Transcript: Pilot One is a Contender for Real Estate Photographers11024
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| WGAN-TV Labpano Pilot One Camera is a Contender for Real Estate Photographers | We Get Around Network Forum Founder Dan Smigrod Transcript: Pilot One is a Contender for Real Estate Photographers Transcript (video above) - Hi all, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Monday February 10, 2020 and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. Our topic tonight; my review, my beta testing of the Labpano Pilot One. What's my conclusion the Labpano Pilot One 360 one click camera is a contender for real estate photographers that want to offer 360 Virtual Tours and do Google Street View map updates for storefronts. Those two things. My recommendation is based on loaner of a Pilot One camera, it's a kind of a beta hardware and software but I been loaned a Pilot One camera Labpano sent it to me, it arrived on Thursday January 23, 2020. And my recommendation is also based on a discussion that I had with some super successful Google Street View subject matter expert photographers at the 2019 Google Street View Summit in London. These are power users of the Labpano Pilot Era: and that's the big brother of the the Pilot One. Labpano is presently accepting Pilot One pre-orders through the first week of March 2020 and I have a link for you that you can get a free GPS module that's valued at $129. So free with the link WGAN.info/Pilot One. PILOT One, excuse me, P-I-L-O-T O-N-E, Pilot One. WGAN.info/pilotone With the Labpano had previously announced that the Pilot One would begin shipping in late February 2020, it has since updated the shipping schedule to March 2020 and that's at the soonest as a result of the CoronaVirus affecting staffing at its China based manufacturing facility. Okay so, what did I hope to do? There were three reasons that I accepted LabPano's invite to beta test and review the Pilot One. First, I was super excited about creating Google Street View map updates and creating new Google Street View "blue lines" ... Essentially Google Street View where there is presently no Google Street View, that's the first thing that I was super-excited about testing. Second, is to create a PilotTour using the Labpano new Virtual Tour platform in the cloud, featuring auto creation of tours, that's using a process called V-SLAM. Super-excited to see how Labpano new Virtual Tour platform in the cloud would automatically create Virtual Tours without a photographer having to create a constellation or organize the 360s into the tour. So I really wanted to create PilotTours with the Pilot One camera. And the third reason that I wanted to accept the Labpano's invite to beta test and review the Pilot One was to create EyeSpy360 virtual tours using the 360 panorama shots from the Pilot One. Unfortunately or fortunately Labpano is having so much success with pre-sales, I have not received the GPS module and their recommended backpack as of [10 Feb 2020] in order to create Google Street View with Pilot One. And, also unfortunately PilotTour is still in very early development and I'll talk more about my PilotTour testing and recommendations later in my review. I did successfully shoot 360 HDR panoramas with the Pilot One to create multiple EyeSpy360 virtual tours. If you'd like to see examples of my EyeSpy360 tours, come to the We Get Around Network Forum, WGANforum.com and just use the search box, search for EyeSpy360 or search for Pilot One, either way you're going to end up seeing examples of EyeSpy360 tours that I created using the Pilot One, 360 degrees spherical panoramas. In particular I think, two of the tours, two are the We Get Around Network Forum discussions to look at that include examples, one is titled; My Third EyeSpy360 Tour Workflow for furnished Apartment in Atlanta and the other is entitled My EyeSpy360 tour Example Of a Senior Living Apartment: Easy, Fast and Affordable Tour Creation. So my initial thoughts from using the Pilot One as an Apple fanboy, the highest recommendation, the highest compliment that I can make for the Pilot One is that the is that the user experience strives to be Mac-like. And while the user experience is not there yet, I can imagine that the that the Labpano team will achieve a great Mac-like user experience with firmware updates. Well, I have not taken 50 plus 360 cameras for spin, literally there are that many 3D and 360 cameras today 50 plus cameras. That said, I can't imagine that the Pilot One, 2.2 inch touchscreen with logical menus ... I can imagine that the Pilot One 2.2 inch touchscreen with the logical menus is a huge differentiator particularly when it comes to overriding the automatic modes to change camera settings. So it's very easy using the menus to change exposure compensation, the EV value or the WB; the white balance value or focus distance. So not things that you have to remember and press a button and it's a mystery that literally having a touchscreen with menus, it's super-easy to change settings. So that makes a lot of sense for me. I shot with enough 360 cameras to say, it would be really hard for me to go back to using any other 360 camera that does not have a touchscreen as large as the Pilot One; does not have Mac-like menus, it's really, it's a terrific advantage as part of the 360 Virtual Tour creation process. So about shooting 360 spherical panoramas. When