Virtual Tour Feature for iRealty

[iAuto/iRealty Sales]

Dear iRealty users and guests!

We would like to initiate a discussion here on subject of virtual tours and their possible use in iRealty. As we all know, there are several options virtual tours can be implemented by: image gallery, picture slide show, video tour, third party Flash- or Java-based 360 virtual tour software etc. We need your feedback on the following questions:

-  Is there a need for a virtual tour functionality? If yes, please describe this need in detail.
-  Will it really help your business or it's just not worth the hype?
-  What are the essential things of the virtual tour functionality?
-  Is there a third-party solution of your choice, if any?
-  What would you like to see in iRealty in terms of the virtual tour functionality?

It would be great if we could stir up some discussion on this topic, as your feedback will greatly help us make some decisions about this feature, if it's at all needed, of course. Look forward to getting your feedback,

Thanks,
iRealty Sales

[thecrescentmoon]

I think it could be a uselful value added if the administer goes out and takes the video or pictures necessary for a 360 virtual tour. I'm not sure if private sellers may have the saavy to do it themselves (I could be wrong), but having the option is great.

[iAuto/iRealty Sales]

Well, with the ability to add videos to each listing, produced and filmed either by the clients themselves or by the admin, iRealty and iAuto are both virtual tour-ready applications. You can add one or more video tours to the listing input forms to allow the client to upload one or more video files for that.

VR tools by different manufacturers are abundant on the Net, but the issue is that there is no uniform market standard for virtual tours, no apparent market leader and a ton of ways this can be implemented. To bind our product with a specific solution is not going to make everybody happy, to integrate 5- or 10 various tools is entirely impractical and too costly for both the end users and the developers.

It's good to know what product(s) is the general market leaning towards to make a better decision about possibly using it instead of evaluating a ton of solutions available on the market. Lots of people are asking us about the virtual tour functionality, but nobody has been specific enough to name a specific solution they are comfortable to work with. I guess they want us to make a difficult decision of choosing the provider for them, and that simply doesn't work for a number of reasons. This is why we started the conversation in the first place.

[thecrescentmoon]

The slide show VR tours are useless I think. Especially if the pictures are already there. However, I think a 360 degree function would be excellent since online viewers can get a feel of the space as it pans around.

[iAuto/iRealty Sales]

Any particular 360 view providers you may recommend? There are tons and tons of them in the search engines, but a market leader may be something we should try.

Best regards,

iAuto/iRealty Sales

[themedialion]

Hello folks,

I'm yet to become an iRealty customer but might be soon for a new project I am about to begin. I was browsing this forum to see what the user community and the support was like. (and I like what I see so far!)

Anyway, I also run a virtual tour company (www.themedialion.com) so I'm pretty familiar with the virtual tour field.

(See my tour inventory at: http://themedialion.net/code/all for samples)

As you've said, there are numerous vendors with numerous formats and what most realtors would want is to be able to post a virtual tour from whatever vendor they prefer. Any bonified virtual tour vendor needs to be approved to post to realtor.com via their "picturepath" program. The same goes for being able to generate what the industry calls "IDX compliant" tours. These are basically tours that don't have any branding on them at all for example:
http://themedialion.net/show/44806
vs
http://themedialion.net/show/44806/idx
(note: the /idx tour has no agent photo, contact info, music, etc.)... it's a stripped down version of the original full featured tour

So as you can see the virtual tour world gets fairly sticky quickly and agents probably wouldn't want to be locked into a tour vendor or format by a particular listing web site. They'd simply want a place to drop the web address of their virtual tour (most tour vendors offer unique web addresses per tour) as part of the details of their listing. Perhaps offering .gif icon could be used to indicate if a virtual tour is available on the listing page (like realtor.com uses the spinning red house icon ) and when you hit the icon it takes you to the tour.

What might be a nice feature to add to iRealty itself is to allow for handling panoramic or 360 degree photos with some smooth panning software. There are several java or flash scripts that offer this.

Not to turn this into a sales pitch, but I offer creating tours from agent provided photos as well as I am looking at offering self-service tour hosting with volume discounts etc. Feel free to contact me with any questions or feedback.

That's my $.02.

Kevin
themedialion@hotmail.com
www.TheMediaLION.com
www.RealPinions.com

[iAuto/iRealty Sales]

Hello Kevin,

Whatever you described below regarding the IDX compliant virtual tour functionality sounds very interesting, I've certainly learned a lot. I'll be more than happy to discuss this matter further with you over the email. We may even get a discussion of your solution spun up here to see what the real estate folks have to say about it.

Regards,

iAuto/iRealty Sales