Capturing the “Real” In Real Estate and Making It Virtual
VirtuEye – a London-based startup company specializing in virtual reality technology – has launched a modern day solution to the problem of the traditional property viewing. Instead of booking endless appointments and taking the time to view houses with a long list of agents, potential buyers are now able to “visit” each property from the comfort of their own home or agents office through VirtuEye technology.
Engineered for both real estate companies and potential buyers, VirtuEye captures a complete 3D environment and places it into a smartphone application. Slide the smartphone into a specially engineered VR headset and potential buyers are virtually teleported to new properties across the country.
“Taking time out to visit properties, viewing them and choosing the right one is a hard and time-consuming job, but it doesn’t have to be,” explains Tadas Vidmantas, co-founder of VirtuEye. “We believe technology exists to make our lives easier.”
“With VirtuEye, our main goal was to create the most immersive and realistic virtual experience and apply it to the property market,” adds co-founder Ronaldas Buozis. “Today, we’ve managed to launch an accessible viewing experience in three dimensions, something which has never been offered anywhere before.”
Photography is often misleading – the angles are too wide, images are retouched and a true sense of space is hard to obtain. VirtuEye is the first company to offer a 360 degree experience in complete stereoscopic 3D to the entire real estate market. Put simply, each eye sees a slightly different picture, and as the brain translates the virtual experience the viewer will be able to turn their head to get a real-time sense of depth and space.
Of course buyers are still free to visit properties in the real world, but VirtuEye helps to save time and narrow down the choices. Even going from 20 viewings to 5 means big savings for the real estate agent as well as a huge list of benefits for the client and the environment combined (e.g. less time wasted in traffic, less money spent on petrol, reduced carbon footprint). Factor these benefits in with the ability to visit properties overseas or while on holiday, and VirtuEye has everything covered.
VR companies such as Oculus Rift began the renaissance of this fascinating but forgotten technology. Now, as the concept side of VR has caught up with modern expectations and companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Samsung and Apple all producing the hardware, it looks like Virtual Reality is evolving faster than ever.
About VirtuEye
VirtuEye is a London based company accelerating the employment of accessible non-gaming VR applications. The use of VirtuEye technology is not only limited to the real estate industry as the applications cover tourism, film, sightseeing, art exhibitions and education; essentially, anything that can be photographed can be preserved in a 3D 360 degree virtual tour. The founders of VirtuEye come from a film-making background and are photographic innovators at the cutting edge of immersive visual representation.