I shot three Atlanta Senior Living Apartments using the Pilot One, again these examples are in the We Get Around Network Forum, I kept the settings on automatic with HDR enabled. The in-camera stitched image quality is excellent and I like that the images are typically 11 to 14 Mega Pixel, mega byte, MB JPEG images. They're just big deep files that if you do need to do some editing on I'm just happy about that. So it may be helpful for context that nearly 10 years ago I was using a Canon 5D Mark III with the Sigma 8 millimeter fisheye lens and a Nodal Ninja R1 rotator to shoot 360s. A lot of money, a lot of gear, plus then using two different software's PTGui Pro and Pano2VR to both stitch the images together and clean up the patch where the tripod is located. So important, for the vast majority of professional real estate photographers that require an easy, fast and affordable workflow for shooting 360s, the Pilot One fulfills this requirement. It's so important, I have to say it again. For the vast majority of professional real estate photographers that require an easy, fast and affordable workflow for shooting 360s, the Pilot One fulfills this requirement. I'm going to defer to others to debate the quality of the 360 panoramas, versus other 360 cameras versus the price of the cameras and related accessories. As I just shared with you the Pilot One touchscreen with the Mac-like experience for shooting 360s really are the deciding factor for me. I could imagine that what you look at my 360 images shot with the Pilot One, again the examples are in the We Get Around Network Forum, WGANforum.com, you might conclude that the HDR is not so great or that the color saturation is not the best I would say blame me first for not changing the exposure compensation, the EV, and not doing any post-production to tweak the color saturation and white balance. That said the images are good enough for me straight out of the camera, to use them in the tours without tweaking a thing. I did get a little taste of the Labpano Pilot Tour Virtual Tour platform. Again it's an early, early, early beta. I recommend that Labpano abandon offering Pilot Tour Virtual Tour service and instead focus on third-party integrations with as many of the 130 plus 3D/360 Virtual Tour platforms as possible. I consider the Labpano Pilot Tour Virtual Tour platform in the cloud more of a proof-of-concept to show what is possible with deep integration between the Pilot One camera and other platforms. When possible using the Pilot Open System to create a much shorter and easier workflow for creating 360 Virtual Tours. I could imagine that camera manufacturers like Labpano are obsessed with incremental improvements in the hardware and software and actually the greatest value add Labpano could add is seamless integration with Virtual Tour platforms and software that already exists. It's obviously headed in that direction with the Labpano Pilot Open System. So I can see the potential when the Pilot Tour platform is working that isn't that awesome, because it automatically places and connects the 360s. That said, there are other platforms that already do that such as EyeSpy360. And the EyeSpy360 platform is far more advanced. They've had a, let's call it a five-year head start on deeply understanding Virtual Tours for real estate agents and brokers. And Labpano really needs to come to the conclusion that it's in the camera business, it's not in the tour business. It's really difficult to do both and as I'll talk about in a moment, well, offering, I'll get to the point. (And I should say parenthetically when I'm asked for a recommendation regarding which 3D or 360 camera to buy for real estate photographers or for real estate agents, I always recommend determining the use case first, then to look at the Virtual Tour platform or platforms that are on their short list of the 360, excuse me the 130 plus Virtual Tour platforms and software that exists today. Only then look at which camera or cameras have easy, fast and seamless experience, have an easy, fast and seamless experience with those Virtual Tour platform or platforms.) So at the very least, Labpano should prioritize deep integration with the following eight 3D/360 Virtual Tour platforms with the Pilot Open System allowing for this easy, fast and seamless experience. Those eight are in an alphabetical order, Cupix, C-U-P-I-X, EyeSpy360, Google Street View, Matterport, Panoskin, ThreeSixty tours, T-H-R-E-E S-I-X-T-Y Tours, RICOH Tours, Zillow 3D Home. I've written a related WGAN Forum post titled, Are You a 3D/360 Camera Manufacturer? The Must Have Killer Feature Is ... So I go into great detail on this very point. For clarification, if the Labpano objective is - PilotTour: Indoor and Outdoor 360 Virtual Tour Made Easy" - that's their tagline, I would suggest that they study the EyeSpy360 Virtual Tour platform. For example, the EyeSpy360 workflow is much, much, much easier than the vision of Labpano's PilotTour even when PilotTour emerges from beta, even in its likely future state of what that might be. So for example, EyeSpy360 Virtual Tour, if you take a look at it one of the examples that I've posted to the We Get Around Network Forum that use the 360s that I shot with the Pilot One, it is a much faster workflow than it would be using the Pilot One Pilot Tour feature. So the integration of the Pilot One camera with the Pilot Tour Virtual Tour