Prudential plans ‘immersive’ virtual toursBy Andrea BrambilaCreated 2010-03-10 08:36Global real estate giant Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services has launched acollaborative, virtual research and development laboratory, the company announced at its annualconvention in Austin, Texas, this week.The venture, Prudential Real Estate Collaborative Innovation Partnership (PRECIP), will be a”collaboratory,” or virtual lab “without walls,” to marry the expertise of outside technologycompanies and the Prudential Real Estate network, the company said. Owned by PrudentialFinancial Inc., the network has about 60,000 sales associates and about 1,700 offices.”It’s not a traditional laboratory in its own right. It’s a combination of three things: innovation, aresearch and development effort, and collaboration between experts in the (tech) industry and(real estate) practitioners. We think it should allow us to bring new tools to the market evenfaster,” said Jim Mallozzi, the company’s chairman and CEO.”It’s different from more traditional research because it utilizes network and collaboration toolsto form research teams that in past approaches may not have shared a common research focus orseen how their various perspectives could easily come together around specific tasks,” said SteveVan Anden, the project’s interim director and a longtime consultant to Prudential Real Estate.The company says the laboratory will focus on four areas: video gaming and sensory spaces;social networking and media sharing; mobile computing; and the application of semantic Websearch engines research.The latter refers to search engines that display results based on word meaning rather thankeyword page rank. The point is to actually answer a user’s question, such as, “What is the bestItalian restaurant in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood?” — rather than give them theinformation to figure out the answer for themselves.”If you ask Google a question, it doesn’t give you an answer, it gives you a list,” Van Anden said.”We want to give (users) a very specific answer.”The company has already signed a letter of intent with Montreal-based virtual world developerImmersive Design Studio (IDS) to create one of the project’s first priorities: a virtual, immersivehome tour. The company showed off a prototype of such a tour this week at the convention.”This is actually ‘Avatar’ meets real estate. We demonstrated how (two people) could both be indifferent rooms at opposite ends of the country and be holographically next to each other. Buyerscan start to experience homes and what they would do with (a home) even before they actuallysee it,” Mallozzi said.While the tour prototype uses traditional navigation with a mouse or joystick, the project hopesto incorporate technology that IDS has already developed that tracks the body as it moves, VanAnden said. People will be able to project a to-scale version of a room onto a wall and “walkthrough” a room without clicking or wearing any special equipment.The prototype’s sensory-rich, immersive-world technology comes from already existing gamingplatforms, the company said.”IDS has been working in ‘hybrid space’ trying to look at how you can merge the virtual and thephysical where those forces are not opposed as one over the other. Hybrid space is the core ofIDS research and development and especially for virtual house tours it makes a lot of sense,” saidThomas Soetens, co-founder of IDS.Although the tours are not ready for release yet, Mallozzi said the project could be ready in the”not-too-distant future.”In the meantime, Prudential is seeking other potential tech partners for the effort and hoping to”connect the dots” between the real estate industry and other fields, like video gaming.Van Anden said a key objective for the collaborative tech effort “is to dramatically increase thenumber of participants and perspectives that shape our research efforts.”The company is accepting applications from members of its own network who would like toparticipate in the project. The project has attracted a lot of interest already, the company said.While the real estate company has consulted agents in its network about technology before, theproject will give them “a more active voice” to set the company’s research agenda, Van Andensaid.”There will be many hubs in the collaboratory network, including PRERS offices across thecountry, technology partners, and importantly, the offices of participating brokers and salesprofessionals,” he said.The company has not projected a specific budget for the project, Mallozzi said, but he expectsthe project to attract investors over time.