Video: Are virtual tours only for luxury properties? | Video courtesy of Matterport YouTube Channel | 10 August 2021

Host

✓ Amir Frank, Senior Evangelist, Matterport

Panelists

✓ Michael Shabun, VP, Marketing & Business Development, Insta360
✓ Giles Atkinson, Director, Atkinson Mcleod

Transcript (video above)

[00:00:02]
Amir Frank: -Welcome webinar listeners. Thanks for joining us today in this special webinar. We've got a lot of things planned, so come on and join us. Get solved in, just your audio if you have to, do what you need to do. We can get going.

We got a couple of special guests with us today. You can see them here. Let's get into it and hit up some introductions. With us today we've got Michael Shabun from Insta360. Michael, how are you doing? Thanks for joining.

[00:00:37]
Michael Shabun: -Hello everyone. I'm here. Thanks for having me, excited to be part of this session and be back for another round.

[00:00:45]
Amir Frank: -Yeah, absolutely. We've had John before and it's been awesome, so we're looking forward to this. Along with Michael, we have Giles Atkinson, our Director of Atkinson McLeod, out of the UK. Hey, Giles, how are you?

[00:01:00]
Giles Atkinson: -Hi. Yeah. Good. Thanks man. Frank thanks.

[00:01:03]
Amir Frank: -All right. Thanks very much for joining us today, both of you. I really appreciate your attendance and in helping us out with this. Basically, we're here to talk about Matterport. We get this a lot. Matterport is thought of as really just being for luxury tours. It's an expense that an agent may want to spend if they're getting the commission for a luxury tour.

What we're trying to do is say no, there's actually a lot more value to it than just that. Let's see what we can do. Our agenda for today is to talk a little bit about a Matterport. We might have some people with us who are not as familiar with Matterport.

What we do, we know what the Matterport model looks like, so I'll go through that. Will cover the Insta360 with Michael and talk about that.

Then we'll talk about the applications for residential real estate industry with Giles, and there is various special promotion. We're going to talk about the special promotion, what that is, what you can get, and then we'll open up to Q&A, speaking of which you have a Q&A button in your Zoom panel.

If you just tap that, opened up the Q&A window, feel free to send us a question at anytime throughout the webinar, if anything pops in there. We do have staff on hand to help answer those questions, and we'll get to questions at the very end those that we can't address throughout the webinar. Let's go ahead and dive right in.

A little bit about Matterport, again, a lot of you, I'm guessing already know this, but for those of you who are joining us new, Matterport, we've been around for a little over 10 years now.

We just had our 10th year anniversary not too long ago. We've got over 5 million spaces, 5 million models under management at Matterport. We've got over 300,000 users and global offices opening up all the time. I'm here in Sunnyvale.

We've got an office in San Francisco, Chicago, Kansas, London, and Singapore. If you want to know more, just go to matterport.com and find the about page. Matterport goes public. I just wanted to touch on this a little bit. You may have heard, this was announced I think last Friday, I don't even remember anymore, it's a blur, but yes, Matterport is a publicly traded company.

The reason why I wanted to bring this up is because ever since I started at Matterport, little more than 5 years ago, we get this question, what do I do if Matterport goes out of business? I've got all my models in Matterport servers and what happens then?

I think this just speaks to that and it says hopefully is a little bit relaxing, and says look, it's not very easy to get to being a public company. To stop at this point is much more unlikely. Hopefully, anyone who is questioning that, you feel a little bit better, and more secure about having your models being in Matterport servers. Insta360, Michael. Let's talk.

[00:04:24]
Michael Shabun: -Yeah, it's been an exciting couple years since we first created our partnership, and I think you guys probably have some really good data on the amount of models that's been captured within Insta360 products, but in my experience, it's been wildly successful.

My goal here is to show you all the applications for using a small consumer 360 camera to create affordable virtual tours through Matterport. You'll see that it's quite easy and it will save you a lot of time. Let's get into it.

The main camera that I want to focus on today is actually Insta360's newest consumer 360 camera. It's called the ONE X2. Anybody that's heard of Insta360, you've probably heard of this camera. It's our flagship camera. It's now the third generation of the ONE X2, and there's some incredible improvements that have been made along the way. The most important features to note here are the enhanced resolution, and image quality.