platform, that's because EyeSpy360 for example, creates a 360 Virtual Tour and a 3D tour and interactive floor plans and hotspots and so fourth. So as a residential real estate photographer or a residential real estate agent or broker, if you're looking at two things; one is the camera the other is the platform. You might say well, even when Labpano Pilot One platform is firing on all cylinders, wouldn't it make sense to have a camera that is deeply integrated with the platform? And I would say yes, but unfortunately I don't believe that Pilot Tour will ever be as good as or as the platforms that I've just, the eight platforms that I have described. Given that, as much as I give Labpano props for a creating a this V-SLAM process essentially that a way to organize 360s in relationship to each other, in my mind it will always be a proof-of-concept that will never be as good as either the eight 360/3D platforms that I've mentioned or many more of the 130. So, and that becomes problematic because I could imagine that the Labpano Pilot Virtual Tour platform could inhibit other Virtual Tour platforms from wanting to integrate with the Labpano camera. So if lab, and that's because the perception may be that and perhaps true that Labpano is planning to attempt to compete with them by offering a free Virtual Tour platform. My feeling is any professional real estate photographer would likely choose a different 360 Virtual Tour platform from the Pilot Tour platform. I can't imagine a professional real estate photographer in a or real estate agent paying $1,200 for the Pilot One and being satisfied with the free Pilot Tour Virtual Tour platform. It's just, it's too basic, and even if Labpano's intent is to have a very sophisticated Pilot Tour platform for real estate agents, let's say they're at least five years behind trying to play catch-up. So there's two issues here for four Labpano; one, is trying to play catch-up with platforms that have five plus years of experience and then two, is having a platform that competes with the very thing that really gives the most value to the Pilot One is the ability to have easy, fast and seamless deep integrations with other Virtual Tour platforms. And, as I've shared, if the platform's feel that Labpano is going to compete with them by having this PilotTour Virtual Tour platform, it may mean that other virtual tour platforms will be super hesitant about providing integration knowing that it essentially is now perhaps helping the camera compete with it on the virtual tour platform side. So I'll come back, I want to talk a little bit more on this topic towards later in my review but I did want to cover some other points. Labpano Pilot One live-streaming. I did find it super easy to live-stream to Facebook. My Pilot One live-stream to Facebook, I've archived that, I've recorded it. It's available on my Facebook feed Dan Smigrod. S-M-I-G-R-O-D, easiest way to find it, come to the We Get Around Network Forum, go to the topic of Pilot One and you'll see that I write about my Pilot One live-stream on Facebook so that you can actually go see an actual Facebook live-stream that albeit recorded. Plus I was presently surprised about the excellent quality of the Pilot One streaming video. So, given the ease of use and the quality of the video, I challenge real estate photographers to imagine how we can offer this Pilot One Facebook live-streaming feature, as an Add-On for real estate clients. I think that something probably really new and only because it's so easy to do and the quality of the video now is really awesome. I could imagine using this feature for example, for amplifying an Open House and for doing a live walkthrough with the agent, that then continues to be available on the agents Facebook page. So any other Add-On opportunities is a real estate photographer that you see. My Labpano Pilot One beta testing recommendations are as follows; as a Pilot One beta tester, again I was given a camera, I was loaned a Pilot One camera and the good news is I would say is nearly everything that I would suggest that Labpano change or fix is likely a firmware upgrade. So here my following notes for Labpano but I think it's probably helpful if you're deciding about buying a Labpano Pilot One camera, any early concerns that I had. But again I think the vast majority of these could be fixed with a firmware upgrade. First, touchscreen keyboard. The letters and numbers and symbols on the Pilot One are simply too small to be practical. So you're presented with a keyboard, while this implementation of keyboard may work on a larger Big Brother Labpano Pilot Era camera, using the touchscreen keyboard on the Pilot One camera is extremely difficult and frustrating to enter the passwords for Wi-Fi. It's super hard. The good news is that the Pilot One has a great way that you set the date and time with a wheel that's kind of like a slot machine and you just keep aligning the wheels. So the process for entering passwords and tour names would be far, far easier with this wheel approach. So first let's identify the problem is that, I sometimes I think it's analogous that when first there was newspapers, then came along radio and radio first began reading the newspaper. Well, that wasn't exactly taking advantage of the medium and then came television and then television was like radio without picture and that wasn't taking advantage of the medium. So probably