Earlier this year, we saw a brief clip published by Luma showing off an extremely clean interior of an apartment. For a few days, people were speculating. Was this Zip NeRF? Had Luma figured out how to crack indoor spaces? The answer to the latter question is a resounding, yes! The NeRFs are seriously clean and unlike ZipNeRF is available to download and use right now. Looking back at the original post from May, they've managed to increase the quality dramatically and the results are spectacular.
Real estate has long been thought of as an obvious use case for NeRFs to disrupt. Luma has now supercharged this and it's hard to imagine going back to existing methods. Keep in mind that NeRFs do not require any special camera. They can be generated with any camera whether that's an iPhone, a DSLR/mirrorless, or even a film camera!
Today we see a new app unveiled by the Luma AI team and the scans look really clean. This further reduces the amount of crew that's necessary to help lease out your space. This seems like a major avenue for companies such as Zillow, Redfin, Compass, Apartments.com, Expedia, Airbnb, this seems like a no-brainer to begin implementing. This further reduces the amount of crew that's necessary to help lease out your space.
As of right now, you are only able to upload footage through the Flythroughs app, but I imagine that will be expanded in a similar way to the browser upload for the standard Luma app. Luma has left little to the imagination about how Flythroughs can be used to transform the real estate and hospitality industry.
Given Google's recent blogs about Immersive View and using NeRFs, it would be interesting to know if we might see a potential Luma/Google collaboration down the road. If I were a Matterport user, I would be reconsidering my camera investment considering all you need now is a camera and the Flythroughs app.
Here are some sample videos of what Luma Flythrough users have generated, but more can be seen on their website here: https://lumalabs.ai/flythroughs.
According to Luma's tweet, Flythroughs is a brand new model that is being used to generate the NeRF. The maximum capture time right now is three minute video and can work on iPhone version 11 and above. Currently these are not interactive, but again, I think that we will see this feature down the road from the Luma team.
Today is an extremely exciting day that promises to revolutionize how people can see objective views on apartments, potential stays, and vacations. Luma has taken another step forwards into translating their goal of making 3D accessible for everyone.
