Seminole Hard Rock
Construction Visualization
Suffolk-Yates was awarded the contract to build the $1.5 billion expansion of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. The new tower, a 450-foot guitar-shaped structure housing 638 luxury rooms, had more than 60 different room configurations, with no two floors identical. The project was on a tight timeline, slated to complete before Super Bowl LIV. Suffolk-Yates called on Theia to bring the entire property into VR.
Solution
Theia converted Suffolk-Yates' baseline Revit models, CAD files, and contract documents into a fully immersive VR environment, running on Silverdraft Demon VR Workstations powered by NVIDIA Quadro GV100 GPUs. Biweekly review meetings ran in the construction trailer city at the job site, with up to 20 people in the room. One person wore the headset while everyone else watched a live video feed. Design decisions that would previously have required physical mockups got resolved inside VR instead.
"We started using VR at a very high level. But it soon took on a life of its own as we opened up the virtual walkthroughs to input from key tradespeople and maintenance staff."
Kyle Goebel, Senior VDC Manager, Suffolk-Yates
The guitar tower alone presented a coordination challenge unlike most projects. With 60+ room configurations and no two floors the same, the traditional approach of building physical mockups for every variation wasn't realistic. VR made it possible to walk through every configuration before a single room was built.
The review process extended well beyond room layouts. Sightlines across the 13.5-acre pool complex were evaluated. Backlit hallway panels were revised after being seen in context. Hoist sizing for bathtub installation was confirmed in VR before delivery.
"High visual fidelity VR reveals true scale and better actual sense of what the entire team is trying to accomplish."
Bill Fishkin, President, Theia Interactive
Outcome
Physical mockups were still built for some configurations, but far fewer than would otherwise have been required. "We had nowhere near the number of iterations we would have had without VR. Each iteration we didn't do saved the client hundreds of thousands of dollars." — Kyle Goebel
The Seminole Hard Rock expansion opened on time. It remains one of the largest and most complex AEC projects Theia has supported.
Details
Tags
Related Work
Lenovo
Product Visualization
Lenovo partnered with Theia to create a 1:1 scale digital twin of the ThinkStation PX, co-designed with Aston Martin. Delivered via desktop application, pixel streaming, and VR.
Lucid Motors
Virtual Showroom
Theia built a virtual showroom and digital twins for the Lucid Air luxury electric vehicle, enabling global buyers to explore, configure, and interact with the vehicle in a photorealistic environment.
Festo
Training and Education
Festo, a global leader in industrial automation, partnered with Theia to build the Festoverse digital showroom, replacing trade show demos with an always-on virtual experience.