How is VR Helpful for Custom Home Building

How is VR Helpful for Custom Home Building

by | Jul 18, 2023 | architectural rendering, Radical Galaxy Studio, Virtual Reality, VR, VR Virtual Tours

Harnessing Virtual Reality (VR) in Custom Home Building: A New Age Revolution

The home-building industry, steeped in tradition and craft, has always been a fertile ground for innovation. From the dawn of the first architect’s compass to computer-aided designs, every new technology has played a transformative role. In the current era, Virtual Reality (VR) stands at the forefront as a groundbreaking technology that offers unparalleled advantages to custom home builders, promising a fusion of innovation with tradition.

Breathing Life into Blueprints with Enhanced Real Estate VR Visualizations

Gone are the days of mere 2D drawings and static 3D renderings. VR technology is reshaping client presentations. Imagine donning a VR headset and stepping into the foyer of your dream home or walking into a custom-designed kitchen before it’s even built. This sensory-rich, immersive preview is a quantum leap from traditional visualization methods. Not only does it allow homeowners to tangibly experience their dreams, but it also provides a holistic understanding of design elements, finishes, and spatial layouts. VR transcends imagination; it’s a gateway to experiential reality.

Accelerating Dreams with Faster Decision-Making

Traditional design reviews often involved lengthy discussions, primarily because of the gap between what’s on paper and what’s in the client’s mind. With VR, that gap narrows considerably. Real-time visualization means clients can see, adjust, and finalize design elements on the fly. Whether it’s the hue of the living room walls or the texture of the bathroom tiles, every tweak is instantly viewable. This interactivity leads to reduced decision-making time, ensuring the design process is fluid and efficient.

A Symphony of Ideas: Improved Client Communication

The home-building journey is a collaborative dance between architects, builders, and homeowners. VR offers a synchronized platform for this dance. No longer do teams have to rely solely on blueprints and mock-ups. With a VR headset, everyone—be it the architect in New York or a client in Tokyo—can convene in the same virtual space. This uniform visualization eliminates ambiguity, reduces the scope of misinterpretation, and fosters a spirit of holistic collaboration.

Building Right the First Time: Reduced Errors and Change Orders

Errors in the construction process aren’t just setbacks; they’re costly missteps that can escalate project budgets and timelines. Fortunately, VR acts as an invaluable auditing tool. By simulating the complete home in a virtual space, teams can run detailed walkthroughs to identify potential design issues, structural flaws, or aesthetic mismatches. This early detection is pivotal in preventing time-consuming and expensive reworks, ensuring the project remains on track.

The Future Showcase: Using VR to Attract New Clients

In a market saturated with builders, standing out is crucial. VR offers custom home builders a dynamic tool to make a memorable impression. A VR tour, with its intricate detailing and interactive design, can be exponentially more compelling than a slideshow or a brochure. By crafting immersive experiences for potential clients, builders can showcase their innovation, dedication to quality, and commitment to delivering unique homes.

Enhancing Client Relationships with VR

An often under-discussed aspect of VR is the trust it fosters. When clients can virtually step into their future homes, witness the beauty of design, and have a say in customization, it instills confidence. They’re no longer investing in an idea but a tangible experience, which strengthens the bond between the client and the builder.

Conclusion

As technology expands, Virtual Reality stands out as a beacon for the custom home-building industry. It’s more than a tool—it’s a paradigm shift, propelling every phase of home-building into the future. At Radical Galaxy Studio, our journey with VR has been transformative. Working closely with both home builders and homeowners, we’ve seen firsthand the monumental difference VR brings. It’s not just about constructing homes; it’s about crafting dreams and memories. For custom home builders and clients alike, VR isn’t a mere glimpse into the future—it’s the present shaping the homes of tomorrow.