The 5.7K video is a standard feature of the ONE X2, and the previous camera, but the image quality now has been rejigged, and the color science has been improved. What you're going to see is an overall better quality virtual tour after you capture. It has great features like HDR photo, which we'll get into in the next slide, and I'll show you the importance of that.

Everything that we build into this camera makes it easier for you, the end-user, to actually create your virtual tour. There's a lot of automation that happens once you connect to the Matterport app from your Insta360 camera.

The fact that you can push one button, and take your capture versus having to do anything more advanced is the key here. Let's go to the next slide and I'll show you guys some of the other features. The HDR, I would say is probably the most important feature here because what that's going to do is, it's going to perfect your photography in high contrast areas.

If you're shooting indoors or if you're shooting in a space that has a lot of light coming in from the outside, the HDR function will actually allow you to keep a good quality image without the windows being overexposed or the light coming in and blinding one side of the space that you're capturing. This is important, not just for low budget tours, but for tours across the board.

It's just going to make it look much nicer and sharper. The way it does this is it takes a series of photos at different exposures stops, and it stacks them all together for you automatically. You don't have to do anything besides select the mode that you're shooting with, the camera, and the Matterport app do the rest for you automatically.

The way that this happens is through a cutting edge image quality sensors that gets built in directly to the camera. It will also capture it at about 18 megapixels for your still photos. We are building in some of the leading consumer technology into this camera. I mentioned before, there's really not much that you have to do as an end-user.

I think Giles could talk a lot about this as well. Is that we've almost made the process too easy when you're going in and you're capturing your tour, you set up your camera, you connect to the Matterport app, you click one button to snap a photo, you move the camera around through the space, and all of the photos are automatically transferred into the Matterport Server and Cloud and they're stitched for you automatically. Beyond just clicking a button and taking a photo, there's really not much more you have to do.

These are the differentiating stats of the ONE X2, it does have an improved battery life, about 50% longer. One piece of feedback that we're getting from users was, I've essentially captured my whole tour with the ONE X, the previous model, but the battery is pretty drained. So we went out and we created a more advanced battery.

The 80-minute battery life is actually continuous capture if you're recording video, if you're taking stills throughout the day, you're going to get a lot more than 80 minutes worth of capture in your time.

You can essentially capture multiple spaces throughout the day without having to recharge the battery, and if you did, they are swappable, so you could get an extra battery and you can just swap them in and out. It's really easy.

There's a 3 second time per scan, which is a much shorter amount than the Professional Matterport camera, and the accuracy is within reach of the Matterport camera. It's about 48% accuracy, so you really are getting a great quality tour, you're saving a lot of time, you're saving a lot of money, and you can do it yourself.

[00:09:49]
Amir Frank: -Yeah. That's really easy.

[00:09:50]
Michael Shabun: -Yeah. The last slide here that we have is just to note that for anybody that isn't existing Insta360 user, who might be listening in, any one of our consumer 360 cameras is Matterport compatible, so if you do have the older generation of the ONE X2, the ONE X, you can use it. If you have our modular camera, the ONE R, it's also compatible, and the workflow is entirely the same for each one of the units.

[00:10:16]
Amir Frank: -Fantastic. That's great. I really appreciate it. Basically, deal with this side, I just wanted to point out that you've got Matterport account, you add 360 camera, and you get a model. You're not going to get anything different. We do get this question. You're not going to get something that is radically different from the Matterport Pro2 or other cameras. Every camera that we support gives you a Matterport model. The differences are subtle.

I just wanted to touch on the building lifecycle. In this webinar, we're looking at residential real estate. We're looking really more at the promote use case, but Matterport models are really used throughout the entire building's lifecycle.

You can use Matterport models throughout the design stage. Certainly, throughout the build stage, we've seen that with the milestones scans for different purposes and collaborating with teams and whatnot. Facility management is really great, especially if your team is off site, insurance, and of course, repair. Giles, you've probably got more experience than all of us in this having been in industry for so long.

