Selling Los Altos Real Estate With Photosynth

Back in the late 90’s, I thought it was cool to be one of the few Los Altos Realtors to use software that “stitched” photos together to create “virtual tours” of my real estate listings.  Flash forward to today and I now can use Photosynth. 

Photosynth creates a futuristic 3-d experience with user submitted photos.  Could this service replace real estate virtual tours and/or ad pizzaz to listings that only use still photos?   Take a look and judge for yourself.

According to it’s website, Photosynth allows users to: 

“Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience.”

The process to create a “Synth” is fairly simple.  Take a bunch photos of your subject.  Note: the more photos one takes, the better the Synth.  Unfortunately, the more photos one takes, the longer the download time.  In fact, It took me awhile to begin the process because Photosynth’s server was overloaded.  

I took 37 photos of my living room fireplace and mantle.  As recommended in the instructional video, I took the photos from a variety of angles and zoom positions.   Once the photos were downloaded, the Synth was created.  Below is my Synth of my living room fireplace and mantle. 

Thanks to Galen Ward of Seattle’s Rain City Real Estate Guide for alerting me to this service.  For an additional viewpoint, read Marlow Harris’ post on 360Digest.  Note: because this is their “beta” version, Photosynth currently only runs on PC’s (XP and Vista).