Custom Home Builder: Forward Thinking with Virtual Reality

Custom Home Builder: Forward Thinking with Virtual Reality

by | Mar 29, 2019 | Virtual Reality

Although he doesn’t advertise it as such, Lochwood-Lozier is a design/build firm, and it also takes on projects designed by outside architects, building eight to 10 custom homes per year and doing about 15 to 20 remodels. Typical homes measure 5,500 to 6,000 square feet and cost anywhere from $1.5 million to $1.6 million, not including the land. The budget for a recent remodel was $3.4 million.

Clients purchasing custom builds at that level are discerning and sophisticated, particularly in the high-tech demographic that makes up Lozier’s market.

Along with personal attention and today’s typical basket of e-marketing tools—Houzz, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter—Lozier takes it a step further by using virtual reality to better connect his clients with their projects. “So many people have difficulty understanding 2D plans,” he says. “Even in SketchUp it’s not quite the same level of realism.”

Virtual reality (VR) offers a computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional environment in which viewers can interact with their surroundings—not to be confused with augmented reality (AR), which adds digital elements to a live view.

While more and more architects have turned to VR to share projects with clients or collaborate on work, not many builders are using it. “I don’t know of any other design/build contractors doing this,” Lozier says. “It’s not a common thing—yet.”

Lochwood-Lozier teamed up with Seattle-based Radical Galaxy, which works with companies to create VR, AR, and mixed-reality material for their projects. It works this way: After Lozier’s (or the external) architects have designed a home and made the selections (floor, tile, wall color, hard surfaces, sometimes furniture) with their client’s input, they send Radical Galaxy 2D drawings as DWG files. These include floor plans, elevations, dimensions, measurements—“basically what would be in a 2D set of drawings,” Lozier says. In a process that takes about two to three weeks, Radical Galaxy inputs that information into its program and produces a VR file…

…Clients come to the office, put on a headset, and get to virtually walk through their home. Some opt for an exterior and interior look, and some just look at particular rooms. “They can check for potential problems,” Lozier says. For example, one client used the system to go through his kitchen. He realized the distance between the bar table and the kitchen island was too narrow. Lozier’s team was able to revise the drawing in CAD to make that space more comfortable. They sent the file back to Radical Galaxy and then had the client walk through again to sign off on it.

…VR walkthrough—ranges from $8,000 to $20,000. Most of that is for programming and the tremendous number of hours that go into production. But Lozier says the cost is not bad when you’re building a $5 million project and you have a hard time visualizing what’s on paper. “This is truly some of the best money you can spend on this level,” he says. “Think of the cost of a change order in the field; the cost of VR could be miniscule. I haven’t had a client tell me it wasn’t money well spent.”

Read Full Article at:

https://custombuilderonline.com/

PropTech firm Radical Galaxy wins VR/AR Award

PropTech firm Radical Galaxy wins VR/AR Award

by | Jan 7, 2019 | Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality

Radical Galaxy Studio, a leading real estate technology firm with a focus on pushing the boundaries within real estate planning, pre-selling, design and leasing, was chosen as the first place winner for the 2018 TecHome Brilliance Award in Phoenix. The award recognizes the most innovative and cutting-edge companies that have played an integral role in advancing tech in the real estate industry.

Radical Galaxy was selected due to its ability to transform the design-build process for home building industry by eliminating painful, manual processes. Instead, home-builders and clients alike can walk through and even interact with the home even before it’s built, allowing better communications and decision making on everything from layouts to finishes.  Furthermore, Radical Galaxy’s virtual reality offerings can give users an interactive, game-like experience.  Beyond moving in, out, and around buildings, VR tools allow users to see how the light might change from day to night given the current window placements, review different floor plans and design options by swapping through options, and achieve the best living configurations by moving furniture around at the touch of a button.

Radical Galaxy was awarded on stage in front of industry professionals attending the TecHome Builders awards. The awards were open to any technology company servicing the home builder industry.

“We are honored to have been recognized as the best VR/AR firm within the real estate complex,” said Matthew Shaffer, Managing Partner and Co-founder at Radical Galaxy. “Radical Galaxy has a history of working with our clients to create solutions that address real challenges and improve their ROI.”

