How One Lumber Store Is Creating an Immersive Virtual Reality Design Experience
Keim Lumber in Charm, Ohio is introducing a 360 Design Experience that will allow builders and homebuyers to tour a home that hasn’t yet been built. Keim’s immersive studio uses five projectors to render visualizations in an enclosed 23-foot diameter and 11-foot tall space, so buyers can tour a life-sized version of each room in their new home before construction has even begun, Forbes reports.
Though still in the early stages of development, the technology, which was created by the firm Tekton Engineering, will eventually be operated by Keim’s sales team and will provide customers with the most realistic design prototypes in the marketplace.
“It can be used as a meeting space for the walk through of a project with blueprints, or to do mark ups during walk through with the stakeholders, so the client and the builder can all experience it at one time,” said Eric Kaufman, the visualization developer at Tekton. “The projectors are flat, but the software helps wrap it around you to create the experience by using computer game software Unreal Engine.”