Pixel Streaming: why the browser is the best place for a real estate experience

The problem with downloads

High-end real-time 3D needs a powerful graphics card. For years that meant two bad options for property sales: ship a heavy app that buyers have to download and install — and that most of their laptops cannot run — or cut the quality until it runs on anything and stops looking like the real home.

How Pixel Streaming works

Pixel Streaming, part of Unreal Engine, takes a third route — and lets lightweight devices display higher-quality graphics than they could render themselves. The engine runs on a remote machine — a cloud server with a proper GPU. Every frame it renders is encoded into a video stream and sent to the buyer’s browser. The buyer’s mouse, keyboard and touch input travel back to the engine, which responds and renders the next frame.

• The plugin inside Unreal compresses each frame and sends it as a media stream.
• A signalling and web server connects the browser to the engine and serves the player page.
• WebRTC carries the stream peer to peer, for the lowest possible latency.
• Input — clicks, keys, touches and custom events — goes straight back to the engine.

To the buyer it feels like a website. Nothing is downloaded except the stream itself.

What the buyer needs

A modern browser that supports WebRTC — Chrome or Firefox on desktop, or a browser on iOS or Android. No executables, content files or installation. A laptop or tablet gives the full experience; phones work too, but a small screen cannot show everything a configurator or unit search offers.

Why it is great for selling

• One link, every channel. The same experience works in the sales meeting, in a follow-up email and on the development website.
• Full quality on any device. The buyer’s hardware no longer limits what they see.
• Always up to date. Prices, availability and finishes are updated once, on the server, and every buyer sees the change immediately.
• Insight. Because everything happens in one place, it can be measured — which units buyers open, which finishes they compare.

Servers, latency and cost

Streaming quality depends on distance to the server, so we run our demos from Europe and the United States — Residential Development 01 streams from Europe, Residential Development 02 from the US. Cost depends on how many people can use the experience at the same time. Our hosting starts at $149 per month with two concurrent viewers included; the first month comes with the project.

Beyond the browser: touch screens and VR

Pixel Streaming is our main delivery route, but the same Unreal project can also run as a build on a large touch screen in a sales office or showroom, or in virtual reality on a headset. One production, three ways to show it.

Want to feel it? Open one of our live demos — it takes a few seconds and needs nothing but this browser.