Virtual and Augmented Reality is Revolutionizing the Art Scene

Virtual and Augmented Reality is Revolutionizing the Art Scene

by | Nov 26, 2018 | Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality

“The best use of digital is to not make you aware of the technology, but to make you aware of the art.” – Jane Alexander, chief information officer, Cleveland Museum

Art has been heavily ingrained in various cultures since the beginning of time. Humans have used different art forms to tell stories, express their thoughts and feelings and passed down historical and familial information to future generations. The art world has evolved greatly, since its early, primitive forms of cave drawings to the Renaissance Age and later, Modernism.

While the techniques and paintings themselves have changed, the way we view and showcase art hasn’t drastically progressed –until now. Art enthusiasts around the globe are starting to adopt virtual and augmented reality technology to reach wider audiences and as a tool to engage art lovers in a new and exciting way.

The art industry is worth a whopping $63.7 billion and its stakeholders are constantly thinking of creative ways to grow and advance it. Many experts within the art world feel that virtual and augmented reality are the next big thing in continuing to engage audiences and further grow this ever-developing industry. This blog will highlight several venues and artists who have embraced this technology into the way they’re approaching their exhibits, foreshadowing a new way to interact with art.

Examples of Virtual and Augmented Reality in Art

Jacob Koo of VRt Ventures partnered with the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) last year to bring the highly acclaimed Kerry James Marshall’s Mastry exhibition to life.

They created a VR experience using Samsung Gear headsets, enabling audiences to be transported into the exhibit. Users could walk through galleries at their own control and view every painting from any desired angle, at their own pace. The technology captured the lighting on the paintings and placement of those paintings, which are crucial elements of the artist’s vision. A feature showcased within the engaging experience was the inclusion of narrations of the artist’s inspiration of each piece and the backstory that surrounds it. Users could also download the experience to their PC or Mac to view without a headset.

The project was highly successful and garnered attention, enticing Koo to partner with another artist, Shepard Fairey, to bring his DAMAGED exhibition to the masses.

VRt created a VR and AR mobile app that allowed users to walk through the space from any location. The app also featured 100 minutes of narration from the artist himself. The experience is also available on VR headsets.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art experimented with AR in their museum by handing out iPhones to museum goers with AR technology to view surrealist painter Rene Magritte’s work. For those not familiar with this artist’s work, Magritte is famous for his paintings of rocks in clouds and of men sporting bowler hats.

The AR technology featured an interactive gallery that was filled with digital puzzles inspired by Magritte’s famous works of art. Guests were intrigued with the ability to, in a way, get inside the mind of the artist’s peculiar world by creating apples, bowler hats and pipes for other guests to find as they went through the museum. The museum is using this as a test run to explore more ways to make art relevant and modern. SFMOMA has stated they are looking to implement this technology in other ways, in the future.

Recently, the Moco Museum based in Amsterdam, Netherlands announced a new AR app they are releasing called ‘Moco Play.’ The free app, which is available for iOS and Android, has interactive digital content that overlays over a selection of the museum’s featured modern artworks. Visitors simply point their mobile devices at the artworks and it comes to life on their screen. Artist works that are featured on this app are Icy & Sot, Andy Warhol, Yayoi Kusama and Keith Haring, a modern artist known to push the envelope in the art world. This app launch comes after the museum recently celebrated its millionth visitor and presents a leap forward into innovation within the museum.

NeuroDigital, a company specializing on haptic sense in VR has collaborated with  Leontinka Foundation and the National Gallery of Prague on an exhibition called Touching Masterpieces. This exhibition aims to enable blind and visually impaired visitors “see” the objects on display despite not being able to actually view them with their own eyes. For this, three world famous sculptures – The Head of Nefertiti, Venus de Milo and David by Michelangelo –  have been recreated in the virtual world to allow those who wish to “see” the famous sculptures. With haptic gloves, they are able to “touch” the sculptures without damaging the real ones. The gloves have the ability to replicate how different materials can be touched, which makes users feel as though they are touching the real deal. Touching Masterpieces is “the first VR experience for the blind and visually impaired – not with a headset, but with a pair of gloves.”

