virtualtour: Another Message from the Future of Real Estate Video
- 10/08/08 10:25 AM
As a follow-up to my recent "The Future of Real Estate Video?" post, I have another amazing piece of technology prototype eye-candy that is sure to have a future in real estate videos. It's called VideoTrace, and it's a research project out of Australia. Given a video of the inside and outside of a property, one could construct a complete interactive 3D model of the property and make the virtual tour of the future an actual 3D environment that you can walk through like a video game. This also has implications for staging. You will be able to completely stage a … (2 comments)
virtualtour: Updates: More AutoPano Pro Screencast Tutorials and a new PTGui!
- 09/08/08 01:58 AM
We've been recommending that people use one of two panorama stitchers for some time now, PTGui and AutoPano Pro. AutoPano Pro works great if you shoot with a very wide-angle or fisheye lens, but if you're shooting with a 10-shot or 12-shot rotator head, sometimes AutoPano (or for that matter, most stitchers) have trouble stitching some images. This is really common if you're shooting a scene with large sections of solid-color wall or have the camera too close to the wall. With AutoPano when this happens, it can be really tough to fix these issues. We set out to find a … (0 comments)
virtualtour: The future of Real Estate Video?
- 08/15/08 06:37 PM
While I have been previously critical of broad use of real estate video, I saw something today that totally amazed me, and if it becomes integrated with video software, might change my mind about real estate video. What I saw was an amazing new piece of software. It's a research project at this point, but I assure you it'll be the coolest thing you see today. Check out the demo below: Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo. (or click here if the embedded video doesn't work) This technology is likely a year or more … (5 comments)
virtualtour: Autopano Pro Stitching Tutorial
- 05/26/08 01:46 PM
Just wanted to share this great article & review I found on Autopano Pro, which is a promising stitching tool. Autopano Pro runs on Mac, PC, and Linux and has some pretty neat features: Automatically detect one or more panorama scenes from a folder full of images. Ability to stitch any overlapping images, not just ones done perfectly from a tripod. Great leveling and perspective correction features. Some HDR / bracketing support. Enjoy! Alan … (3 comments)
virtualtour: A Picture is Worth Thousands of Dollars
- 05/04/08 06:13 AM
I ran across an article filled with great stats on how pictures affect the sale of a listing. Quick Summary: Listings with more pictures generate more leadsMore pictures = quicker sale (1 photo = 70 DOM, 20 photos = 32 DOM) More pictures = higher list-to-sale price (1 photo = 91.2%, 6+ photos = 95%)For the full article, see The Successful Combination of Photography and Real Estate. The statistics didn't even attempt to deal with photographic quality, but I would think that the numbers would be even better if they tried to take photo quality into account. Enjoy!Alan … (25 comments)
virtualtour: Virtual Tour Background Music: Cheezy or Cheez-a-licous?
- 04/12/08 10:39 AM
Ok, this question is going out to agents, home buyers, and home sellers... When you open a virtual tour and the cheezy music starts playing, do you: Think it adds "panache" to the listing and makes you feel better about it ORImmediately reach for the mute buttonWe got a lot of requests to add background music capabilities to our TourBuzz virtual tour platform, and I resisted for a long time. But so many people asked for it I finally gave in and added the feature -- click here for a demo tour. But I still want to get feedback from the community: Agents - do … (16 comments)
virtualtour: Great Photography and Virtual Tour Resources
- 04/02/08 03:13 AM
Just a quick blog post to share some notable real estate photography resources I've come across recently. Blogs, tips, and tricks: Photography for Real Estate Blog - Great blog about RE photography and tools, and an awesome Flickr pool & group to get constructive criticism on your technique HDR Blog & Galleries - Great examples of "natural" HDR results, and a blog and book to explain how to do it yourself. Panotools Wiki and Mailing List - A well-maintained wiki on all things panorama related (hardware, software, etc) and a fantastic mailing list community. Lots of great people as well as … (14 comments)
virtualtour: What makes a good virtual tour?
- 01/31/08 08:15 AM
Over the last two years, I've worked with several virtual tour photographers in the Atlanta area. I was always amazed at how bad most virtual tour experiences were, and so in partnership with these photographers, I built a Virtual Tour Hosting Platform for real estate called TourBuzz. I wanted to share with you some of my observations and thoughts about what makes a virtual tour good or bad, according to my research and thinking. I hope that you find it educational, and I am looking forward to feedback on the ideas as well. Picture QualityThe pictures themselves are of course the most important … (8 comments)
As a follow-up to my recent "The Future of Real Estate Video?" post, I have another amazing piece of technology prototype eye-candy that is sure to have a future in real estate videos.
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