I just want to I guess get your opinion on some of this. We talked about the building lifecycle and whatnot. You're actually using it for some pretty interesting use cases as well, and not just promote, but also updating the landlord themselves. You're using this in lettings and updating landlords on the status of their property.

[00:11:58]
Giles Atkinson: -That's right. We use it for broaching properties when we're selling them and letting them. We mainly operate in Central London, but as well as the applications they're promoting a property for the eventual sale or let.

We also carry out inspections during the course of a tenancy. We used to send a written report to a landlord for the inspection, but now, we'll send them a virtual tour, so they get a real idea of what their property looks like.

Call often the landlord when we've actually seen their property or when we've seen it for a number of years. The feedback we've had from clients is really positive rather than a rather dull written report. They get a sense that they've actually had a proper walk through their property.

It's really useful to identify any maintenance issues, anything where you can see any improvement for a property, either during the time the tenant is living there or in between tenants. It's really helpful for giving feedback to a client that is distanced from their own property.

[00:13:00]
Amir Frank: -Brilliant. That's great. Again, I'm going to tap your experience on this slide. You've definitely obviously used photos and probably floor plans, and I think we even talked about the videos and now 360 tours. Have you seen this progressed throughout the years as far as technology and being engaging and valuable to your business?

[00:13:26]
Giles Atkinson: -It's been interesting. We went from the natural progression with photos and then the application of floor plans, and then even onto some video tours. I found video tours have been novel. I'm not so upbeat on their application. I prefer the virtual tours, but photos, floor plans took their natural progression and took a certain amount of time for floor plans to become an absolute expected standard.

But the pandemic has just really pushed the technology. I think virtual tours, they've been adopted quite heavily across the marketplace. I think they would probably taken 5, 6, 7 years to get to where they're at now. It's just been compressed into the last 12 months to 18 months. I think because of the pandemic, there's been huge application across the marketplace.

[00:14:24]
Amir Frank: -We'd get this a little bit where there's some people who might be a little bit confused or maybe not confused, but draw parallels between a Matterport 3D model in a 360 tour. What are your thoughts on that? Do you find more value in an actual 3D model versus just walking around from one 360 panel to another?

[00:14:49]
Giles Atkinson: -To walk-through, I think is a lot more immersive. It feels that you're genuinely strolling through the property. It definitely has an advantage over a standard 360 tour where you would go from one room click to another room. It feels far more that you're actually having a virtual viewing of the property.

[00:15:14]
Amir Frank: -That's great. Appreciate that, and let's go on to the next slide. We brought in some statistics. These are things that may not necessarily be global statistics, but they're definitely statistics that we have found to be true, at least here and other parts of the world. Again, I'm not going to go into this too much.

I don't want to read off the slide, but Giles, if I can just bring you into this one as well. With your experience and having been in the industry, pre-360 virtual tours in Matterport and post-Matterport, what are your thoughts? We're looking at numbers like 90% of buyers would be more compelled by a listing with a 3D tours. Is that something that you can relate to?

[00:16:05]
Giles Atkinson: -It's amazing now. I totally agree with that. It's amazing how many more buyers and perspective tenants actually ask for the walkthrough for the virtual tour. Now, it's become the standard where people would previously ask for photos years back and now tenants purchases, they're insisting on a virtual tour.

It has a huge impact on the amount of time that will market property for as well. The fact that we can market the property very effectively through digital medium, emailing the virtual tour to the database. We can in the time that it would take you to actually physically carry out 120 viewings. It's just impossible to achieve that. You wouldn't want to.

But with a click of a button, you can email the tour to the database. You can get the stats out of Matterport to see who has carried out the virtual tour, the engagement level. Then people actively were getting inbound marketing. People will approach us saying they would like to be at the property as a result of the email campaign. Had a massive impact on reducing marketing time.

[00:17:22]
Amir Frank: -You felt that A, you're seeing definitely a reduction in your time spent with the client on site, driving around town, as well as their time. I'm sure they're appreciative of that, but also, once someone has experienced letting their property with the virtual tour. The next time, they want to see that again for this other property.

