Virtual Reality
My committment to creating beautiful and effective imagery makes my relationship with Digital Frontier a natural partnership that allows me to bring you the capability of producing VR 360, VR Interactive, and AR apps for design, development, and marketing. Digital Frontier has thoughtfully researched and assessed how to produce VR applications that add value for architects and developers throught the design process. With over twenty years experience producing CG renderings and animations, and their large professional staff Digital Frontier is perfectly positioned to create your virtual experience.
Virtual Reality is the most exciting new tool for real estate sales. While panoramic 360° views have long been a favorite for presentation, we now have the ability to experience free movement and interaction within a virtual environment. VR allows people around the world to experience your property.
Forward thinking professionals are using the newest tech to deliver sales sooner, promote projects more effectively, and streamline work flows up and down the chain. The field is exploding with new software and hardware that net differing experiences. So what are the best choices?
VR Interactive
Much more than a visual tour, VR 3D interactive produces an immersive experience that allows the viewer freedom of movement as well as the ability to interact with the created environment. The viewer can affect changes such as moving items, replacing objects, selecting a variety of materials, changing lighting, and calling up information screens.
With this extra interactivity the viewer uses more game appropriate hardware: hand controllers as well as the HMD and a gaming or VR system of choice, e.g. Facebook Oculus, HTC Vive. VR3D Interactive apps also require more coding with the list of interactive elements specific to client needs, creating the unique scope of your VR project. Unbuilt projects come alive for your audience, exciting them with the possibilities of ownership.
VR EXPERIENCE
This is a great tool for selling real estate, existing and unbuilt. The wow factor is through the roof, interest worldwide is huge, and its use only requires a compatible smart phone, a simple headset, and a custom app created for the individual project.
VR Experience is a 360° immersive environment that allows a viewer, wearing a personal HMD (head mounted display), to take a virtual tour through your property. They have the freedom to look around as they move from room to room.
In the case of unfinished buildings the VR 360° space is created using CG modeling programs and the use of ’reality engine’ software. Prospective buyers can tour and experience your unbuilt project even before it exists in the real world.
AR – AUGMENTED REALITY
Your custom AR app accesses the camera of a compatible smart phone (or special glasses) to display virtual information, graphics, and games as if they existed in the real world. There are degrees of interactivity that can be achieved. This example shows a AR app for a winery; when the camera focuses on the wine label, info graphics and a video appear on their phone screen. This deepens the consumer’s knowledge of a brand to encourage sales.
INTERACTIVE APPS
Your custom interactive app allows for rotating and viewing CG rendered buildings, selecting floor plans, and taking animated walkthroughs of units. Users select desired finishes, flooring, furnishings, appliances, and lighting prior to purchase or lease. Your app is viewed on a mobile device. This is an excellent functional tool for finalizing sales.
MR – MIXED REALITY – CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT
Mixed Reality merges the physical world with the virtual world. More complex and more expensive than both VR and AR, the viewer sees the real world and virtual elements created as if they actually exist together. Use of special glasses is required for holographic projections. Microsoft is among the leaders in this field, and its Hololens developer kits are rolling out now.