3D Design Bureau

The Growth of ‘Hybrid Reality’ Viewings in the Property Market

Physical viewings of a property will always be the most effective way for potential buyers to explore a property. However with current restrictions in place, the real estate industry has been required to innovate and has embraced tech-driven solutions to bring spaces direct to the viewer.

3D solutions such as Matterport 3D virtual tours, off-plans 360 virtual tours of ‘yet to be built’ spaces and a combination of both, hybrid reality tours, are allowing property professionals to showcase their portfolios 24/7 to clients.

Our hybrid reality tours have become increasingly popular among developers and real estate agents due to current delays to construction. This 3D solution allows real estate agents to secure pre-sales and pre-lettings of properties that are still under construction or partially completed.

Hybrid Virtual Tours in Real Estate

Hybrid reality tours are a combination or merging of real spaces and renders, where both can co-exist and interact within a virtual tour. Users have the ability to navigate through the real (360 photos) and virtual world (OP360VT) at the same time.

In the above hybrid reality tour, our client wanted to bring their show units to the market while it was still under construction. The client had completed a number of similar show houses within a different scheme and therefore did not want to build the entire tour for this show house in full CGI.

What we proposed was to combine the 360 photography from the similar showhouse (using Matterport technology) and combine them with the CGI elements of this scheme that differed from that of the similar showhouse. The kitchen, dining and outdoor courtyard and garden are full CGI while the rest of the house is from the previous scheme but similar house type.

To showcase the exteriors of the proposed development we rendered a 360-degree CGI from the open space to the front of the ‘yet to be built’ show unit. This was achieved using 3D modelling in Autodesk Revit, 3D visualisation in 3ds Max & vRay and post-production using Adobe Photoshop.

Whilst Matterport technology is automated in the cloud, this hybrid tour was produced using our off plans 360 virtual tour app. This viewing app is compatible on desktop, mobile, tablet and in VR.

The CGI element of the hybrid reality tour is designed and produced to a photo-realistic standard and allows users to move through both the future planned space and built environment from point to point of external and internal areas.

The UX of the mixed-reality tour include:

  • Information hotspots
  • Integrated in-tour sharing on social media platforms and email
  • VR capability
  • Thumbnail gallery
  • Auto rotation of each location

Our client was able to bring the entire development to the market well-ahead of completion of the different phases of construction and present their project to potential tenants and buyers.

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