7 VR and AR Commercial Real Estate Companies That Will Show You The Future
The Oculus Rift has caused an explosion of other VR headsets and countless VR and AR technologies. In fact, an entire industry has formed, and commercial real estate now has its own crop of companies using the tech for showing off properties and upcoming developments. Here are seven that you should have your eye on.
HQ: New York and Istanbul
Founders: Kemal Akçalı, Caner Soyer and Alper Guler
Partners and Clients: West Orion Group, Donan, Decorilla, Mamaris Yapi, Palmiye Park
What They Do: AR Pandora's four different products use both VR and AR. Their main product is their ARchitecture platform, which creates a portable, interactive AR model of a property that can be inspected on different floors and at different times of the day. The models can also interact with a VR headset and Microsoft Kinect (allowing you or your client to virtually walk around a space and change the colors and positions of furniture with the flick of a finger), and they can be implemented with your physical or online marketing, creating clean and beautiful ads and videos for your websites or brochures. The company has a similar platform specifically for furniture, allowing you to see how a couch or table will fit in a room. Again, the colors and materials can be easily modified with only a few taps on your mobile device. AR Pandora is confident it can eliminate all need for expensive physical models and make your sales pitch infinitely more effective.
To learn more about our Bisnow partner, click here.
HQ: New York
Founders: Dustin Byrne, Judy He and Dave Eisenberg
Partners and Clients: Related, Starwood Capital Group, Zillow, SL Green, Vornado
What They Do: Floored uses 3D modeling to create a 3D property model that can be explored using the Oculus Rift and can help develop, market and analyze upcoming projects to investors. During the design process, clients can work with the Floored team to pick everything from wall textures to furniture to points of interest that can serve as key markers during your virtual tour. The new Protofit program gives clients an intuitive interface that can help them create simple and easily adjustable office floor plans, including break rooms and meeting rooms.
HQ: Toronto, CA
Founder: Colin Graham
Partners and Clients: Bentall Kennedy, Triovest, The Milestone Group, Morgard Investments
What They Do: Arcestra mainly deals with advanced commercial real estate advertising campaigns, allowing clients to update their websites and send out email alerts from their phones, check interest in properties and effectively control their portfolios. But the company also experiments with immersive 3D videos and models that landlords and brokers navigate freely in real time with potential tenants. Using a phone or tablet, the broker can rotate around the building or go to specific points of interest that includes details about the building.
HQ: Mountain View, CA
Founders: Matt Bell and Dave Gausebeck
Partners and Clients: The Altman Brothers, Lux Capital, DCM, AME Cloud Ventures, Crate & Barrel founder Gordon Segal, and Sling Media co-founder Blake Krikorian
What They Do: Matterport sells a Pro 3D Camera and iPad Capture app that can be used to create a "3D Showcase," an online, immersive 3D model that buyers can look through and see from every angle. The laser-based camera—worth $4.5k—gently spins around each room, using 2D and 3D sensors to capture high-definition images, as well as the colors, contours, dimensions and spational relationships between all the objects in the room. The camera is lightweight, easy to use and relatively quick, scanning 1k SF in 30 minutes. These scans can go on Matterport's cloud program, which processes the photos and 3D data to create accurate, high-definition 3D models and floor plans. The camera can even take note of frequent scannable issues like cluttered and empty spaces and spaces with many windows. While the company has a demo app on the Samsung VR store, it's planning on further developing the program for other VR headsets.
HQ: Atlanta
Founders: Chad Eikhoff
Partners and Clients: A number of Fortune 100 corporations and entertainment giants, including Delta Air Lines, Aflac, CBS and Turner Broadcasting System
What They Do: TRICK 3D specializes in 3D animation and VR, creating virtual worlds and sets using a virtual camera system and live motion tracked camera. With models created from blueprints, clients can navigate through floor plans, change furniture and materials, zoom in and out, pan between certain "hot spots," present their properties at both day and night. It even features ruler measurements that can help give a sense of scale. The program is in beta, but will eventually allow walkthroughs with Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard headsets. Founder Chad Eikoff says that in addition to real estate, the program can also be used for travel (such as Delta Air Lines) and hospitality.
HQ: New York
Founders: Alexander Gredysa
What They Do: VR Global's applications gives those in the commercial, residential, hospitality and mixed-use markets a simple application that provides 2D/3D 360° photos, videos, 3D-rendered models and CGI that can be accessed online, on your mobile device, and in VR and AR environments. By using the company's white-labeled applications—specifically designed for real estate agencies, sales agents, developers, designers, architects and creative agencies—clients can share their properties and enhance sales all across the technology. You can even remotely guide a tour from anywhere in the world.
HQ: Palo Alto, CA
Founders: Vitaly Samoylik and Vitaliy Goncharuk
Partners and Clients: Jayman, Harkus Strategic Design Solutions, Prologis, Colliers International
What They Do: Augmented Pixels does a ton of AR work, but its real estate sales app, intuitHouse, allows agents to use AR to display properties. After scanning a physical model, print material or physical location, the app (free on the Apple App Store) can display informational hot spots on key areas of different floors, which can be accessed with a quick tap. You can also display 3D 360 views of key areas, photos and information to help boost sales, decrease purchase times and improve company brands. The app allows clients access to Augmented Pixel's cloud, where they can manage and update their properties' information and even see detailed analytics about usage. And, of course, the AR models can also be toured using VR.
