Animation in VR for the real estate market.

Saldations to all!
I have observed the tour 360 VR being used in large scale in the real estate market, both photographic and 3D (electronic model).
I would be grateful if the forum friends would inform me about virtual tour using animated camera on matinne UE4 with oculus rift.
Have you seen this product being used in the real estate market?
I ask why I am developing this technique here in Brazil and I worry about not seeing the product being offered by the specialized companies. I am very much in doubt as to whether the market will fill this kind of presentation with caution due to reports of the discomfort caused by the movement in the virtual environment.
Grateful

In the company I worked we tried to use it as some clients requested it. But there are some problems that occurred. I am talking about real time VR. I’m not sure if you are asking about this or if you are asking about a VR movie that is pre-rendered and watched on the web with an oculus or another headset.

First as you said discomfort is quite common and it increases with lower frame rates. So to get a larger project run with the minimum required frame-rate of 90fps your scene needs to be optimized and run at least at 90fps. Frame-rate seems to get worse while turning the head and that is exactly when people feel discomfort. I’m speaking about the Oculus Rift. The HTC Vibe might be a bit different.

Some people are more receptive to this kind of motion sickness than others. Some people are getting sick immediately and others are not getting sick even with low frame-rate.

Optimizing your scene may require advanced knowledge with unreal and also requires knowledge in high poly to low poly modeling that isn’t widely common in the Arch Viz community. To get or buy optimized assets for Arch Viz can be a challenge.

Then there is the challenge of hardware. Clients don’t usually have an Oculus Rift. And they not always have a high end computer that can run your scene in 90fps. So they need to invest into expensive hardware. And you cannot carry this kind of hardware around easily so clients probably need to come to wherever the high end PC stands.

But if you master these hurdles the client response is usually very positive.

It’s good that we’re exchanging this information, your experience is very valuable to me. I have an electronic modeling company for 20 years here in Brazil. we worked with 3ds MAx and vray for the real estate market and I am with my first VR project practically ready, in phase of adjustments for the demonstration to the clients. As I said very well, we have to overcome these obstacles to avoid harming the product and overcome these optimization challenges that are fundamental to make the product viable.
My architectural potion for presentation, consists of a simple walk through the project with animated camera in the matinne properly processed, packaged and presented in PC, hadware robust (oculus rift CV1, GTX 1080 up). I do not intend to present in real time predicting the difficulty of several users who do not have affinity with game controls, this could compromise the performance in the sale of real estate, I would like to know what you think about it.
I look at my project: When the camera moves evenly, slowly and in a straight line, there is no discomfort, even at lower FPS rates. In this way, the head movement in the hatset also does not cause discomfort. The problem exists when the camera makes any curve move, I’m solving this with the teleport technique, getting dark and appearing at the other point, it’s definitely not wise to make curves. Do you confirm that?
When you talk about the known VR disease that includes nausea and dizziness, I have a curiosity, is it a disease that can be chronic, or is it only transient, affecting only the moment of use?
As for the hardware challenge that has reported on the customer having to move to our office to get the correct experience with a robust PC, I’d like to hear your opinion on my solution to this.
I think of making an adaptation of a notebook (I7 16 GB ram), with an external module with GTX 1080 card and source. In this way, I think of solving the question of how to take the equipment to the customer. I think with one bag would take the oculus rift and the VGA module and another, the notebook, what do you think of this strategy?
Has your company managed to get around the problems you presented to me? Have you been successful in selling this product?
Outside of your company, have you seen anything like what I intend to present in the real estate market?

Hi again,

I personally think that at the moment headset VR is just a gimmick comparable to what 4 channel audio was before Dolby surround came out. Or what stereo TV was for a while. It just doesn’t really work on a practical level. It will eventually be replaced with something that does work better. I don’t know what that will be.

It feels like the Arch Viz industry wants to skip one step. Until recently there was mostly still images and rendered movie paths and now people want to go to full VR. Why don’t we enjoy a game style experience without the headset? It is a lot better than just looking at an image or watching a rendered movie. And it has better visuals than any headset is able to display at the moment and possibly in the near future. And you don’t you want to wear it for a long time. It also completely detaches you from the environment you are currently in. In a presentation it only works one person at a time.

The company I worked at also bought a high end laptop that is able to run the Oculus at the client’s office. This is a solution for the Arch Viz company but the client still needs to solve his hardware problem. I worked on a few scenes for Oculus but I really don’t know how much it got used at the end or if it got used by the client at all.

As a conclusion I personally won’t push it to the client. If the client really wants this experience I will tell him the pros and cons and let him decide. Cost will probably be significantly higher while usability will be lower. In any case it should always be an optional experience for the client so he can turn it on or off in the scene.

You see, if a VR presentation, which is for just one person, selling a unit of the property for $ 400,000 for the joy of my client, for me is enough to justify my efforts as a developer of this technology. And what I am witnessing here in my company, is that nothing beats this technology in the real estate business, it is definitely incomparable for this market segment.