Mobile VR Experiences Virtual House Tour

Abstract

The project “Mobile VR Experiences: Virtual House Tour” focuses on enhancing architectural visualization through an accessible, mobile-based Virtual Reality (VR) solution. Traditional visualization methods, such as blueprints and static renders, often fail to convey spatial scale, lighting, and atmosphere, while high-end VR systems remain costly. This project addresses these challenges by developing a realistic and immersive virtual house tour application using Unity integrated with the Google Cardboard SDK, optimized for standard smartphones. Detailed 3D models of structures and interiors were created in Blender, ensuring both aesthetic quality and architectural accuracy. The system provides intuitive navigation through gaze-based interaction and Bluetooth keyboard controls for user comfort. Performance testing confirmed low latency, high frame rates , and efficient resource utilization. The final application offers a cost-effective, high-performance visualization tool that democratizes immersive architectural experiences for designers, clients, and builders alike.

Introduction

The project “Mobile VR Experiences: Virtual House Tour” aims to make immersive architectural visualization accessible to the general public by leveraging mobile virtual reality (VR). Traditional visualization tools such as blueprints, static renderings, and physical models lack the ability to convey a true sense of space, light, and scale. While high-end VR systems solve this problem, they remain cost-prohibitive. This project bridges that gap by developing a cost-effective, mobile-based VR solution using widely available smartphones and simple VR viewers like Google Cardboard.

Objectives

The project’s main goals include:

1. Developing a highly realistic, immersive VR application in Unity optimized for mobile performance.

2. Creating accurate, high-fidelity 3D architectural assets in Blender for realistic visualization.

3. Delivering a cost-effective alternative to traditional rendering or physical modeling.

4. Implementing intuitive navigation, including Bluetooth keyboard support, to enhance accessibility and comfort.

Literature Review

Prior studies emphasize the importance of presence, immersion, and user comfort in VR design. Research by McMahan (2021), Whyte (2022), and Diniz (2022) underlines VR’s power in improving stakeholder communication and democratizing architectural visualization. Technical works by Jones and Lee (2021) and Sousa et al. (2021) provide guidance on performance optimization, while Lin & Hsu (2023) and Patel & Kumar (2022) contribute insights into motion sickness reduction and gaze-based interaction. Collectively, these studies validate the feasibility of mobile VR as a practical tool for architectural exploration.

System Design and Architecture

The system is structured in modular layers, from hardware and OS to the Unity runtime and application logic. Core components include:

• Bluetooth Input Handler and Unity Input Handler for smooth user interaction.

• Movement Controller, Scene Manager, and Physics Engine for realistic navigation and spatial feedback.

• 3D World Renderer and VR Camera Rig for stereoscopic visualization and head tracking.

• VR UI Layer and Android/VR SDK integration for seamless mobile performance.

The architecture emphasizes modularity, extensibility, and real-time optimization, ensuring low latency and stable frame rates on resource-constrained devices.

Implementation

The virtual home environment was modeled in Blender and imported into Unity, where performance optimizations—like polygon reduction and texture compression—were applied. The Google Cardboard SDK and Unity XR toolkit enabled stereoscopic rendering and real-time gyroscope-based head tracking. Navigation was implemented via Bluetooth keyboard controls for flexible and user-friendly exploration.

Results and Evaluation

Extensive testing on mobile devices demonstrated excellent performance:

• Latency: < 20 ms, ensuring responsive visuals and minimal motion sickness.

• Frame rate: consistently above 60 FPS, maintaining immersion.

• CPU and memory usage: optimized through multithreading and efficient resource allocation.

After optimization, the system exhibited smooth performance even in complex scenes, confirming its viability as a high-quality, low-cost architectural visualization solution.

Conclusion

The \"Mobile VR Experiences: VIRTUAL HOUSE TOUR\" project successfully achieved all of its established objectives. A highly realistic, immersive virtual tour application was developed using Unity, integrated with precision models from Blender. Crucially, the final application functions seamlessly as a cost-effective Mobile VR experience, maximizing user accessibility by relying on standard smartphones and the VR BOX. The navigation system ensures a comfortable user experience for all individuals. Furthermore, rigorous performance evaluation confirmed the technical success of the system, demonstrating consistently low latency (< 20ms), high frame rate (> 60 FPS), and efficient memory and CPU utilization. This solution stands as a highly practical, ready-to-use tool for pre-construction architectural visualization, empowering clients to confidently experience their future home.

References

[1] R. K. McMahan, “Exploring the Role of Presence in Virtual Environments,” Journal of Architectural Computing, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 45–52, 2021. [2] J. Whyte, “Virtual Reality and the Built Environment,” Architectural Engineering and Design Management, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 312–326, 2022. [3] S. A. Diniz, “Mobile Virtual Reality for Architecture: Democratizing Immersion,” Procedia Computer Science, vol. 196, pp. 240–248, 2022. [4] T. Jones and K. Lee, “Smartphone-Based VR Systems: Design and Performance,” IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 77645–77658, 2021. [5] Philipp Maruhn, VR Pedestrian Simulator Studies at Home: Comparing Google Cardboards to Simulators in the Lab and Reality, Technical University of Munich Research Paper, 2021. [6] P. Sousa et al., “Optimization Techniques for Real-Time Mobile VR Rendering,” International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, 2021. [7] C. Lin and H. Hsu, “Reducing Motion Sickness in VR Through Controlled Locomotion,” Human–Computer Interaction Journal, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 95–106, 2023. [8] A. Patel and M. Kumar, “Gaze-Based Interaction in Mobile Virtual Environments,” ACM Transactions on Interactive Systems, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–18, 2022.

Copyright

Copyright © 2025 Kamalnath V, Kumaran G L. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.