Zillow uses VR to try to make online real estate more authentic
Real estate is getting a bit more virtual with 3D immersive tours at Zillow, a major player in online home sales.
The company added a feature called 3D Home to its site and app Monday that lets you step from virtual room to virtual room as you're shopping online. Real estate agents can capture the imagery using an iPhone or Ricoh's 360-degree cameras like the Theta V and Theta Z1.
The result, Zillow hopes, is you should get a better feel for what might well be one of the most expensive purchases in your life. Virtual reality has limited mainstream appeal, even among gamers, but it still holds potential for when you want to be transported to a different realm.
For now, stepping through the 3D home is like using Google Maps' Street View: you see arrows that let you click or tap around to different rooms. You won't be swooping through a 3D zone like you might in a VR video game.
Zillow's 3D Home tool is designed to be easy for photographers to use so home sellers and their agents can add the 3D views affordably to ordinary homes for sale, not just luxury mansions, Weisberg said. Photographing a 3,000-square-foot home takes about 10 or 15 minutes, with shots taken for each room.
See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/news/zillow-3d-home-uses-vr-make-online-real-estate-more-authentic/