Radical Galaxy offers high-end virtual reality home tours

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Radical Galaxy is a virtual reality (VR) tour and 3-D visualization studio for real estate agents, developers and the hospitality industry.

Platforms: Browser; Samsung Gear, Oculus Rift
Ideal for: Luxury agents working with custom builders; high-rise sales agents; new construction sales teams

Top selling points

• Incredible detail
• Hand-rendered environments
• Blending of exterior/interior
• One-on-one service

Top concerns

Budgets. This is not a 3-D tour provider for mid-market homes.

What you should know

Four of the six employees at Radical Galaxy come from the architecture and interior design industries.

This in-depth understanding of how the structural interacts with the aesthetic ensures that a viewer is treated to a virtual experience unlike anything else available in the market.

Photo courtesy of Radical Galaxy

The difference is that a home is captured from its root beginnings, such as CAD files and materials lists.

Radical Galaxy can place a client’s actual furniture within a rendering of their new home to confirm sizes and overlaps with new interior design themes.

The company can show a home at different times of the day because it captures its geo-positioning. This allows owners to see exactly how the sun moves through the home, and what it will look like when it’s dark outside and the under-cabinet lighting is turned on.

Photo courtesy of Radical Galaxy

Clients can test different countertops and stairway designs before asking an architect to sketch it or a builder to send samples. The company has integrated affordable change orders into their business plan so customers feel more comfortable making alterations.

Window shades, doors, cabinets and even knick-knacks on a mantle can be opened, closed and picked-up when viewed through a VR headset.

In one sample I viewed, the television was on and its ambient light was shifting according to the viewers position in the room. It was actually showing the corporate client’s marketing video.

In another sample, a viewer entered an elevator, the floor indicator ticked up, and they exited to a new space.

The company’s projects aren’t designed for mobile VR, such as Google Cardboard. The Samsung Gear and Oculus Rift are your best options for viewing a Radical Galaxy project.

The company also works with hotels, pre-construction urban high-rises and other types of commercial developers. Clients have leveraged Radical Galaxy rendering talents to accompany new building proposals for investors and various forms of municipal approval organizations.

I asked company founder and former hedge fund manager Matthew Shaffer what made his company different. Was it the software? Their collective talent as artists?

“Hours and hours of work on each project,” he said.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe