For some of those who are reading this the term "Virtual Reality" will have no meaning yet. However many visionaries predict virtual reality will be the future of architecture visualisation and imagination. If you are not convinced of this prediction, watch closer at company's like Facebook, Sony, Samsung, Apple and HTC. They are all investing billions of dollars into this new technology, because they know that at short notice it will become the "next big thing". For those who not yet now: virtual reality is an artificial environment that is created with software and presented to the user in such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment.
For us the future starts now. We have had the privilage of making a virtual reality application which gives people a realistic view of how "Residence Parkeind" is going to look like on the outside as well as on the inside.
Residence Parkeind is going to be a unique building situated at downtown Venray (The Netherlands) containing 6 homes, 5 luxurious apartments, a museum and an underground parking lot. Using this new technology for this level of visualisation is still very unique in The Netherlands and it draws a lot of regional and nationwide attention. Also the reactions of potential buyers were very positive.
For this project a lot of technical problems had to be solved due to the size of the project and working with the latest technologies. Virtualizing such a project for virtual reality purposes still requires a lot of specialized knowledge. This is the reason why very few architects are able to build a VR application for their customers. Fortunately most BIM related 3d-software programs contain the function of exporting their 3d-models which makes the building process of a VR-application much less labor-intensive.