A LOW-COST and LIGHTWEIGHT 3D INTERACTIVE REAL ESTATE-PURPOSED INDOOR VIRTUAL REALITY APPLICATION

Abstract

Interactive 3D architectural indoor design have been more popular after it benefited from Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. VR brings computer-generated 3D content to real life scale and enable users to observe immersive indoor environments so that users can directly modify it. This opportunity enables buyers to purchase a property off-the-plan cheaper through virtual models. Instead of showing property through 2D plan or renders, this visualized interior architecture of an on-sale unbuilt property is demonstrated beforehand so that the investors have an impression as if they were in the physical building. However, current applications either use highly resource consuming software, or are non-interactive, or requires specialist to create such environments. In this study, we have created a real-estate purposed low-cost high quality fully interactive VR application that provides a realistic interior architecture of the property by using free and lightweight software: Sweet Home 3D and Unity. A preliminary study showed that participants generally liked proposed real estate-purposed VR application, and it satisfied the expectation of the property buyers.