Gallery

Joey Fonacier
Rico Velasco
Fernando Figueroa

For virtual reality to be most effective in helping our real estate clients showcase their properties it requires more than a beautiful virtual environment. It requires a method of navigation and interaction that allows a first time VR user to explore the virtual property as naturally as possible. We found out very quickly that the current default teleportation solution provided by Unreal Engine VR template was too difficult and that users, especially those new to VR, became too frustrated and disoriented by the teleportation mechanic to actually enjoy the property.

After many versions and hours of user testing, we came up with this navigation system. For local navigation there is a network of navigational hotspots. The user brings up hotspots in the room and can simply point to go there. Pointing at a door, takes the user to the next room. Pointing at the stairs, takes the user to the next floor. This lets the user to move around and see the space as if they were naturally walking around in real life. The limitation is that it's difficult to travel large distances on a large property.

To solve this we created a minimap. The user can open up a scale model of the of the house and simply touch the room they wish to navigate to, allowing them to quickly move to anywhere on the property. The minimap can be scaled to the user’s preference and rotated to help the user understand the entire context of the building and the property. A GUI also allows the user to toggle floors in the minimap on and off and lets the user know which geographical direction the model is facing as well as the scale of the model. Functionality is also added to change the time of day so the user can experience the property under different lighting conditions.

The potential of virtual reality in architectural visualization is obvious. But in order to fully tap into that potential, the entire experience needs to feel seamless and intuitive so that all users can be quickly and fully immersed in the virtual worlds that we create.