over stood to say the translation of a large keyboard that would work on a larger screen, simply does not work in to my level of satisfaction on a Pilot One camera. The screen, is the the touch screen is really big but a touchscreen keyboard simply does not work. In my opinion, it was super difficult to enter Wi-Fi, particularly my Wi-Fi where I have very long names for passwords and then for naming tours, it was super impractical being on location, trying multiple times to get the series of letters and keystrokes properly. So the good news is I think Labpano already has a great solution in its approach to the date and time that feels like a slot machine of rotating wheels to pick the date, pick the time. I think that would perfectly work for passwords and tour names. Next, the transitions between menus. It really needs to be obvious that you swipe left or right to move between menus. It needs to be obvious when you can swipe left or right and it needs to be obvious when and how to exit a menu. So Pilot Tour is so close to being awesome, but these things just weren't obvious to me and I even though there was documentation that documentation for us beta testers was somewhat limited and perhaps the documentation for when the camera actually ships will be much better. But again I don't even think that's something you should have to look at the documentation, I think that's one of the Mac-like experiences, is that it just works and it works as expected and I was at a loss about how to transition. So I found myself constantly pressing the physical home button to get back to the main menu, that's not a great workflow. Next is hemisphere shooting. Well, I found the timer hugely helpful for staying out of a shot. It's just not always possible to hide. So I'm sure you've probably been in this position particularly outside where there's just no tree or object to hide behind and if you get too far away from the camera using an app and Bluetooth then you lose the connection. So I could imagine either Labpano or a third-party offering a solution for staying near the camera, but not in the shot and then stepping around to the other side of the Pilot One to complete the shot. About the image gallery in the camera. Well, I'm so sorry, I didn't even bring my camera into the shot, but let's see if I can just turn it on to show this point here. So right here in terms of the image gallery, so I think you can see I think I have some videos that have showed up there. I found myself shooting a blank shot. Essentially I would hold my hands over the four lenses to separate tours. So it would be nice if a separator could automatically be added to separate tours and to separate groups of 360s. So for example, if you were doing or I was doing more than one apartment in the same day. So, in order to separate those groups of 360s, I'm holding my hands around the four lenses, I suspect that it wouldn't be that hard for Labpano to say, okay, there's the algorithm says there's so much time between the time this tour was done and this tour was done, certainly if it was separated by hours then just automatically insert a blank shot to differentiate the groups of 360s and then certainly it would be way easier to delete a blank than to try and figure out which apartment 360s were part of apartment one versus apartment two. Apartments looked the same. Where they certainly look the same when you're looking at a small screen. While I found uploading to my Dropbox super-easy, I would have liked for the videos to be checked that it was uploaded successfully. Now this feature was included, how to say this? In the midst of my beta testing, there was a firmware upgrade and so once I, when I began testing and I uploaded to Dropbox, I didn't have any way of knowing that it was updated to Dropbox, the good news is that feature was added to a firmware upgrade. And that's true for the following. ... I had made some notes to say, there are times when I need to upload some of the 360s but not all, I'm changing priorities of what needs that, I might have shot three tours in a day but the one of those tours may need to be uploaded before the others. In my beta testing, it was hard to keep track of which 360s I still needed to upload, plus, I would like to be able to select which 360s to upload if I did not want to upload everything to Dropbox at once, I had to upload 360s one at a time and it was hard to tell which ones I had already uploaded. For example, I could select multiple images, I was limited to deleting the multiple images with no option for uploading the selected multiple images. So anyway, the good news is I did do a firmware upgrade version 5.0.10 and that actually solved that problem. Of knowing what had been uploaded and what hadn't though I still think I'm having a little bit of difficulty recognizing which videos have been uploaded or not uploaded. I think the check mark has been added to the videos as well. Again, the good news on this list that I've described, they're all likely firmware updates. So if Labpano is an agreement with my recommendations, all these recommendations might be implemented even before the camera ships in March or later. And again, ... I updated to version 5.0.10. The firmware update was an easy Mac-like or iPhone-like experience. It just works as expected. That may seem obvious but I'm sure all of us had, had times where updating firmware was attaching it to a computer