Virtual reality is increasingly becoming a viable technology for businesses and realtors showcasing properties—as well as university campuses considering interactive online tours—a local VR professional said today.
More than a dozen local business owners and entrepreneurs converged on the Louisiana Technology Park Academy today for a workshop on virtual and augmented realities. The technologies are in their infancy but already have practical applications, event speaker Morgan Krutz told attendees.
“Don’t let it intimidate you. It’s just a new medium,” said Krutz, who began working in VR on feature films but now does work for Three Sixty Eight, a local marketing company. “There’s gonna be applications for just about anything to use VR.”
Krutz noted kinks in the technology persist. Some users experience vertigo, plus the work of building virtual reality experiences is sometimes expensive, difficult and time-consuming. But as products like VR headsets become ubiquitous and researchers work through some of the early issues, it will become the norm for businesses to use the technology, he said.
For instance, Krutz built a program with augmented reality—technology that applies images to physical objects, as in the smartphone game Pokemon Go—for an engineering company to use in foreign investments. The client could point an iPad at a brochure, and a 3-D interactive model sprang up from the page, a feature he demonstrated at today’s event.
Krutz and other business professionals who have used the technology said there are myriad conceivable uses for VR and AR. Drones could fly over a plot of land, for example, and determine the amount of material it would take to build a structure. A company could create a virtual tour of its office space.
For real estate professionals, VR will be the norm in the next few years, says Berkshire Hathaway Realtor Trey Willard, who attended the seminar.
Willard pays around $300 to $350 for a professional to scan houses and create interactive tours that can be accessed through a computer, smartphone or VR headset. He adds tags that potential buyers can click on to get more information about appliances and features in the house.
“In bigger markets, this is becoming the standard,” Willard says, adding he is one of a handful in Baton Rouge using the technology.
“If you have to show five houses on a Friday afternoon, I say, ‘Why don’t you come to my office and I’ll show you all of them in 30 minutes,’” says fellow Berkshire Hathaway Realtor Brent Thompson, who also attended the Thursday session.
Willard and Thompson say they use the service mostly on higher-end houses, and it entices out-of-town buyers who otherwise would have to rely on still photos.
“You’ve got people that are basically looking and clicking around on their computer screen and it’s not very immersive,” Krutz said. “With a headset you’re not looking through the window, you’re actually in the environment.”
—Sam Karlin
