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Must see: Tour Seinfeld's apartment with virtual reality headset

Must see: Tour Seinfeld's apartment with virtual reality headset

Fans of the show can now explore a virtual 3D model of the iconic New York residence, thanks to one Web designer's painstaking effort.


By BD+C Staff | March 6, 2014
Greg Miller used the Unity coding language to create "Jerry's Place." All render
Greg Miller used the Unity coding language to create "Jerry's Place." All renderings: Greg Miller

After two months of taking screen captures and coding, Web designer Greg Miller has re-created a place intimately familiar to many Americans: Jerry Seinfeld's sitcom apartment.

With the use of the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, fans of the show can now explore a virtual 3D model of the iconic New York residence.

Users can walk around Seinfeld's apartment, explore all the rooms, and are free to find all 11 episode-specific references that Miller put into his virtual re-creation.

To start, Miller sketched out the entire apartment in a 3D model, he told Fast Company. Then, over two months, he watched Seinfeld and examined screencaps to figure out the minute details of the apartment. He even found 1990s-era labels for Jerry's cereal collection.

Don't own an Oculus Rift? You can still explore the apartment here. "Jerry's Place" is Miller's tribute to fellow Seinfeld fans.

Oculus Rift was designed by Palmer Luckey as a reasonably affordable ($499) device for gaming, but startups like PocketCake are using the technology to bring virtual reality simulations to the architecture and real estate markets. 

Luckey told Fast Company that he believes that the future of gaming lies in virtual reality, and thus his headset was created as a way for users to feel as if they are inside the game they're playing. It uses sensors to follow the movement of your head as you look around, cretaing an immersive gaming experience. But it works for exploring your favorite television character's home, too.

 

Here are screen captures of views of Jerry's Place through the Oculus Rift headset:

 

Watch this VR model progress video from Greg Miller: 

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