Hi there, I am pretty new to sketchup and I wonder what the best VR / AR is to be used with sketchup.
We do functional planning of machines and buildings and we are interested to verify our planning with the customer by virtually walking around…
Any recommendation on what do use for the beginning (hololens might be a litte too expensive for now 
)
Thanks, Oliver
I’d recommend looking into Enscape. It runs directly as Sketchup plugin and dramatically enhances the visual fidelity. It lets you do the usual stuff such as rendering pictures, videos, 360° panoramas, comes with a variety of premade props (already with Sketchup proxies - handy!) and lets you generate standalone web and .exe-presentations. We started using Enscape a year ago on a HTC Vive and our clients absolutely love it, the feedback has been overwhelming. We might be upgrading to a HP Reverb some time in 2020 though…
Other than that: Twinmotion is currently free until November and was recently updated with a Sketchup connection plugin that lets you transfer data from Sketchup directly to TM. Feature wise it’s comparable to Enscape though it feels rather clunky to use. On the plus side it has some nice tricks up its sleeve like animated props or wind and weather effects (rain, snow…). There are no news about the pricing yet which makes me kinda hesitant to fully dive into it. Enscape offers a free 14day trial and a monthly subscription after that so there’s not that much of a risk financially.
There are others on the market (I think I have tried them all!), but Enscape is quick, easy and reliable with basics that you can build good presentations on. The direct coordination with SU is probably the best practical advantage it has. TwinMotion has all the bells and whistles for a killer presentation but has more of a learning curve. There is the unknown of future cost but it is tied with Unreal Engine so there is potential for it to be integrated somewhat in the future, which means building far more sophisticated work - if that is important, or even has any value at all for you. There is a third contender - which is the only one with AR - Kubity. Easy to use, but not up there with the sophistication of either of the others. The AR is a really useful tool for reasons that most people don’t realise, and which would probably enhance your type of work. I can elaborate more on that if you are interested.
thanks so far for the answers.
So I understand that there is no way to to the walk-through with a VR/AR Headset directly out of sketchup? I always need a VR / AR software ?
Thanks, Oliver
There is a VR Viewer for Enscape but the visuals are pretty barebones. If you want to just go for the technical approach then this might be your go-to solution. If you wanted to incorporate VR into your customer journey to enhance the sales experience then looking into said renderers might be worth a shot.