[00:17:46]
Giles Atkinson: -Absolutely. Yeah. A huge time saver for us and also for perspective purchases tenants that they've seen the property virtually. Their time is precious, and I don't want to come along 6, 7 o'clock in the evening to be at your property if it's not suitable.

[00:18:02]
Amir Frank: -Makes perfect sense. I can definitely see that. I like the idea of either meeting with them in a used to be pre-pandemic, meeting with my agent at a coffee shop and going through the list of potential homes but only actually visiting those. I'd say yes, that looks good. Now you can just do it virtually.

[00:18:25]
Giles Atkinson: -Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:18:26]
Amir Frank: -Great. Let's check out a demo real quick. I'm just going to pop over here, and let's see. If you're not familiar with Matterport and you haven't seen it quite yet, or if you've seen it, but again, you feel like it's only for these high-end luxury listings. This was actually captured with the Insta361 1X. It's cool.

You can see the doll house. You get a really nice idea of the layout of the property. You can see where the kitchen is in relationship to the family room, dining room, and so on, bedrooms where they're located, and you can even pop in here and start walking around. I can go over here and just say I want to go up the stairs.

It's just like I'm actually there. Just as we were saying with Giles, is that you really get a sense that you are walking around this property. You don't need an immersive VR headset, even though that is a possibility, but I just don't think it's even necessary.

I think if I went here and saw this home, I would feel like I've already been here before. I don't think there would be much knew that I would be able to discover after having seen a tour like this. There you go. I can drop down, back down to the first floor.

[00:20:06]
Giles Atkinson: -There is a concern and sometimes we have with people, as sales guys is you send a virtual tour, and then you can't really sell the benefits of the property. Worst, quite often we share a screen with a prospective client, and then we'll do the walk-through with them, and we'll identify particular benefits of the property in proximity to transport and so on. It doesn't remove the benefit that salesperson can have.

[00:20:36]
Amir Frank: -Yeah, you can certainly also add matter tags. That's not something that's unique to high-end tours. Again, you can just add a matter tag that stuck to the counter-top and say granted, marble, whatever counter-top. You can point out the high-end appliances, you can point out any feature that salesperson would want to point out. You can certainly include that as part of the information.

I don't know if people know this, but to get to see the backyard, there's a little portals you can go and click here. Check out what this place looks like from the back.

This is actually just a pinned, you can see it right here, it's on a Insta360 view that's put in place. It's not actually part of the doll house. But we can get technical in other webinars. Just wanted to show people what that looks like. I had some questions for you guys and I want you also to feel comfortable asking me questions.

Because you're in a position where you've been doing this for a long time. Michael, you've been obviously working with Insta360, and you may want to know a little bit about Matterport. We've been working together for a while, so you may not have questions yourself, Michael, but Giles, you may have some questions. Please feel free to ask them because our viewers may have the same questions.

We wanted to ask you. How are you currently using the Insta360 within your workflow and jobs? I think we touched on this a little bit. But basically you mentioned that you're doing lettings. Do you also use them for real estate sales?

[00:22:21]
Giles Atkinson: -Yeah, so lettings and sales. Then the midterm tendency inspections for rental properties.

[00:22:28]
Amir Frank: -Is the agent going out with the camera themselves and just doing it?

[00:22:33]
Giles Atkinson: -We had when we first started, using the tours. We used a third party to carry it out. We found it was so straightforward. I think Michael talked about the fact you just put it in the room, click the button, and away it goes.

We found the actual application was so straightforward to produce the virtual tour. We brought the process in house. It takes our guys for a standard two-bedroom property, 10 to 15 minutes to carry out the virtual tour. There's no post-production work like you'd have with a video tour or photos.

Matterport does the clever stuff when it's up in the cloud, and by the time I got back to the office, usually the tour has been processed by Matterport and is ready to be sent out to the database.

[00:23:27]
Amir Frank: -I couldn't agree more. I've done a lot of video, and editing can be complicated, and it's certainly time-consuming. I think with this being a fully automated process, it's just a matter of positioning the camera, clicking a button, getting that information and moving onto the next scan position. Like you say, it's very straightforward, and can be done very quickly. I mentioned Michael saying, three seconds per scan position.

