The Future of Matterport, Virtual Reality, and Home Sales

By now, you’ve seen the amazing features of the increasingly popular Matterport 3D walkthrough. The updated version of panoramic camera shots allows home buyers to use their mouse or computer keyboards to navigate through your listing from the comfort of their own home. It’s the next best thing to actually being there. Or is it? […]

By now, you’ve seen the amazing features of the increasingly popular Matterport 3D walkthrough. The updated version of panoramic camera shots allows home buyers to use their mouse or computer keyboards to navigate through your listing from the comfort of their own home. It’s the next best thing to actually being there.

Or is it?

I mean, have you seen what’s out there when it comes to virtual reality? I recently strapped on a pair of VR goggles and got to give it a go: This is me, riding the new roller coaster set for its debut at Cedar Point this summer!

It was wild!

And all I could think was, “Imagine strapping on a pair of these babies and experiencing a Niagara listing first-hand…from ANYWHERE.”

Virtual Reality and Real Estate

The long and short of it is that virtual reality is here and it’s better than anyone could have hoped. And believe me, this technology is a real estate game changer.

So while early versions of virtual reality were focused on video game technology, it’s starting to become pretty clear that there are some pretty serious commercial applications, including real estate. My prediction is that we start to see a major gravitation towards virtual reality in the next few years, especially when it comes to selling high-end luxury properties.

Matterport and Oculus Rift

About three years ago, Matterport started working on their system I am so stoked to have in my home sales toolkit. Matterport realized that it was affordable to mass produce 3D sensors, but there was no software available to take the 3D data and create a space easily. And it may have taken them some time, but they did it. Matterport created a camera that spins around on a tripod to capture a 360-degree scan of a space and turn it into a 3D showcase with cloud software.

And now, with the boom of available virtual reality headsets, “walking” through a home is totally do-able. Driving the boom of available virtual reality headsets is Oculus Rift, who began shipping their headsets at the end of March. Now, you can put on a headset, which fills your complete field of vision with the 3D images of the home. You can look up, down and side to side to take in every detail of a listing as if you were there.

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matterport by callkarl.caSt. Catharines Real Estate Market