What's new at Metropix?

We're pleased to announce that a raft of enhancements have been made to the Metropix service since our last update. The range of furnishings in 3D Walkthroughs has been extended by the addition of new living rooms, designed for smaller homes, and new dining rooms as well. And there are more major upgrades due shortly, including the ability to customise the overall look of the property in a traditional or modern style.

Here are two very recent examples of 3D Walkthroughs with the new funishings:

• A small property with one of the new compact living room layouts: click here to view


• The new dining rooms: click here to view

If you haven't watched a 3D Walkthrough for a while, you might notice a few other changes. Firstly, it's no coincidence that these examples have photos, as this feature has been popular and most clients now provide pictures for the majority of 3D Walkthroughs.

Also new are the friendlier design of the page, and new titles in the video which show a property description (e.g. "Acacia Avenue, Watford"), room names and also room measurements where available.

Two other new features are the send to a friend function, and the ability to download the video to your PC to watch offline. And an exciting new possibility is the ability to view 3D Walkthroughs on iPods and mobile phones — just click the button and transfer the MP4 file to your device. More on this area will be announced later in the year, including support for something called podcasting. It's more useful than it sounds, we promise!

Another development is that we can now produce a 3D Walkthrough of any floor plan, regardless of what's on the plan. Previously a small proportion of floor plans could not be reproduced in 3D, including those with corner items and buildings with a floor that's split over two or more levels.

While watching a 3D Walkthrough, you might also notice that the video is smoother than previously.

Finally for now, on the floor plans side of things, we've increased the quality of our GIF and WMF files. The WMF files in particular are now better accepted by popular software packages such as the TEAM system.