Category: iStaging

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iStaging’s VR Maker App Is Now Google Street View Ready

Late last month iStaging announced a new feature for their virtual reality (VR) Marker app that brought the power of ARKit into play for use when making floor plans of locations. The applications for this feature would benefit estate agents, interior designers and event organizers offering a range of valuable capabilities. Now, iStaging have revealed that their VR Marker app is now Street View ready.

iStaging Street View

This new feature means that users can now effortlessly share their 360-degree panoramas capture within the app directly to Google Maps Street View with just one tap. This functionality means that users can easily create virtual tours for viewing on Google Maps Street View thanks to the affordable solution. The VR Maker app and included capture kit are already being used by thousands of real estate agents, photographers, designers and retailers around the global to digitize spaces and now, these can be shared to Google Map Street View with ease.

“Our customers have high quality standards, and we’ve worked hard on creating a capture solution that delivers on their expectations,” noted Johnny Lee, CEO of iStaging. “We’re humbled to see it recognized as Street View ready by Google”.

The VR Maker app is a spatial VR capture solution that enables users to take advantage of their mobile device to create immersive virtual tours within minutes using a fisheye lens and Rotator. The solution also includes an all-in-one virtual tour builder that can create real estate walkthroughs, digital stores, 360-degree previews of vehicles, and much more. With the addition of the Google Maps Street View support, iStaging have enabled a new workflow for users offering a new platform to share immersive 360-degree panoramas.

Google Cardboard can be leveraged as well, with iStaging LiveTour supporting unique web links that can be embedded onto any website allowing users to view the 360-degree panoramas in VR thanks to platform. These new features bring more to the iStaging ecosystem are a sure to offer a range of benefits to users as the product continues to develop.

As iStaging continue to bring new features to their VR Maker app, VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest so stay tuned for more.

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Create Floor Plans with iStaging VR Maker

There are a number of professionals who would find the ability to quickly and easily create floor plans to be extremely useful. Estate agents, interior designers and event organisers would all no doubt find such a capability to be extremely valuable. For those users, the new feature added to iStaging’s VR Maker app might be of considerable interest.

The new VR Maker feature utilises Apple’s ARKit toolset to recognise spaces, such as walls and floors and can provide accurate measurements. By scanning each wall of a space, a floor plan can be produced quickly and easily.

Having an accurate floor plan means that estate agents can better advertise to prospective clients. Technical personnel can better judge where to install equipment, event organisers can estimate room capacity and interior designers can draw up ideas for furniture locations.

“The floor-plan feature is an important addition to our toolset,” noted iStaging CEO Johnny Lee. “Virtual tours and floor plans are two facets of the same experience and our real estate customers expect to be able to generate them all in one go.”

The feature is fully integrated into iStaging LiveTour, which allows users to capture 360-degree pictures of real estate, events or locations and convert them into VR tours. The app is compatible with cameras such as the Ricoh Theta S, Samsung Gear 360, Insta 360 and LG 360, among others. The floor plan produced using the app can be exported as an image or added in to a LiveTour.

The floor Plan feature is currently in Beta. To use, users will need to download the VR Maker app from the Apple App Store using an iPhone 6 or newer, which has the ARKit feature installed. They will then need to select a LiveTour to add a floor plan to, and begin scanning from a corner of the room.

To assist new users, iStaging have included a full guide on how to begin using the new feature on its website. For further news on new and innovative uses of AR technology, keep checking back with VRFocus.

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iStaging’s VR Maker Integrates with Alibaba’s Tmall Platform

Last month iStaging Corp. unveiled VR Maker, an spatial capture solution enabling smartphone users to create immersive virtual tours quickly and easily. With Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in full swing in Barcelona, Spain, iStaging has announced a new collaboration with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, integrating VR Maker with Alibaba’s Tmall platform.

VR Maker key art

In an effort to bridge the virtual and physical worlds, Tmall sellers can use iStaging’s VR Maker to digitize their physical stores in virtual reality (VR). Tmall sellers can then upload their VR content on Tmall and sync VR content on Tmall with search results based on the location and distance of their physical shops.

Being the platform giant that it is, Alibaba is looking to roll out this new idea to tens of thousands of stores, eventually turning them all towards VR. With easier access to this range of interactive content, the collaboration will help fuel the ever growing pace of VR growth in China, especially as Chinese consumers a more mobile focused.

During the MWC, iStaging will be demoing VR Maker and showcasing how it has been used by the retail and e-commerce industries. What makes iStaging’s offering unique is the seamless integration of its VR Maker with Alibaba’s services, providing users with a complete VR capturing solution.

VR Maker key art

iStaging isn’t just into VR, offering augmented reality (AR) solutions to support e-commerce and retail industries, enabling them to digitise real objects using AR or home users to design their own interiors by previewing furniture in their own homes in real time and at actual size.

As iStaging continues its VR and AR development, VRFocus will keep you updated on the latest announcements.

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Life In 360°: Take A Tour Of Your Future Home With iStaging

With another weekend consigned to the history books welcome back to VRFocus for another week, another Monday, and another trip into the world of 360 degrees with Life In 360°.

