In 2012, Jonathan Coon became a supporter of the initial Oculus Kickstarter campaign, proudly owning a signed Rift DK1 as a testament to his early involvement in VR.
Fast forward to 2025, when Coon, alongside a team of tech developers, brought to life an impressive 5,000-square-foot holodeck, perched on a hilltop with views of Austin. This endeavor was born out of collaboration with Pureblink, Agile Lens, and DBOX.
This groundbreaking facility represents a vision for future living, promoting the concept of a “frictionless lifestyle” in a forthcoming residential community. According to Coon, every visitor, including a 92-year-old guest, has taken part in a VR tour that lasts half an hour.
“We’ve achieved $427 million in sales and signed 52 contracts, and I believe most of those deals stemmed from individuals being able to explore this holodeck,” Coon states.
The team conducted 622 tours within this virtual space, engaging a total of 1,529 guests in a walkthrough of the community, showcasing its homes and exceptional amenities. The ambitions represented in this hillside structure are so vast that no single hardware provider has yet been able to fully meet its operational needs.
Nevertheless, it operates seamlessly.
With decreasing costs for holodecks and the sales teams recognizing their potential, could new homeowners soon have the chance to personalize their purchases and communities in ways unimagined in the 20th century?
“You can’t gauge whether a good version of something will work by testing a poor version,” Coon remarks.
Selling a Home with a Holodeck
Transitioning from Walking to Living in Three Acts
Act 1: Establishing the Environment
Back in 1939, the Colorado River was dammed near Austin, generating flood control, hydroelectric power, and creating Lake Austin for local enjoyment.
By 2025, Waymo vehicles are navigating Austin streets autonomously. It’s easy to envision a future where travelers journey from the airport straight to a gated community via autonomous vehicles.
As we look ahead to 2039, how will the American Dream evolve in the U.S.? What insights can we gather about future land acquisition and utilization from experiences in this unique holodeck?
On a recent weekday, I took a human-driven Uber to the Four Seasons Private Residences on Lake Austin. Upon entering the sales center, a striking 12-foot wide display greeted me, showcasing images of the hillside.
The display showcased a hillside adorned with homes that are yet to be constructed, but the imagery presented looked incredibly realistic. A solid walnut 3D model on display provided a detailed overview of the area to scale.
I watched a well-produced video detailing the amenities expected for the community, concluding with an impactful remark about a frictionless experience.
Act 2: Presenting the Current View
I rode in the back of an Escalade, ascending to a vantage point overlooking the waterway. When we reached the summit, I disembarked and climbed gradually up an observation tower.
This location is envisioned as the site of a restaurant helmed by a world-class chef. I took in the expansive view of Lake Austin and beyond.
“Wow.”
The “wow” moment was meticulously orchestrated by Coon and the developers of the Four Seasons Private Residences. The view encapsulates the essence of what living here could signify.
In the foreground, future homes will reside; in the middle lies the local community and waterway; and in the distance, the vibrant city of Austin is visible.
Descending from the observation tower, I found myself in a temporary structure at the heart of the planned community like none other.
Act 3: Exploring the Future View
The expansive 5,000 square foot holodeck resides within a tent, framed by a metal rail along its interior, outfitted with a series of cameras from OptiTrack.
Near the entrance, a compact control room contains a collection of high-end PCs equipped with cutting-edge NVIDIA graphics cards. Across from these powerful rendering setups, a series of humidifiers work to maintain moisture in the air, preventing static electricity buildup.
During a tour for four individuals, plus a fifth acting as the tour guide, the holodeck consumes approximately 3,200 watts of power.
Eleven monitors in the control room track eight client slots, the host, and the motion capture system, with a central 60-inch screen displaying real-time performance data of Meta’s AirLink Wi-Fi streaming technology as it sends the rendered world from those PCs to Quest Pro headsets in the adjacent space.
Track. Render. Display. This essential cycle makes VR functional across diverse settings. Devices like Bigscreen Beyond 2 still rely on wired connections, while numerous location-based VR setups from the past decade utilized backpacks. The Austin holodeck employs Wi-Fi, a system initially not designed for continuous low latency, high throughput data transmission.
With no prominent visitors on that day, Amanda Watson, the innovator of the AirLink streaming technology, who has since moved on from Meta, sat on the floor beside a Wi-Fi router, diligently attempting to maximize system performance ahead of the next group of prospective buyers.
They utilize Wi-Fi 6E configured uniquely to facilitate connectivity among clients during active multiplayer sessions with the tour guide. The routers transmit to headsets modified with antennas that help overhead cameras recognize and relay back data to the rendering PCs, eventually broadcasting it over Wi-Fi to the head-mounted displays.
I asked Watson to give an estimate of the data throughput for a typical five-person tour. She surmised that, over the course of a 30-minute session, the five participants might collectively use over 200 gigabytes of data across the wireless network. The challenge lies not in data volume but in the reliable delivery of each frame produced by the track, render, display cycle.
“Creating an experience in which guests feel comfortable at every moment is challenging,” Watson explains. “In the Holodeck, guests should not experience a lapse in immersion or feel compelled to remove the headset. Achieving this is difficult in VR, especially with wireless streamed VR. Placement of the router, ensuring a clear line of sight between router and headset, and minimizing environmental disruptions are all crucial for optimizing the streamed experience’s quality.”
OptiTrack represents the latest effort to refine tracking for tours accommodating four guests at once, following Meta’s Shared Spatial Anchors and Antilatency’s ceiling-mounted lighting systems. They continue to experiment with Meta’s Shared Spatial Anchors for their requirements; during my visit, I experienced this on Quest 3, finding it smoother and conducive to movement. Their latest tests also incorporate passthrough camera functionality on Horizon OS-based headsets.