You can imagine a house like we just saw has maybe 30 to 40 scan positions, you can probably get through that in 15 minutes I think maybe less even.

[00:24:08]
Giles Atkinson: -It's a little bit difficult when there are some stairs but yeah.

[00:24:10]
Amir Frank: -With the stairs it's a little bit difficult right exactly. But with these cameras, we don't recommend using a traditional tripod, you're using a much smaller tripod where it's base can actually fit on a single stair. There's no adjusting. Sometimes it's even stairs are definitely more complicated with a larger camera. I found that if I do every three steps, I don't have any problems with it if was aligning.

[00:24:37]
Giles Atkinson: -The Insta360 do a good monopod don't they? I think.

[00:24:42]
Amir Frank: -Yeah. In fact, we're going to get to that, yes, they do. Based on your experience, is there anything that a new user should look out for using the combination of Insta360 with Matterport or maybe Matterport in general? Giles, do you need to do anything out of the ordinary?

[00:25:08]
Giles Atkinson: -Usually, so you talked about actually lock them with the new camera. We don't have the new cameras yet. Our guys will often have, if they're doing a series of tools that will take a portable battery with them, and the camera chargers up in-between tours. Which is quite sentiment as the application.

We've got a mixture of different cameras. The Insta cameras are good because you can swap out the batteries. Sometimes the battery of a some of the cameras they are on board and you can't swap them in and out.

Battery usage is definitely been an issue, but is easily solved. I'm surprised at the lack of issues to be honest with you, the application has been pretty straightforward for us. Yeah, we've had over a year and a half of using the application, and all of our sales guys now are very happy, very comfortable with the process.

[00:26:03]
Amir Frank: -That's interesting. Speaking of battery, not only can you charge between sites, which totally true and you should definitely do, but if by chance you happen to get on-site, you don't have that second battery. Michael and I've definitely talked about this. I think it's a huge advantage to having a swappable battery.

You can actually leave it plugged in. If your battery that you have connected to the camera to recharge it is small enough, and I have a little tiny one that I got on Amazon, I've done this before. You just leave it plugged into the camera, the little short cable, and tape it up to my tripod and it just sits there. Basically a supplemental battery, and it doesn't come in the shop and it works great.

[00:26:52]
Giles Atkinson: -The charge port is on the side, isn't it?

[00:26:55]
Amir Frank: -The charge port is on the side, so it doesn't even pick it up.

[00:26:57]
Giles Atkinson: -Yeah, because some of the other cameras the charge port is on the base, so it doesn't allow that. Yes, that's not an advantage.

[00:27:03]
Amir Frank: -It would require an adaptor system and what not exactly, so this being on the side is very convenient if you need to do that. Yeah, if you're in a pinch. Fantastic, we're going to get into how using this in your marketing materials. I won't ask about that, just yet. But any notable results that you've seen due to using Matterport with your lettings and prospects.

[00:27:32]
Giles Atkinson: -Lettings with sales, it's a great tour as a teaser with people, if they're spending 750,000 on an apartment. They want to come and have a look at the property. It's a great intro with the lettering side of things.

The sale feel was far more progress by the time you actually view the property, the prospective tenant is a lot more comfortable with the notion of saying yes to the property because they've spent a lot of time on the tutorial ready. It's more of a practical purchase. They're taking the property for 12 to 18 months. Its application on the rental side for us has been huge.

[00:28:14]
Amir Frank: -Interesting, yeah. I totally agree, I've heard of cases where people by sight. I've seen just based on the Matterport model.

But like you said, usually if you're purchasing and putting that money down, you're going to want to visit the property, even if it's for the second, third or fourth time after you've seen it with the Matterport model before signing on the dotted line. But you say with lettings and rentals, they feel a lot more comfortable just saying, okay, let's sign without even seeing it.

