Gather vs Enscape: Which is a better fit?

Richard H.: My name is Rick. I'm president of the Rick Harrison Site Design Studio. We're a land planning firm that invented new ways to develop land and we work all over the world and I'm also president of Neighborhood Innovations. We develop Land Mentor software, which is a virtual reality civil engineering land surveying planning tool and I would rate Enscape five out of five. About 20 years ago when we started developing our own software Land Mentor, we wanted to use video gaming as the basis for our 3D. So we developed that and then we went on to discover VR in 2015 and started working with the Microsoft Mixed Reality team to develop our own VR system. When we discovered Enscape, we discovered it actually kind of blew away the performance of our own software and a higher quality. So now what we do is we're using our own software and we export our 3D into SketchUp with Enscape to get a higher quality and a higher performance 3D and VR and then we also ship the final VR executable to our clients that they could click on the site and within minutes, be their own 3D presenter and it really changes the whole scope of the land development business. When we discovered Enscape, it was kind of ironic because we were on a parallel track with our own Land Mentor software that the user interface and the virtual reality, the use of the Xbox 360 was so close to what we already developed, we actually changed our controls to match Enscape. But what really blew me away was the models that are included, the trees that go into the wind,, that mirrors have reflections, just the sheer quality and the speed. We were never able to replicate even close to the speed to use VR on the Enscape. I mean, I've got files that are almost two gigabytes in size that are in SketchUp that we could go into VR in real time and look around and be within the site projecting ourself and so we couldn't figure out how Enscape was able to get that kind of performance and we've been working on it for about seven years. So we just tell people, "Hey, just get Enscape and then you're going to have a much higher performance system." So Enscape is the only third party software that we use in our business and we discovered it. Just the ease of use and the speed is quite impressive and we really didn't look at anything else. Why look if the system was so good? As far as the ease of use and learning it and getting into it, it was very intuitive. The material editing just really changes, going from a SketchUp where it's very cartoonish and you go into Enscape and then it just comes to life without having to have the expense or the complexity or the huge hardware requirements of a higher level 3D package. As far as the learning curve there, I mean, to us it was basic, minutes. It was very, very intuitive, a very nice package and as a software developer ourselves, we've been in the business for almost five decades, I don't compliment very many other software packages and I really have nothing bad to say about Enscape. I wish the support of the new Meta Quest headsets were a little bit better and I'm just picking up a Meta Quest 3 next week. So hopefully that works pretty good. But other than that one headset VR and I have plenty of other headsets, so it's not a huge deal, I really have absolutely nothing negative to say about the software and that's highly unusual for us, again, as a software developer. We're pretty critical of other software packages. I would recommend that if you're using SketchUp in your business, whether it be architecture or planning, that it's just not a usable system to go to clients. It's not a very professional output and the big thing is and like I said, we worked on it for seven years ourself, is to try and get the VR performance because once you put on the VR headsets and wear them, you are no longer looking at a 3D. You're really transported into this new world and it really changes everything and we spent tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on outside consultants trying to figure out how to get VR performance when you're dealing with an entire land development, not just one building to be in real time without any hesitation and honestly, we have thrown tremendously huge data into Enscape and have never seen a performance degradation, even with the trees flowing in the wind and shadows in real time and things like that and it really is a magnificent piece of software that's really changed the way our planning businesses operated and even our software business. When we sell a Land Mentor, we just tell people, "Hey, just get Enscape and use that instead of our own software," which is something I thought I'd never say. So we wanted to not anybody have to add a different software package. But Enscape just kind of blows away everything we've seen as far as easy use. The software package isn't worth anything if nobody uses it and I can tell you we work for land developers and builders and a lot of them are not only not computer savvy, they're afraid of the computer and within five minutes we could get them up and running on the phone with Enscape and then they become this master presenter in 3D and some of them have VR headsets and then they could just blow away anybody when they're looking for investors or selling homes or even, say, plan approval. It really is a magnificent tool.