and finding the program and then transferring something to a folder. No, you just, the camera indicates that it's got a, it needs a firmware update, you accept and it does the upload and you're done. It's no connecting to a camera, really nice. There's a feature for adjusting a photo, let's call it a photo sphere or 360. It's an interesting feature but I couldn't figure out how to do a batch change. So the good news on the adjust photo which says it's in beta lets you change the brightness, gamma, the shadow, highlights, saturation and temperature, all that's good. But again, I couldn't figure out how to do a batch change and I would say unless I could, it's really super-unlikely that I would just want to edit one 360, I really want to edit one 360 and say Apply All and Apply All actually means, so for example, if I'm doing a tour and there's inside and outside, I'd want to apply the changes let's say, just to the indoor 360s, then edit one of the outside 360s and apply that as a batch change to the outside one. Now that said, I think most photographers are going to bring the images or either going to not do any adjustment or bring them into Lightroom and do the adjustments or a different software program. But that said, I think Labpano is super-close to having this Adjust Photo feature. All I'm looking for is to add the option of batch change and let me select which images I want to add to that batch. About Facebook, I would like an option to save the video to the camera, perhaps it's there and I couldn't figure it out, but I did some live-streaming to Facebook and while Facebook saves the video, I haven't figured out how to extract a Facebook video from Facebook, short of doing screen scraping, I don't really want to do that, I want to have it something that just works. So I'm not sure that I, if when I live-stream to Facebook, if there is an option for saving the video I didn't see it. So essentially I live-streamed to Facebook and I didn't get a video that was saved on the camera. I can only go to Facebook and have the video live there. Now, and one other I think item on Facebook is I would like to be able to set the countdown timer to go live. So when I hit, when I physically hit the button on the camera, I'd like when I go live to really mean I want to go live in five seconds and that way my hand is not in the shot. Now, I'm sure the Labpano Pilot Go App for iOS and Android, probably addresses that issue but I didn't spend enough time with the Pilot Go App to properly review that and frankly I would rather do it on the camera where I'm not guessing whether or not the app actually launched the camera. So, what else? So, I look forward to shooting 360 video. Now 360 video again somewhat outside the scope of a real estate photographers needs, I was really wanted focused on 360 photo spheres for Virtual Tour. Again I talked about Google Street View and unfortunately I did not get to test that. Hopefully Labpano will send me a GPS module and their recommended backpack so that I can do the map updates, the Google Street View map updates and add some blue lines in Atlanta. I do look forward though to shooting 360 video in March 2020 when my wife and I will be taking a week-long Western Caribbean cruise and I will also plan to shoot a 360 tour of our Miami hotel room. We'll be in a Miami hotel for the night before the cruise as well as our cruise ship suite. So my wife and I are celebrating our 25th anniversary, we've splurged on a suite on the ship and I would really like to capture that as a 360 tour and I'll plan to share this additional Pilot One content in the We Get Around Network Forum when we return. Labpano was gracious enough to extend the loan of the camera to me to accommodate our travel plans. Probably get some really nice beauty shots on the ship and on some of the islands and in Mexico. I did have a couple hardware improvements and these hardware improvements may be addressed even before the camera commercially ships but I'll point them out. The home button, Labpano stressed that the Pilot One camera that I received, hand labeled number 22, is beta hardware. So in their production run, Labpano may have already addressed the home button which feels like it's a tiny bit loose when I touch it. So I just felt like I didn't get the tactile response that I was expecting, it just feels a tinge loose. Again I'm using beta hardware, this may have already been addressed in the production run that begins shipping as early as March 2020. And then the next hardware is actually related to the case. So I found that this soft case it's very nice and it's a nice edition. I'd recommend two things to improve it. First, make it easier to put the soft case on the camera, I struggle with that, it's a snug fit and I think that's good, but I think it needs to be more like a funnel so that it starts out really wide and that makes it super-easy to pull it over the camera and then using the drawstring close the top big part of the funnel, I just felt that there wasn't enough material at the top and when I grab it and I put it over the, here let me see if I can just do this for you. So you get some sense of what's going on here. This is, my hands are near the lenses I don't like that, I suppose it went on, but I just felt like if it was wider at the bottom that, that would be a much better. Make it super-easy, make sure I'm not touching the lenses and there's always