Have you tried Oculus Rift headset? If you have, then it should not be difficult for you to understand our excitement about it.. “That’s a big field for experiments”, – thought our developers. “That could be a profitable idea”, – thought marketing department. Nearly instantly the idea to adjust our iPad app ARHouse to be compatible with the Rift came to mind. What if?!
At the same time marketing department of our company did a research whether Architectural Simulation on Oculus Rift would have any potential on the market. We found out that this issue is relevant for people who are house hunting in another city since they have to fly out and make a quick decision on where they’re going to live. Rift developers got a lot of inquires on this matter.
A lot of apartment ads have limited photos or only show one angle of the apartment, and then when you go in person, the actual apartment brings a lot of disappointment – too little space, irrelevant design, etc. Even 360 views some real estate agencies use in their websites are good to a certain extend.
So what we did was taking a Unity plug-in and superimposing an image in 3D for Oculus Rift using it. Making ARHouse Oculus Rift compatible brings a lot of opportunities.
Walking around a virtual apartment before actually step in the real one, watching the view outside of the window can be a very useful and cost effective marketing tool for companies delivering innovative development projects. Impression conveyed with a help of Oculus Rift application lasts for a long time.
On the one hand, placing a customer inside a building and letting him walk around it creates huge opportunities for marketing. On another hand, from a customer perspective, such experience would mean unprecedented enjoyable moments and saved time. Instead of making lots of appointments to look at a places, customers could be sitting at their computers at 2AM deciding if their wardrobe and bed will fit in that bedroom or whether the look from the window is good enough.
Another use for ARHouse compatible with Oculus Rift glasses is an exhibit at different trade shows and expos. It generates buzz, draws crowds of people waiting in line around your booth for the chance to look at your product or service featured in the app. It can be a great opportunity for real estate developers and agents, for architects and construction companies, so if your business participates in trade shows, Augmented Pixels can definitely help build a Rift app for your next show.