Today though we’re not taking you off into the skies or under the sea, or even dealing with video for that matter as we’re simply reporting on some 360 degree related news closer to home. More specifically your potential future home courtesy of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) company iStaging.

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iStaging, which focuses on real estate and who we last spoke of on VRFocus just over a year ago has released a new mobile-centric platform comprising of an app (VR Cam), product suite and cloud storage space where estate agents can store and edit “virtual tours” of the properties they are selling in 360 degrees.

The virtual tours essentially comprise of a series of 360 degree images which are navigatable by teleportation via hotspots within the images and on the shown floor plan of the property.

“Home buyers and real estate agents are demanding a better, more efficient way of discovering and showing properties.” Explains Kevin Basset, iStaging’s Head of Marketing in a statement. “Virtual tours help real estate agents and their clients make visiting and purchasing decisions much faster. Creating these tours usually requires expensive equipment and the help of a specialist. iStaging has worked hard to deliver a comprehensive mobile solution that costs only $9/month, hardware included.”

The pricepoint allows up to ten tours to be online in the cloud space simultaneously. $19 (USD) per month gets you 25 tours and $39 per month nets you space for 100. A free, “lightweight” version of the service is also available. According to iStaging those that are using the paid subscription method will also receive a free fisheye lens for their smartphone.

You can see an example of the tours here, with this Parisian apartment which has already received over 8000 views at the time of writing. An advertising video for the platform has also been released by iStaging and you can see that below.

Life In 360° returns to our more regular offerings on Wednesday, be sure to check out VRFocus throughout the week for news from the VR and AR tech space.

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iStaging and PIXERS Partner on Tango Compatible Interior Design

In an announcement today, iStaging, a Taiwanese-based startup that uses augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) for interior design has partnered with PIXERS, an interior personalization specialist.

The collaboration will see the iStaging app utilise PIXARS products, enabling customers to try out infinite design configurations for their own personalization ideas. PIXERS products include decorative walls that can be fully personalized and applied on any flat surface at home, the office or any other space, thanks to a flexible self-adhesive material unique to the company.

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“We’ve been experimenting with VR for a while now, but personalization of virtual interiors is a totally new area,” said Mateusz Mentlewicz, CMO at PIXERS. “iStaging has a system that turns PIXERS’ products automatically into 3D and AR content. That allows us to provide our customers with an exceptionally personalized experience when they do a makeover of their living or work space

iStaging’s technology is markerless, eliminating the need to place a catalogue or a piece of paper on the floor to indicate the position of a piece of furniture. The app will be able to recognise different surfaces — walls, ceilings, floors — which will enable professional designers, DIY enthusiasts, and design aficionados to decorate homes from top to bottom.

“At iStaging, augmented reality and virtual reality are not buzzwords or something fancy. We create technologies that are useful in real life, and in this way it makes a big difference for furniture and real estate businesses,” said Kevin Basset, iStaging’s Head of Marketing. “By teaming up with PIXERS, we’re looking to enhance the user experience and provide their customers with a tool to make better purchasing decisions.”

Google’s Project Tango has been displayed extensively over the past year and PIXERS will be one of the first retailers adopting the technology. iStaging’s app is also fully compatible with Tango, engineered to work with the first Tango-enabled smartphone, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, set for release later this year

The iStaging app can be downloaded for both iOS and Android platforms, and for any future announcements keep reading VRFocus.

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AR Interior Design App Creator iStaging Raises $5m in Funding

In January VRFocus reported on Taiwanese startup iStaging launching an augmented reality (AR) application for iOS and Android. The iStaging app allows anyone to design their own interiors by previewing furniture in their own homes in real-time and at actual size. Now the company has announced its secured $5 million USD in a pre-Series A funding round.

Led by VC firm, WI Harper the funding round also included Taya Venture Capital. The new investment will allow iStaging to expand deeper into territories where it currently has satellite sales offices including Redwood City, California and Paris, France. It’ll also be able to continue its progress into the Chinese market, in cooperation with its partners in China. “We are extremely happy to benefit from the network of support that our VC investors bring to the table,” said Johnny Lee, iStaging CEO and Founder.

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“The funding will reinforce our efforts to develop and promote the best-in-class AR and VR tools for our target markets, added Kevin Basset, iStaging’s Head of Marketing. “The most used technologies are those that complement your daily work. iStaging provides exactly that. As an example, with our VR Maker, real estate agents have everything they need to capture, create, and allow their clients to visualize hundreds of properties virtually before selecting the ones to visit in person. That’s a powerful tool for increasing efficiency and winning sales, and it’s something we’re excited to promote in the U.S., Europe and China.”

iStaging doesn’t just make an AR interior design app, it caters to companies working in the home market, namely furniture makers and real estate agents. Its AR and VR products include a comprehensive set of tools — from platform-centric apps on mobile devices to VR glasses for visualization, enabling businesses to provide their clients with the capability to visualize the end-product in a realistic setting.

As iStaging continues its expansion, VRFocus will report back with the latest details.