goes on easily and again it has a nice drawstring, I think that would close it nicely. Let's see, ah, and the second thing on the soft case, is it comes with a carabiner. So it's got this little carabiner here, it's attached to the case and I like this because there's a loop here and I can carry it on my pocket. The only problem is this is a $1,200 camera, this is not a $1,200 worthy carabiner, I would like to see a real substantive carabiner plus one that has a loop for closing it, so I don't have my carabiner open by accident and lose my $1,200 camera on my belt. So those are kind of the two hardware suggestions, obviously really small things in the scheme of it. Again, I think everything else can be addressed in firmware. So I did get some, I got some pushback on my original review in the, We Get Around Network Forum today in the Labpano community, Jocelyn Trowelburst, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly in the Netherlands Antilles. Let me read what he wrote and then let me see if I can respond to that. And so he writes, in part "Completely disagree with your point of view that Labpano should forget about the PilotTour platform. To the contrary the one using V-SLAM, the Pilot One using V-SLAM technology to determine camera position in virtual space is groundbreaking. It is a good proof of concept and further turning to make it work," and excuse me, and it says further, probably means, "In fine-tuning to make it work in practice will result in a huge time-saver for tour creators. What is the integration with other virtual tour platforms, Labpano surely is not going to give away its V-SLAM advantage, other platforms won't know how to handle the data." So respectfully Jocelyn I completely disagree with you, completely disagreeing, so let me see if I can break this down. So I'm going to read through and then kind of break it down. Completely disagree with your point of view that Labpano should forget about its PilotTour platform to the contrary the Pilot One using V-SLAM technology determine camera position in virtual space is groundbreaking. I absolutely agree with that, for a $1,200 camera to have this V-SLAM technology that lets each 360 know where it is in relationship to each other, that's amazing. And incidentally I think what happens is when you do the PilotTour, there's a message on here that says rocket this way and then rocket this way and so that calibration is probably making that V-SLAM possible. Again Jocelyn writes, "It's a good proof of concept and fine-tuning it to make it work in practice will result in a huge time-saver for tour creators." Jocelyn I absolutely agree with you on that. This is a amazing solution but again in my opinion and even as you write, it's a proof of concept to show what's possible. Where we start to verge is when you write, what is deep integration with other virtual tour platforms. So that's essentially saying the the Pilot One camera should be able to work with other platforms to take advantage of the V-SLAM advantage. So when you write that other platforms, when you write Labpano surely is not going to give away its V-SLAM advantage, other platforms won't know how to handle the data, I would suggest that Labpano should absolutely give away its V-SLAM advantage essentially powering as many of the 130 3D and 360 virtual tour platforms to work easy, fast and seamless with the Pilot One. Again the, we all shoot not because we want to shoot, we create these 360s because we want to share them. And it turns out that many of us are using all kinds of different platforms, literally if you come to the We Get Around Network Forum, we have a post where we list in a Google sheet a 130 3D and 360 platforms. And by the way, we also have a post in the We Get Around Network Forum on 50-plus 3D and 360 cameras. We maintain both those lists and Google sheets. This is such an opportunity for Labpano to knock it out of the ballpark to say, okay, one we showed all the platforms what's possible with PilotTour. We can do the constellation configuration automatically with your platform. So they demo how it's possible. Now, first beginning with those eight platforms that I've identified earlier, but then all the way right up through the list of a 130 3D and 360 platforms. Imagine how Labpano Pilot One and it's bigger brother Pilot Era will do when they crush the competition of the 50 other 3D/360 cameras by an offering to make it easy, fast and simple for every 3D and 360 platform to leverage the V-SLAM technology that's integrated in the Pilot One camera. So where you write that this is a competitive advantage that they'll never give up, there's two reasons they must give it up. One, is so that other platforms can take advantage of it and if you go back to my original thinking here that when a photographer is making a decision about which camera, they really need to make a decision about which platform first. And before you make a decision about which platform, about what the use cases are. But a real estate photographer, a residential real estate photographer and commercial real estate photographer are likely to zero in on a good chunk of those eight platforms. And right now, Pilot One is at a disadvantage because there's only a couple other cameras that actually check the box of those eight that I identified. So it's really important for Labpano to have Pilot One easy, fast and seamless integration with those