the ability to experience the upcoming apartments in a new way through a Chapman 4D application, which can be downloaded on iTunes and Google Play.

Blue Star Interactive head David Francis said that the communications future is all about 4D and immersive technology. 

“As the only Australian company that offers an end-to-end augmented reality production solution, Blue Star Group is excited to be pioneering this technology in the property space,” he said.

“3D has long been claimed as a cinematic tool where viewing is enhanced through eyewear that slightly offsets your depth perception. 4D is another level, unbounded by screens. Using mobile devices - and wearables in the near future - 4D literally turns the world into a stage.”

Francis said that they see this technology becoming a key component of marketing plans for Australia’s leading developers and property marketers, and is a powerful tool for informing remote or overseas buyers as they can see the full model from their own location.

It also, however, provides insights into how users behave – including which apartments are being looked at, how long they looked at it for and their geolocation, that build records to inform marketing efforts. 

Property Observer downloaded the free app and decided to give it a spin. The premise sees property buyers pointing their tablet at brochures, press advertisements and marketing collateral around the project. This is then supposed to bring you into a virtual world where specific apartments can be viewed interactively with sound effects and views.

The app is a collaboration between Blue Star Group, McGrath Real Estate and Caxton Property Group. It’s 83.1 megabytes and requires IOS 6.0 or later.

From the office, we downloaded the Chapman Green sample brochure, which was very quickly recognized by the application, with the iPad held landscape. You are then asked to be patient as the virtual world loads, and are given a marketing video of the project to watch in the meantime. Unfortunately, the application crashed as the app tried to load the virtual world and continued to do so. Checking for latest software updates, reducing the amount stored on the device and uninstalling the app and re-installing, this yielded no better result.

Property Observer is keen to know if anyone else has had more luck.