[MereInterest]

I can see having the virtual tours as a first pass to avoid needing to drive over, but they can't replace a physical tour at all. There's no sense of scale or size in the virtual tour, as images on a screen feel much different than being somewhere. You can't tell if the house smells of mildew. You can't have stand in the kitchen while somebody walks upstairs to see how much sound carries through the floorboards.

[diggernet]

And you'll never see that one corner of the room that the camera somehow missed, where the ceiling has a hole due to the roof leaking.

[dTal]

>There's no sense of scale or size in the virtual tour, as images on a screen feel much different than being somewhere.

Judging by the ludicrous FOV estate agents typically use in photos, that's a feature (to them) - as are the other limitations you cite.

[MereInterest]

Definitely agree. It's kind of hilarious when you see the same room in two different pictures, taken from different angles. The aspect ratio of the furniture looks completely different.

There's also a trend of photoshopping furniture into an image, which I cannot stand. The entire point of photographing a room with furniture is to give a sense of the scale in it. That simply doesn't happen with photoshopped furniture, because the relative size is determined by the scaling of the images, rather than the actual size of the room/furniture. The photoshopped images should be viewed with extreme suspicion, and only the barest hair's breadth away from false advertising.

[diggernet]

Yeah, don't get me started on how offensive those furniture renders are.

[diggernet]

I agree the FOV takes some getting used to, to mentally adjust for, but I like that you can see so much more of the room that way. In listings without the super wide lens, you just see a little corner of the room in each photo.

[ethanbond]

But they aren’t the buyers

[dTal]

They are the buyers of the software.