eight platforms. And it's really important that they not, that Labpano not compete with its own Virtual Tour platform. So by Labpano offering Pilot Tour, it's essentially saying to other platforms, hey, we got something that's better than you have, we're going to compete with you and by the way we'd like to still have you deeply integrate. And that's the part where Pilot, where Labpano may shoot itself in the foot by competing with the other platforms. If it simply says about the Pilot Tour platform, this is a proof of concept but we're going to enable this and all these other tour platforms, it'll sell more cameras if it eliminates the competition of having Pilot Tour that will greatly accelerate third party camera integrations with the platform. And oh by the way, at the big picture level in the forward thinking, even if we all looked at Pilot Tour platform at its best case scenario that when the camera actually gets shipped the Pilot Tour worked, remember I've tested it in beta and it doesn't work, but I'll give it, I'll make the concession that I'm sure it will be working at the time that the camera ships commercially. The point is, there are there there are many other platforms that have five plus years of experience in residential and commercial real estate what a Tour looks like. Including a 3D view, the 360 Tour view, the floorplan view, the hot spots. And so, Labpano could make a decision to say okay, we're going to put a ...technical resources into Pilot Tour and once it does that, it's spending a lot of time and a lot of money on building out a platform that doesn't have a competitive advantage with other platforms. Now I suspect that Jocelyn would probably say, well, yes it does it has this vSLAM advantage. No, nom, that's just the technology of how the other platforms get to the final resolution. So for example, the EyeSpy360 Tour, they build the tour for you. Never mind if there's people in the background and it's a tour as a service business and it's presently done manually. The point is as a photographer, it is the tour is created for me and it was super simple to take my Pilot One shot 360s and upload it to the EyeSpy360 platform and have them build the the tour for me. If you were to take a look at EyeSpy360 versus Pilot Tour for example, you would, even if PilotTour was firing on all cylinders in its first year, it's still five years behind in all the bells and whistles that make EyeSpy360 resonate for virtual tour service providers in the residential and commercial real estate space. So Jocelyn respectfully, I disagree and I completely see how important it is for Labpano to have this PilotTour proof of concept but then to abandon it in favor of offering that feature to the 130 3D/360 Virtual Tour platforms and that's where the real value will come to Labpano as well as to residential and commercial real estate photographer and and Google Street View photographers because then we're not asking a photographer to both change for existing photographers in this space to change cameras and to change platforms. Best that they can still stay, that we can still stay with the platforms that of our choice and we just switch to a different camera to achieve that result in an easy, fast and seamless manner. So that's kind of my comment for Jocelyn and that's made with all respect. I think this is just, this may be one of those where we respectfully agree to disagree. Anyway that's kind of my review of the Labpano Pilot One. We have started a number of discussions in the We Get Around Network Forum, WGANforum.com, I hope you if you're watching on our YouTube channel or Vimeo channel in the WGAN-TV Training Academy, in the WGAN-TV Podcast, in the Apple Podcast app, wherever you're watching that We Get Around Network Forum, it's totally free, you don't need to be a member to read anything in the Forum. But if you want to join the conversation, totally free to join the forum, plus you get 50 plus membership benefits including the list of 50 3D/360 cameras, the list of 130 3D and 360 Virtual Tour platforms plus special offers on whenever there's products or services. So for example, on the Pilot One camera, you can get that free GPS module using our affiliate link WGAN.INFO/pilotone ... That's WGAN.INFO/pilotone ... WGAN.INFO/pilotone WGAN.INFO/pilotone WGANForum.com And we have offers like that all the time we automatically put them in an email that when you join the We Get Around Network Forum, you automatically receive an email from me that lists the 50-plus membership benefits with all the ways to redeem them simply for joining the We Get Around Network Forum. Anyway thanks for tuning in, I'm Dan Smigrod Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum, you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5:00. |
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WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
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| Video: Virtual Tours with the Labpano Pilot One 8k TESTED | Video courtesy of Sarb Johal YouTube Channel | 27 May 2020 | ||
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WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
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 Screen Grab: Message from Labpano about its Pilot One GPS Module, as found in the Labpano Community on Facebook on Sunday, 14 June 2020. |
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