For the tours, the Quest Pro headsets have been customized with special forehead cushions crafted from bicycle helmet foam, top straps featuring memory foam, additional weight in the back, and extra battery power—all aimed at enhancing comfort. As a result, participants can comfortably navigate without wires tangling them, and they can see their feet below to maintain spatial grounding while moving around.
The wooden planks beneath guests’ feet in the physical holodeck perfectly correspond with the virtual wooden surfaces depicted in most scenes.
With participants having immersive memories from five unique locations, the next step is selling a home.
Transitioning from Guided Walking to Enjoyable Paths
To ensure safety during tours, a holodeck staff member may direct the movements of participants within the VR space, potentially heralding one of the first emerging job roles in this realm.
The concept of the “holodeck” originates from Star Trek, envisioning a perfected version of what is being implemented today in Austin. Within this fictional universe, the holodeck serves as a refuge, offering adventures generated by interacting with desired characters and settings, effectively using suspension of disbelief to navigate space.
Within the Austin holodeck of 2025, navigation is directed by a human guide presenting a sales pitch. The guide also wears a headset, which displays the names of fellow participants in VR. The loading screens, reminiscent of SteamVR’s barren home grid, feature a large screen nearby projecting the same photorealistic visuals found on the lobby display.
Once the scenes are rendered on the powerful computers in the other room, the sales presentation begins in earnest.
The guide highlights key features along a carefully mapped route, occasionally inquiring about preferred beverage options at the bar they are currently near. Inside the private restaurant, I was told I could peruse the menu as I noticed a piece of paper on a table with napkins and utensils, positioned perfectly in front of the scenic view of Austin and the waterway.
If the directed attention isn’t sufficient, additional safety personnel dressed in black outfits are stationed strategically to prevent guests from colliding with real-world obstacles.
Private & Public Facilities from the 1900s to 2000s
As we advance into the 21st century, how might the lifestyle of the average person differ at various intervals—25%, 50%, 75%, or even 100%—of this era?
The investment made to create this holodeck, approximately $3 million, combined with extensive experimentation, parallels the journey of Thomas Edison’s pursuit of the light bulb. Imagine if, like the light bulb, a holodeck were capable of illuminating invisible spaces efficiently and effectively.
What transformations could communities undergo if members of the public could visualize new constructions by virtually exploring a model? What if community members had the opportunity to vote on revisions to the virtual simulation years before physical construction begins?
In the 2003 film A Mighty Wind, actor Bob Balaban learns about stagecraft: “Can you have an actual three-dimensional object that represents the thing that it actually is, can that be next to something that it pretends to be?”
While humorous, Alex Coulombe resonates with the essence of discussions like that one. As a leading tech integrator for the holodeck in Austin through Agile Lens, he has spent over two years working alongside Coon and his team at Impossible Ventures, in tandem with Pureblink and DBOX.
For Coulombe, this endeavor symbolizes a significant milestone in a mission that has spanned more than a decade, exploring the boundaries of architectural and theatrical VR projects on current hardware.
“As an architect, I faced frustration when working with individuals who struggled to grasp spatial concepts we were attempting to convey,” Coulombe recounted regarding the challenges faced around 2013. “They would nod along, claiming they understood, but would then pose questions indicating a lack of comprehension. Questions like, ‘I’m really far from the stage, right?’ or ‘The person in front of me is going to be way too close,’ often highlighted this gap in understanding.”
In the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite, Uncle Rico optimistically asks his nephew Kip about his discoveries on the Internet, to which Kip disappointingly retorts that the digital realm of that era couldn’t provide such wonders.
In 2025, typing the URL for Impossible Ventures into a browser redirects you to Jonathan Coon’s personal LinkedIn page, detailing his role in producing that film, alongside insights into his early beginnings with 1800contacts during the same decade.
In the Austin holodeck, one might argue that Coon has indeed created Uncle Rico’s time machine. His belief in VR, kindled when he supported that Kickstarter initiative in 2012, remains steadfast.
“Just help me feel as if I’m somewhere else, with someone who isn’t with me, doing something we can’t do together, and everyone will have a VR headset,” he conveys.
That evokes the sensation of time travel.
Floor Plan on the Ground at 1:1 Scale
As the tour continued, I explored the homes and facilities that residents of the Four Seasons Private Residences will enjoy in the near future, culminating in a seat within a virtual cinema boasting impressive 5.1 surround sound.
Coulombe introduced me to some of their recent experimental developments within the holodeck.
He transformed that grid-lined virtual space, resembling the Star Trek holodeck, with a floor plan of a home scaled at 1:1. He repositioned the layout so that the front door was right before me. I stepped forward into the virtual abode, examining the floor and deciphering labels for each room without walls or furnishings to distract me. I followed lines on the ground, much like tracing over a drawing, with each step grounding me in the distance of the space.
This exemplifies VR at a walkable scale.
The open space above the floor allowed for an imaginative fusion with spatial awareness. I navigated confidently through rooms as my mind filled in potential activities within those spaces.
Picture a new construction project in a typical American town, where the primary structure isn’t a model home, but instead, a multifunctional recreation center designed as a holodeck. Visitors could schedule tours of the land and visualize plans in VR, leaving public input or voting along their journey.
After a lunch meeting with the engineers behind the Austin holodeck, I was escorted back down the hill. As I departed, they presented me with a box and a coffee table-sized book.
The box contained a replica of the menu I had viewed in VR and a 3D image viewer similar to a View-Master. Both items featured photorealistic computer-generated visuals of the property and its upcoming amenities.
A potential buyer could display that book on their coffee table or bookshelf while awaiting construction, serving as a conversation starter for friends and family interested in their future home.
After all, these buyers already possess cherished memories from their time there.