A true masterpiece, at that.

Conclusion

Personal preferences aside, the value of art as an integral and omnipresent segment of society through the ages, cannot be denied. Art is celebrated across different cultures as a form of expression and a way to interpret and understand the past. By integrating modern technology with art, we are allowing a younger generation to get excited by and discover historically celebrated works that have been seen around over hundreds, if not thousands of years.

While reporting on attendance ratings in museums, Kelly Song, a correspondent from CNBC stated that “Museums are looking at the best attendance they’ve ever had, thanks to the way technology is revolutionizing the consumption of art. It’s allowing visitors to experience art in a new way, while bringing exhibits to others that may have never even set foot in the institution at all.”

This growing technology also has the potential to reach audiences that perhaps cannot travel to museums and educate them on the presented art pieces. The possibilities are endless and exhilarating. We’ll be sure to continue following this exciting new trend.

Augmented and Virtual Reality Differences

Augmented and Virtual Reality Differences

by | Jul 12, 2018 | Augmented Reality, Radical Galaxy Studio, Virtual Reality

“Virtual reality and augmented reality have the potential to become the next big computing platform, and as we saw with the PC and smartphone, we expect new markets to be created and existing markets to be disrupted”
-Goldman Sachs Investment Research

Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) have become increasingly popular within the last few years. People use the terms AR, MR and VR often, but do you know what it actually means? VR, MR and AR differ in how digital content is combined with the physical world. AR and MR overlay holograms on top of the physical world, while VR is a fully immersive experience that replaces the world around you and transports you to a new location.

What is Augmented and Mixed Reality?

“I think AR is big and profound.” “I don’t think there is any sector or industry that will be untouched by AR.”
-Apple CEO Tim Cook – CNBC and Vogue

Augmented Reality is defined as “a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view.” What does this actually mean? In simple terms, AR shows digital images on your glasses, phone or tablet that can only be seen on these devices, not in the real world. The real world is still seen when using AR, it is just enhanced with digital images. Users are not constricted to a fully enclosed headset such as Virtual Reality; thus, you can make a clear distinction between reality.

AR can be used in a number of applications including but not limited to gaming, interior decorating, architecture, fashion, tourism. One of the popular early uses of AR was the Pokémon Go app which allowed users to capture, train, and fight virtual characters in your real world location as if it was happening right in front of you.

Examples of AR would be Radical Galaxy’s furniture app that’s in development that allows consumers to furnish their homes and see what items look like in scale in their living room. What is great about using AR for interior design is that you can see what the furniture would look like in your home. This means that what you see on your phone is what it would look like in real life; from the look of it to how much space the piece of furniture would take up. Using AR to select furniture pieces is great for those who are more visual and to avoid potential furniture mishaps such as ordering a sofa too big for your living room.  

Besides being used for personal uses, devices such as the Hololens is being used in a professional setting from architecture, construction, medical and oil and gas to reduce downtime and costs and saving on travel expenses sending specialized staff to specific locations. A Hololens is a pair of glasses that lets you see holograms of objects overlaid in the real world. You can click with your fingers, move things around the room with ease, and interact with everything from games to web browsers in a very natural format.  

Recently, Baker Hughes replaced parts of a turbine at a petrochemical plant in Malaysia in five days and no travel expenses. An on-site technician was guided by engineers supervising the work remotely from a Baker Hughes site in the US. If the team had to go onsite the time would have taken longer which is costly given the downtime of the machinery, in addition to the estimated $50,000 of travel costs to get the team to Malaysia as was reported in Bloomberg.

What is Virtual Reality?

“We are setting a goal: we want to get a billion people in virtual reality”
-Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Virtual Reality is defined as “the computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment (a headset)” In other words, Virtual Reality is when you are fully immersed in the virtual world and cannot see actual reality. As you turn your head or move your body, the graphics in the headset react to your movements, allowing you to feel as if you are inside another world.

