Next Generation Virtual Tours
What is the matrix? by t-mix
Virtual tours are on the verge of becoming just that; more virtual.
Up until this point, they have been well, frankly, disapointing. Greater adoption of video by real estate marketers could help this situation in the short term (see Inman Connect Highlights Real Estate 2.0), but thankfully there is some cause for optimism in the long term as well.
Google’s Street View (see Google Maps Hits the Streets) is just the tip of the iceberg as more and more technologies are deployed to bring ground-level context to individual locations.
EveryScape is another company that hopes to “bridge the gap between the physical world and the virtual one”. It allow you to navigate a two-dimensional image as if it were real. Essentially, it’s a 360 virtual tour, with depth.
Playing around with their demo and it’s pretty easy to see that someone could build a pretty cool virtual tour product on top of this. The ability to create tours or let users “drive” manually is a pretty slick feature.
But that’s not even half as cool as what’s being cooked up in Redmond.
Context and quality have been the critical factors in undermining most web based virtual tours today. Figuring out where in what relationships exist between photos (which hallways link to which rooms etc.) is very hard to accomplish in the current web environment.
Photosynth is another emerging technology (based out of graduate research done at the University of Washington and now being incubated at Microsoft labs), which first came to light late last year.
Photosynth allows you to “stitch” together photos in 3D space and assign relationships between them. The effect is you can navigate through a series of 2D images and get a sense of how they relate to one another. It’s pretty amazing stuff - you can see a demo on the Microsoft Labs site.
The blog istartedsomething says:
imagine a real-estate house tour with Photosynth. It would be light years ahead of slide-shows or even more complicated Quicktime VR presentations.
Quality is far more difficult problem. The need for fast load times have, to date, necessitated low quality or low resolution images on the Internet - unfortunately, this does no justice to the presentation of real estate properties.
Another Microsoft project called Seadragon aims to make the resolution and corresponding size of image irrelevant, so that images can be browsed smoothly in any environment.
A presentation at the recent TED conference demonstrates these two technologies can work together. Check it out, it isn’t hard to imagine how these could be the next generation of virtual tours.
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18 Comment(s)
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- From Real Estate 2.0 | Dec 31, 1969
- From Real Estate 2.0 | Dec 31, 1969
- From University Update | Jun 14, 2007
- From YouTube - Microsoft Photosynth - Demonstration | Jun 17, 2007
- From Inman Innovator Award Finalists Announced | Future of Real Estate Marketing Blog | Jun 25, 2007
- From Foreclosed Homes Articles » Next Generation Virtual Tours | Jul 8, 2007
Fred Light | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
That’s very cool. Will that help Realtors understand the concept of uploading more than 4 photos per listing? (forget about virtual tours!)
havensofmanhattan | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
There is no doubt that this technology is only going to get better and better. Being on top of these opportunities is going to be more important that it was a few years ago. Great article and thanks for the links.
Word | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
It will be interesting to watch how that can develop with real estate marketing. Obviously, the more pictures to draw from the richer the experience.
Fred, I appreciate the 4 photos reference above…I would also add that just because a Realtor has an email address does not mean they have a presence on the web!!
John Schroeder | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
Always the balancing act…what is the best use of time and resources? Will it be video or some new virtual tour options. It should be fun to find out. Time to me always seems like the harder thing to come by.
Joe from VideoHomes | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
Wow. This was a great video. Allot things at play here. The visual mechanism itself is going to be a hit for sure but the networking aspect behind the scenes may carry the most power. The concept of ‘connectivity of related productions’ will be monster. This will mean “tours” will be alive, growing everyday. The can grow separate branches so as to accommodate each unique viewer. Sort of like saying: hello world here is my initial production, now “you” rather than “me” can customize it to suit your needs.
How are these photo collages formed? Pulled from flickr? Where else would could this app pull image content? Why stop at images? What about copyright? Common license perhaps? What if Joe Realtor pulled images from his competitors site?
Sorry for all the questions I will investigate on my own further. It’s just so darn cool! By far the most useful tool I’ve seen in the virtual tour environment.
What I see being the more powerful angle is not the
Joe from VideoHomes | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
Wow. This was a great video. Allot things at play here. The visual mechanism itself is going to be a hit for sure but the networking aspect behind the scenes may carry the most power. The concept of ‘connectivity of related productions’ will be monster. This will mean “tours” will be alive, growing everyday. The can grow separate branches so as to accommodate each unique viewer. Sort of like saying: hello world here is my initial production, now “you” rather than “me” can customize it to suit your needs.
How are these photo collages formed? Pulled from flickr? Where else would could this app pull image content? Why stop at images? What about copyright? Common license perhaps? What if Joe Realtor pulled images from his competitors site?
Sorry for all the questions I will investigate on my own further. It’s just so darn cool! By far the most useful tool I’ve seen in the virtual tour environment.
Jonathan Washburn | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
I imagine the combination of Microsoft’s Seadragon and Surface will be very compelling for real estate related applications.
Incredible Agent | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
I definitely believe virtual tours will be changing. Adoption of technology like this is critical to whether it will be a part of that change or not. I see video being much easier than taking 100+ photos of a house and then tying them together with this technology. Yes it’s cool, but will it be used in real estate? Only time will tell.
Kyle Else | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
Hope that the technology will be a justifiable ROI.
Kyle Else | Jun 14, 2007 | Reply
Hope that the technology will be a justifiable ROI …. (”for the Sell-Side”) to market property…
Real Estate Blogger | Jun 15, 2007 | Reply
Great concept, but far out for those used to posting a couple of lo res photos and expecting results.
Louisville Real Estate | Jun 15, 2007 | Reply
I remember when virtual tours where just beginning to gain popularity, and I was just blown away by the technology. This new style of virtual tour is even more impressive. I can’t wait for this to hit the mainstream and become affordable and efficient.
JMay | Jun 16, 2007 | Reply
This is definitely an interesting application of Google’s new Street View trial. I continually am reading of great uses for this new technology, which is in contrast to this CBS clip (http://thenewsroom.com/categories/Science%2Band%2BTechnology?c_id=wom-bc-je) about the hazards. Frankly, for real estate, touring, and every other use, I’m still on the side that’s praising Google.
Good thinking on this idea for Street View!
- Jennifer from The Science Desk at TheNewsRoom.com
Martin Yerfino | Jun 18, 2007 | Reply
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shaun mclane | Jun 18, 2007 | Reply
I’m looking forward to photosynth. Saw it last year, and thought it was an interesting concept.
Boston Real Estate | Jun 19, 2007 | Reply
Insane!
Scott Lockhart | Jun 28, 2007 | Reply
This is cool stuff, but it will be for the most part completely unrealistic for most agents to use and the time/investment put into doing these could be used to hire someone to do a pro video ($150ish). Not sure it is worth the effort. Sorry but hi-res video when adoption increases will kill this one in the RE market. Did I mention this was cool?
clydd | Nov 24, 2007 | Reply
Good article. I had written on the subject of virtual tours, actually the angle I am looking at is “immersive” more on this here:
http://realvisionhomes.com/content/view/31/176/
Regards,