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Virtual reality home design tools
Communicating home design ideas to clients can be rather stressful. There are a number of factors that align with your choice of design – lighting, furniture, fabrics, and finishes. 2D sketches and plans often do not convey the action that comes into a designer’s mind. Many a times, these ideas are less understood and thus not applied to a home interior design correctly. Virtual reality (VR) home designs attempt to bring a change to that. New virtual reality home design tools from popular tech-giants – Oculus, Sony, HTC and Google are now able to create expressive environments that immerse the user into a richly imaginative digital experience. Step into your future home and walk around to explore its appearance, by the way of a VR headset. With a VR headset to power your vision, it is possible to configure the intended look with a deeper understanding, sometimes even before you set foot into the property!
The interior designer and client experience
Popular interior design companies are allowing clients to experience a walk-through into their future abode; even shop for furnishings and décor such as kitchen layout styles, etc. Using the potential of augmented reality, real estate sellers are letting buyers get an almost real feel of the interior like virtually place couches and bookshelves and see the finished look. As a home buyer today, you can get access to prospective designers virtually and be able to make a choice based on your budget and preferences. In fact, homeowners just need to provide a few details like a floor plan and the measurements, to set the designer to transform their vision into a reality. Earlier used by sculptors and installation artists, tools such as Google’s Tilt Brush helps build a room by painting into a 3D space. The prototypes can then be converted into 3D modelling and sent to VR headsets directly. Clients can wear the headset to view their artistic ideas coming to life.
Choosing VR headsets
The best part about VR headsets is that the imagery can be converted into video and shared via various digital channels. Share your VR home design into the digital space from every possible angle – how cool is that? 360-degree images of interior spaces can be viewed easily. Big players like Facebook’s Oculus Rift priced at $599 is the wearable headset that lets you immerse into the virtual world and is even compatible with your phone. HTC Vive offers the ultimate experience, but it all comes at a price of $799 and $129.99 in addition for the controllers. Working at the same resolution (2160 X 1200) as of the Oculus Rift, using an HTC Vive you can grab objects as you walk through a room in virtual reality. Microsoft HoloLens is the perfect solution for your virtual home design experience with augmented reality and is available at $3,000 for the Development Edition and $5,000 for the Commercial Suite. For this specific purpose, Oculus Rift might be the best choice. The only drawback is the fact that Rift foam padding absorbs sweat and you’ll have to clean Oculus or use a VR cover.
Phone based VR headsets are budget friendly using which you can record 360-degree panorama images of your home and easily upload them to your phone. Other products in the VR headset range worth mentioning are Google Daydream View, Samsung Gear VR, and more. Architecture for virtual reality is helping transform the industry. From vivid imaginations to design mock-ups and finishing touches, virtual reality home design possesses the capability to sell design ideas better than anything else today.
