Wouter Rutten and I have met each other in 2013 during our final year of collage while following a minor called "entrepreneurship and innovation".
We were asked to come up with an innovative businessplan, so we had to come up with an idea. Because Wouter and I had same interests we decided to work together. During our research we came across a new development in the game industry called "Virtual Reality" and for the first time we saw a movie of the oculus rift (virtual reality glasses). This new technology immediately draw our attention, so we traveled all across the country to buy one of those virtual reality glasses and decided to write a businessplan based on this new technology.
We found out that this new technology is not only interesting for gamers but it is also very interesing for future visualisations. We started having interviews with a target group for who visualisation is an important issue in their profession. We spoke to architects, landscape designers, interior designers and marketeers. Later on we also had interviews with customers of architects and landscape designers.
During the interviews we found out that current visualisation tools for real estate and landscape projects are often difficult to understand and not very user friendly for customers of architects and landscape designers. They find it often difficult to read 2d images and floor maps. Also they often miss visual insights and they cannot find the answer on questions such as "Do I have sufficient hours of sunshine on my balcony during the summer?" or "Will the living room be big enough in real time?". Because customers often have insufficient insight in the architecural model, bad decisions are being made and they will often find out when it is already to late. This results in high costs for repairing the mistakes or unhappy clients.
This is why we started searching for a method which enables customers to have a 100% insight in their architectural model and we FOUND IT! It took us 6 months developing the product and now we finally have a proper business model that enables architects to give their clients 100% insight in their model and it is also very user friendly, cost effective and time saving.
This is how it works. We need a 3d file format that can be exported from 3d modeling programs such as: Autodesk Revit, Sketchup, ArchiCAD, Arkey etcetera. Also we need some geological information and proper measurement. This is all we need to make a perfect presentation for customers. Customers can than open a program on their desktop that enables them to walk or fly through the building, ask for the proper sun- and shadow positions throughout the year, make pictures, change textures, watch a movie of the model or watch the model with using the virtual reality glasses.
Of course we passed our final year of college with good grades and we are now busy with the startup of ArchEffects.
