Bahrain Investment Wharf launches AR mobile app
Bahrain Investment Wharf (BIW) has launched an innovative smartphone application that allows real-estate clients to view three-dimensional images of land plots, factory sites and warehouses, among other properties.
Launched in collaboration with NGN International, the application uses augmented reality (AR) and provides customers with meticulous details on properties, said a statement from the company.
Abdulla Alabbasi, director of technical affairs at BIW, said: “We are now equipped to deliver seamless and immersive presentations to its clients, allowing them to explore and navigate BIW via augmented reality.”
Alabbasi said: “This is an opportunity to take a tour of a vast location within minutes, and a far more compelling way to navigate and understand the BIW spectrum of properties. With due regard to user engagement, we ensured that the application was highly user friendly, with features that allowed for property viewing from all angles, as well as simple navigation between the residential, commercial, and industrial zones of BIW,” he added.
BIW was established as a comprehensively managed and serviced model industrial destination, dedicated to creating a favourable business environment that houses a diverse group of local, regional and international businesses.
The 170ha industrial city is located in the heart of the Salman Industrial Area and provides a range of pre-serviced plots for industrial, logistical, commercial and residential use.
Alabbasi further noted: “We have been working to enhance the level of operational performance within BIW, and to that end, we extend our sincere appreciation to the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism (MOICT) whose consistent support has been key to BIW’s ability to work towards the development of Bahrain’s industrial sector.
“The beauty of this AR application, is that its benefits are extended to each and every tenant of BIW, and for that matter the greater public. By simply downloading the application from iTunes or the Play Store, the BIW masterplan is at your fingertips in all its 3D glory. Each of our classification zones are clearly labelled, navigation routes within BIW are illustrated, and businesses are highlighted.”
NGN International’s chief executive Yaqoob Al Awadhi said: “We are delighted to be working with clients like BIW that represent projects of significant magnitude at a national level. The AR application we have developed allows BIW to improve its engagement with both current and prospective tenants of BIW. Furthermore, it reduces the requirements and cost associated to traditional media, such as transportation of physical models.”
Al Awadhi further noted that NGN International is keen on facilitating the use of this application along with enhancing the advantages it offers to companies that utilise it. He pointed out that the application comes within the framework of the company’s innovation and design team to integrate virtual and augmented reality technologies reality into the real-estate sector.
Al Awadhi said: “We are proud to be the first in Bahrain to present this technology to the real-estate field. Apart from AR applications, NGN Intl has extensive experience in recreating real estate and various environments and objects in VR to be observed as three-dimensional holograms. Using our technology, a person can view complex real estate locations from the comfort of their desk.”
Technologies such as these offer developers and real estate marketers the opportunity to make more interactive and interesting presentations, as well as compiling digital data for the purpose of simplification. It is expected that both virtual reality and augmented reality will play a key role in supporting the real estate sector in Bahrain, it stated.
