Want to buy a home in Ireland? Try it out in Virtual Reality

By Jon Martindale March 7, 2016

A virtual tour with Samsung and Sherry FitzGerald

While virtual reality is going to offer a lot of exciting advances for gaming and social interaction, letting people do things they can’t in the real world goes far beyond shooting space aliens and commanding armies. An Irish estate agency, Sherry FitzGerald, is using it to show potential home buyers what their house could look like before it’s even built.

The technology being used to make this happen is the Samsung Gear VR headset, which offers Samsung Galaxy users the chance to try out basic, head-tracked virtual reality. While it lacks positional tracking and motion controls, it offers a high-resolution VR experience that home buyers are now utilizing to preview their potential home purchases.

Although the scheme is currently undergoing trials, Sherry FitzGerald is planning to extend it to every one of its offices within the next few weeks. It’s hoped that with the technology letting people see a high-resolution version of what the house will be like, they’ll be more convinced to put down a deposit than if they just saw floorplans and blueprints (as per SiliconRepublic).

Related: Samsung Gear VR review

On top of that though, virtual reality offers something that no image, even digitally created ones can, and that’s a sense of scale. With “generous floor to ceiling heights,” in the homes that Sherry FitzGerald is showcasing, letting users actually see with their own eyes how much headroom they’ll have, is far more effective than simple giving them some 2D images to look at.

The reason Sherry FitzGerald is so confident in this scheme though, is because it tried it out previously. While this is the first time it’s shown unbuilt homes to people in VR, it previously did walk-throughs of already existing homes, before taking potential buyers there, in order to gauge their reactions to the virtual and real version of the houses.

How do you feel about the idea of buying a house based around a virtual walk-through? While it might seem crazy, surely it’s better than just looking at plans.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Computing Coordinator

Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…

Computing

Get up to $900 off the Dell XPS 15 and Dell XPS 17 today

A Dell XPS 15 laptop on an office desk next to a monitor.

It’s all change at Dell this year with the Dell XPS 16 replacing the Dell XPS 17 and the Dell XPS 15 gradually seeing fewer updates. That means if you’re still keen to snag a Dell XPS 15 or 17, your chance to do so is running out. That’s why it’s great to see some excellent laptop deals for both models with up to $900 to be saved at the moment. If you’re looking for a new laptop, read on while we guide you through what each laptop has to offer.
Dell XPS 17 -- $1,949, was $2,849

The Dell XPS 17 remains a good option for anyone seeking a powerful laptop that works well as a desktop replacement. It has a 13th-generation Intel Core i7-13700H processor with a massive 32GB of memory so it’s ideal for all kinds of productivity-based tasks such as if you need to manage many spreadsheets at once or if you just prefer to have a lot of windows open at once. It also has 1TB of SSD storage while it can handle plenty of gaming too thanks to its Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. Its display is a 17-inch full HD+ model with 1920 x 1200 resolution, anti-glare properties, and 500 nits of brightness so it looks great. Other quality of life improvements include plenty of USB-C ports, up to 14 hours of battery life, a great cooling system, and a form factor that means it squeezes a 17-inch display into a 15-inch form size. It also has a large edge-to-edge backlit keyboard, comfortable touchpad, and large keycaps so it feels good to work on as you’d expect from the makers of some of the best laptops.

Computing

This Dell gaming laptop with an RTX 3050 is discounted to $700

Dell G15 gaming laptop on a table.

You don't need to spend thousands of dollars to be able to get a decent gaming laptop, as there are budget-friendly options like the Dell G15 with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. It's currently even cheaper at just $700, following a $200 discount on its original price of $900. We're not sure how much time is remaining on this offer though, so if you think this is the perfect gaming laptop for you, stop hesitating and proceed with the purchase immediately to make sure that you don't miss out on the savings.

Why you should buy the Dell G15 gaming laptop
The Dell G15 is highlighted in our list of the best gaming laptops as the best budget gaming laptop under $1,000, as it provides dependable performance while staying affordable for most gamers. It's equipped with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card, which is perfect for budget gaming, and pairs it with the 13th-generation Intel Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM. These specifications are more than enough to be able to play the best PC games, though you may have to dial down the settings for the more demanding titles.

Computing

Intel’s big bet on efficient GPUs might actually work

An Intel Meteor Lake processor socketed in a motherboard.

Intel has a lot riding on its next-gen Battlemage graphics architecture, and a very early benchmark shows some promising signs for performance. An Intel Lunar Lake CPU packing a low-power integrated Battlemage GPU was reportedly spotted in the SiSoftware benchmark database. It boasts not only higher performance than Intel's Meteor Lake chips, but also much better efficiency.

User @miktdt on X (formerly Twitter) spotted the result, which appears to come from an early qualification sample of the HP Spectre x360 14. The benchmark picked up that the laptop was using a Lunar Lake CPU, which is said to come with the Xe2-LPG architecture, a lower-power version of Battlemage.