DiscoVR - GovHack 2018 People’s Choice Award

DiscoVR gives users a preview of new adventure locations around Australia before living the experience in the real world. Winning the 2018 GovHack People’s Choice award, the app immerses the user in a virtual reality environment, bringing the location and the surrounding conditions to life through a visual and aural experience, not with numbers and graphs, but with clouds, wind, rain and sunshine.

Imagine a surfer using DiscoVR to find the best nearby waves or an event manager scoping suitable outdoor locations. DiscoVR pinpoints a user’s location, presents a range of possible activities based on their interests and uses open data to locate the optimum site for a chosen activity. It also gathers and presents contextual destination information like the availability of amenities.

The Data

The application used the following data:

• Latest Coastal Weather Observations for Queensland
• Google maps
• Google Street View
• Bureau of Meteorology
• Willy Weather
• Gold Coast Car Parks
• Gold Coast Showers
• Australian public toilets

The Benefits

DiscoVR empowers Australians to make informed decisions, maximise their leisure time and encourages physical outdoor activity. It effectively applies open data to the task of reducing time and energy investments through immersive remote previewing and as a contextually aware virtual reality platform, provides such benefits across a number of industries including tourism, event management, and conservation.