Major players in the VR space are Oculus (Facebook), HTC, and Microsoft to name a few. Virtual Reality is being used for a number of real estate applications. Architects can use virtual reality to design the projects they are working on. Instead of building costly physical models, they can produce VR models which is more interactive, allows modifications to be made easily and a great tool to use for community meetings, the entitlement process and sales and marketing. Using this can potentially save clients millions of dollars on construction costs. It also allows a platform for everyone involved in the design process to see the same thing and give notes to each other. This avoids confusion and the necessity to have everyone meet all in the same place. Optionality can also be built into the VR model, therefore you can see what different materials for walls, floors, and furniture can look like in the space. Having the optionality allows customers to make designs quicker and gives all parties involved a better understanding of what the client wants.

Challenges with AR and VR

“The phone is probably going to be the mainstream consumer platform [where] a lot of these AR features become mainstream, rather than a glasses form factor that people will wear on their face.”
-Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

In VR environments, low latency requirements are of great importance as the human eye needs to perceive accurate and smooth movements for providing an enjoyable VR experience. Given latency issues on current mobile devices it can create a motion sickness feeling in some users.  Tethered VR (Oculus, Vive, Windows Mixed Reality) eliminate some of these issues, but there is still further improvement needed.

Along with latency issues mobile VR is very data demanding.  When the industry moves from 4G to 5G wireless technology it will be a major step forward as the new system efforts aim at supporting the upcoming growth in data rate requirements.  

Future of AR and VR Technology

“Why shouldn’t people be able to teleport wherever they want?”
Palmer Luckey, Oculus Founder

AR and VR devices are being constructed and perfected by many well known companies such as Microsoft, Google, HTC, Apple to name a few. The possibilities are endless for the future in both the professional and gaming markets. Who knows, maybe in the future we will have contacts powered by kinetic energy that will have these capabilities.

VR Studio Radical Galaxy Partners with Apollo, Eastdil Alum to Scale Business and Open NYC Office

VR Studio Radical Galaxy Partners with Apollo, Eastdil Alum to Scale Business and Open NYC Office

by | Mar 8, 2018 | New York City, Virtual Reality, VR

With projects to date including working with major corporations such as Hyatt Hotels, Radical Galaxy Studio has earned its rank as one of the top providers of virtual and augmented reality content in the real estate industry.

Today the company is excited to announce, in partnership with Bradley Snyder, formerly of Apollo and Eastdil Secured, a major scaling and expansion of the current Bellevue, Washington business with the opening of a new office in New York City.

Mr. Snyder will serve as Managing Partner alongside Matthew Shaffer. “We are thrilled to work with Bradley to meaningfully grow the business while continuing to push the technological boundaries within the real estate industry,” said Mr. Shaffer. Mr. Snyder managed real estate investments at leading private equity firm Apollo Global Management after spending time advising real estate transactions at Eastdil Secured.

“At Apollo, I saw firsthand the tremendous impact of new technologies on the way we design, develop, manage and sell real estate,” Mr. Snyder commented. “After implementing disruptive real estate technologies such as VTS, Matterport and Leverton into my own deals over the years, I knew immediately a company like Radical Galaxy had an opportunity to impact the industry in the same way.”

Mr. Shaffer will continue to lead the team based in Bellevue, Washington while Mr. Snyder will lead the expansion in New York. The New York office made its first hire by welcoming Taylor Nederlander on board. Ms. Nederlander will focus on marketing and business development.

About Radical Galaxy:

Radical Galaxy Studio, LLC (https://radicalgalaxy.com/) is a creative studio specializing in visual solutions for the un-built architectural environment focusing on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). The Radical Galaxy team consists of designers, architects and developers who have teamed together to push boundaries and use cutting edge tools to create inspirational work. In addition to VR/AR/MR, Radical Galaxy offers architectural renderings, 360 videos and panoramas, animations and real-time PC walkthroughs.