3D technology gives edge to home buyers
UNREALISTIC pictures of homes up for sale could soon be a thing of the past thanks to an innovative 3D real-estate technology developed in Australia.
Software developed by Melbourne company Scann3d allows buyers to take a virtual walk through a home so it feels like they are actually standing inside.
Scann3d sets up a 3D camera on a tripod inside the home and rotates it around the room, including the ceiling and floors, to film every detail and measure its exact dimensions.
Images collected by the camera are then pulled together so viewers can “walk” from room to room, look up, down and behind them as if they were standing there.
As a result, buyers gain a more accurate impression of the size of rooms, colours and layout than traditional photos and videos of properties.
“You have the control to actually walk around and look behind the bed and get a sense of space and the layout,” said Scann3d’s Trent Clews-De Castella, who helped develop the software.
The company is in talks with major real estate
websites Domain and realestate.com.au about how they could incorporate the 3D videos into their online property listings.
It is also being trialled with real estate agents in ads for 250 high-end properties, mostly in the Melbourne and Sydney markets. “We have had a 15 per cent increase in international traffic and doubled the monthly viewership of our clients’ sites,” Mr Clews-De Castella said.
He said the 3D technology was cheaper to produce than traditional video used to advertise homes, and would eventually replace it and traditional photos.
He said his company hoped to roll out its software for use by museums, art galleries and historic buildings.
Mr Clews-De Castella has spent the past week demonstrating the technology to a group of more than 100 Australian entrepreneurs taking part in a think-tank known as The Unstoppables in Antarctica.