A 3D Interactive Virtual Tour is a digital representation of a real-world environment, frequently used in real estate marketing. It enables users to virtually experience their dream home through an immersive and interactive journey, reminiscent of physically being at the site. This tool shares similarities with video games, granting users the freedom to explore a real estate property.
At Sens Visuals, while we focus on delivering a premium audio-visual interactive experience and seamlessness in our works, we also understand the importance of keeping in mind the buyer persona, with a focus on the local culture.
Let's look at the key features that make our 3D Interactive Virtual Tours so effective:
1. Guided Exploration
While it seems like a good idea to grant the audience absolute freedom to explore the property in the virtual space, it can often lead to technical issues that might break the immersion. Even video games do not provide absolute freedom, rather, they take the user through a guided journey first, so that they can familiarize themselves with the settings and the gameplay.
In the case of a real estate experience centre, we cannot expect visitors to have that much time to go through a steep learning curve. Thus, we need to create a perfect balance between freedom to explore and providing restricted, guided tours. Customers may not be familiar with video games, so providing a certain level of guidance and keeping certain restrictions are essential for a smooth experience. It also helps to highlight the key amenities of the property in the best way.
2. Robust User Experience
A key aspect of engaging the audience in a virtual tour is user experience (UX). We focus on creating a user experience that guides the audience like going through a story. Designing an effective user interface (UI) is crucial for that. Each button, menu, icon, and guide on the screen should help the audience to navigate this virtual world, and provide the necessary information and guidance.
a. Smartphone-inspired UI Design: Not everyone has experience playing video games, but most of us use smartphones in our daily lives and are familiar with their usage. We take inspiration from the UI design of smartphones and commonly-used apps like camera and internet browsers to create icons, buttons, and menu options that would look familiar to most users.
b. The Illusion of Control: Giving absolute control to the audience is not always beneficial. It is necessary to have a linear flow when it comes to exploring each area of the property (like banquet hall, pool area, gym, park, lobby, etc.) which will provide limited mobility to users in a certain closed area. It is also important that the user can interact with the world (like changing from daytime to nighttime, opening windows, etc.) so that they can feel like actually living that lifestyle.
3. Enhanced Sound Design
The most overlooked aspect while designing any AV media or especially, interactive media, is the sound. Sound can contribute 50% or more to the immersive experience, without the user directly realizing it.
Proper sound design can go a long way in giving the actual feel of a place. Not only does the soundtrack need to be good, but even effects like leaves rustling, birds chirping, crickets' sound at night, and other ambient sounds placed correctly according to the source are major requirements to create immersion.
4. Level Design
In video game development, one of the key aspects to create immersion and keep the user engaged is effective level design. This means designing the environment where the player/user roams around.
Often, most of the design part is done by architects and landscaping experts, but translating that vision and experience to a virtual platform, and ensuring that it feels as it should, is a difficult but important step. We collaborate with our client to ensure that this step happens as expected.
5. Media Integrations
To create a seamless and hassle-free experience, it is necessary to integrate still renders, videos, and other media wherever necessary.
The core experience can be real-time, but nothing (yet) beats the visual quality of pre-rendered videos and real images. We combine these media and seamlessly integrate them with the virtual tour to show the user the best sides of the project.
6. Optimizations
Video game developers, especially the most renowned ones, are at the forefront of interactive technology. The most celebrated games by the audience are usually the most optimized ones.
It might sound straightforward, but getting every aspect of the tour to work as intended, while using the least amount of system resources is a difficult task that requires expert game developers. Thankfully, we understand this, and we use cutting-edge tools and expert-made working blueprints to reduce any unwanted glitches or issues that may hamper immersion.
Watch our 3D Interactive Virtual Tour Demo below:
Best of Tech, Best of Art
To create a futuristic and new-age immersive experience, we need the right tools for it. Our virtual tours are powered by the cutting-edge Unreal Engine 5.
UE5 is used by a huge spectrum of industries: from game developers, designers, and architectural firms to automotive designers, and even the military. It features revolutionary technologies like Lumen, Nanite, path-tracing, and immersive materials, which enable us to create complex and realistic worlds. It leverages the latest technologies like AI-enabled DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology and TAA technology by Nvidia.
These tools and technologies allow us to create a complex, living breathing world, that immerses users like never before. To learn more, check out our blog on the 12 Benefits of Using 3D Interactive Virtual Tours for Real Estate Marketing
Conclusion
Through the power of Unreal Engine 5 and our customer-centric approach, we are ready to create a 3D Interactive Virtual Tour for your project that transcends boundaries, engages buyers, and fosters genuine connections.
Get in touch with us to get detailed pricing for a customized virtual tour of your project.