Orvala — Answers
The questions developers actually ask.
Everything a development team asks before committing, answered in full and without a form in the way.
Getting started
Who is Orvala for?
Residential developers selling off-plan, their in-house sales teams, and the marketing agencies working for them. Projects range from a boutique block of six apartments to a phased estate of five hundred or more. If buyers are reserving homes before they can walk through them, this is built for you.
Do you need our 3D model?
It helps, but no. If you have a model from your architect or visualisation studio we work from that — 3ds Max, Revit, SketchUp, Blender, FBX and IFC all import cleanly. If you do not have one, architectural drawings are enough; building it adds roughly a week and is quoted separately.
What do you need from us to start?
A model or drawings, a spreadsheet of units with areas and prices, floor plans per unit type, and your brand assets. Nothing has to be final — prices and availability are editable for the life of the project.
VR, tours and configurators
What is the difference between VR and a virtual tour?
A virtual tour is a set of rendered 360 spheres: the buyer stands on one spot, looks around, then jumps to the next spot. A VR walkthrough is a running simulation built in Unreal Engine: the buyer walks continuously through the apartment at true scale, opens doors, moves the sun, and changes the finishes while standing there. Both are useful and they cost very different amounts. Most suppliers sell the first and call it the second — ours are labelled separately, and the difference is set out in full on the VR page.
Does the VR walkthrough need a PC?
No. The standard delivery is a standalone build that runs on a Meta Quest 3 or 3S by itself — no computer on the stand, no cables, no operator. A PC VR build is available where a client wants maximum fidelity and already has the machine for it, and the same world also runs flat on a touchscreen for the visitors who will not put a headset on.
Can we start with virtual tours and add VR later?
Yes, and most developers do. The 360 tours go on the website for everybody, and the real-time build arrives for the sales gallery once the scheme is far enough along to justify it. The model and the materials are shared, so the second commission is a fraction of what it would cost standing alone.
What is a property configurator?
A real-time 3D view of a home where the buyer chooses the options themselves — cladding, roof finish, glazing, decking, interior lining and the time of day — and sees the building change in front of them. It opens in an ordinary browser, every combination has its own shareable link, and the enquiry that follows carries the specification the buyer built. There is a live one on our configurator page you can use without asking us for anything.
Does a configurator replace variant renders?
Largely, yes. Six cladding options across five camera angles is thirty renders, and thirty more the day the range changes. One real-time scene covers every combination from every angle, and adding a finish afterwards is a data change rather than a new commission.
Studio services
Can we buy renders or modelling without the platform?
Yes. 3D modelling, photoreal stills, animation, campaign content and branding are all available on their own — they are listed on the services page. Plenty of our projects start as a set of renders and become a sales platform six months later, and nothing is wasted when that happens, because the work is built to carry the next thing from the start.
Our development does not have a brand yet. Can you do that too?
Yes — naming, logo, typography, colour and a short set of guidelines a printer and an agency can both work from, plus the UI design for the platform and the website. Where a developer already has a house style, we apply it exactly rather than reinterpreting it. Figma files are handed over, organised and labelled.
Do we own the model and the files afterwards?
Yes. Models, renders, footage and brand files are handed over in open formats — 3ds Max, Blender, FBX, glTF, USD for geometry; layered files and Figma for design. There is no version of this where leaving means starting again.
How it works
Will it slow down or crash on a buyer's phone?
No. Plenty of interactive property sites do, because they push the heavy work onto the visitor's device — the picture degrades, the phone heats up, the battery drains, and the buyer leaves. Ours is engineered so that does not happen: it opens fast, stays smooth, and holds up on mid-range phones and weak connections. Open the demo on your own phone and judge it there rather than taking our word for it.
Can buyers compare apartments?
Yes. A buyer can filter to a shortlist, save what they like, and compare on plan, size, aspect and price. Saved apartments persist between visits, so someone returning a week later picks up where they left off — and your sales team can see exactly what they saved.
What does it need to run?
A browser. No app, no plugin, no minimum GPU. It has been built to hold up on a five-year-old phone on a weak connection, because that is where a lot of viewings actually happen.
Running it
What happens when prices or availability change?
You change them in the editor and the site updates immediately — the list, the building, and any brochures generated afterwards. Re-rendering is only needed if the building itself changes.
How is Orvala hosted?
On a global CDN, included in the monthly platform fee, with your own domain and an SSL certificate. There is nothing for your IT team to provision and no server for you to maintain.
Whose brand does the site carry?
Yours. Every project ships in the development's own identity, on your own domain. Orvala is the platform underneath — buyers never need to know we exist.
Where do the leads go?
Into a panel your sales team can work from directly, with a record of which apartments each visitor opened, filtered for and saved. It exports, and it can push into an existing CRM on the larger plans.
Commercial
How is a project priced?
Every development is scoped individually. The price depends on the number of apartments, how many buildings and viewpoints are involved, whether a 3D model already exists, and which of the three packages fits. Send us the basics — location, unit count, whether you have a model — and you get a fixed quote and a delivery date back, usually within a working day. There is also a monthly platform and hosting fee that covers the editor, lead panel and hosting for the life of the project.
Can agencies use Orvala?
Yes — there is a partner programme for it. Agencies and marketing studios deliver Orvala under their own brand and keep the client relationship, with a dedicated technical contact, shared project tracking and partner terms. Several platform features exist because agencies asked for them.
Can it handle a phased masterplan?
Yes. Phases can be released, held back, or shown as coming soon, and one project can carry several hundred units across multiple buildings without splitting into separate sites.
How does this work for Gulf projects?
The interface runs right-to-left in Arabic, prices display in any currency, and the offline kiosk build is designed for sales galleries where connectivity is unreliable.
Book a call
See your own building running like this.
Send us the development — units, floors, and whatever drawings or model you already have. We come back with what it would look like, what it would cost, and how long it would take.