[00:28:47]
Giles Atkinson: -It's also another issue, it's quite commonplace that people will see quite a few properties and so they will go on and they'll be whether they're buying or renting. There will see a number of different properties. It's a really useful tool to follow up the viewing, and just to remind them again that there's a virtual tour. If they are getting confused about which property is at scene, it's really helpful sales tour to remind them about the property that I saw with you. Especially if they're viewing volume.

[00:29:17]
Amir Frank: -Yeah, certainly. It's definitely. I do this all the time where you'd go into websites like Zillow or Redfin and check out, I'm sure there are equivalent to those sites in the UK, just to look at the houses in the area. If I'm looking at stuff to buy without even having the agent tell me about it, I'll go look for it and then I may send him, "Hey, what do you think about this?" Then they'll look at comps and things like that.

[00:29:49]
Giles Atkinson: -There's another useful one where we have tenants that are renting a property. You might have 3 tenants moving in to a house and 1 of the tenancies is not available for the viewing. They might be remote, they might be overseas even, and 2 of the tenants can see it. You don't need to wait for the 3rd and final tenant to see the property that he can see it by the virtual tour.

[00:30:11]
Amir Frank: -Exactly. Great. That's very, very helpful. This is just to give our listeners an idea of, Giles, specifically this is your site, how you are using Matterport in your site and in email campaigns. If you're not aware of this every time you upload your model, your data that you captured with your Insta360 you capture it, you connect to it using either your phone or tablets, Android, iPhone, anything like that.

Once you've captured all the data, basically, you just upload it to your account and it gets processed. That's all done fully automatic. It's an automated process and then spits out a complete 3D model. With that you actually get some assets that you can use in your marketing campaigns.

You can use it in photos. Looks like your website has photos and the tour which is great. Those photos you can actually capture them from the model itself in there.

Some of them are actually pre-captured for you. Again, one of those automatic things that's just done, so they're ready to go. The little short video clip, so what you see here on the right, is an animated GIF that is generated automatically as the model is being processed. That's something that you can use in email campaigns.

[00:31:36]
Michael Shabun: -I really like about the Matterport integration is that if you find yourself later going through your model and one of the shots wasn't working out for you or you want to redo it, you can always go back and just capture that one shot and reinsert it anywhere into your tour.

There's a whole layer of customization that you can go through with your Matterport tour. It's not just you go in, you capture your tour and you get what you get. You can always go and reconfigure anything that you want. It's really cool.

[00:32:05]
Amir Frank: -Yeah. Absolutely. As Josh was saying, also unlike a video where you're stuck watching director's timeline and the pace that they take through there, which may be too fast or too slow depending on your likes, with Matterport you're the director. You get to walk through at your pace see what you want to see at anytime.

Exactly what you're saying Michael as the producer of this model if I feel like I missed something or I Want to get more detail in here I don't have to go back re-shoot the entire scene as long as most of the stuff hasn't really moved and changed in the environment. I can go back, add another couple scan positions.

That's now part of my model data. I'll upload that and I get a new model that's more complete and how I want it. All right. The special promotion. This is what a lot of you are here to know more about, so let's go through this. If you get an annual account with Matterport either Pro or Pro Plus, and you'll get a lot of stuff from Insta360, that's the deal that we've worked out here. This is basically it.

You're getting overall a 25% discount, and so it depends on where you're coming from. It could be $330, it could be 265 pounds or 300 Euros. You get your annual professional account and then you get the Insta360. I'll show you exactly how that works right now because it's a bit of a two-step process to do this.

This is where you start. You're going to go to buy.matterport.com. That's our shopping cart where you can choose the plan that you want and you can see down here the cameras that it's compatible with. You're going to choose either the 25 spaces or the 50 spaces.

That's the difference between the Pro and Pro Plus plans, as well as the number of users there. Choose whichever one of those you want, and you do it defaults to a monthly. You do have to choose the annual plan. It's got to be the annual plan and you're going to use this promo code.

You're going to enter in ONEX2MP in your promo code field before checkouts, and that's going to get you a discount on the professional plan. Once you check out with the professional plan you are emailed a different code to be used on Insta's website to get your camera and gear so you can be fully set up.

You get that email. It has a link on it to the Insta360 ONE X2 page. Be sure to check out with the stand-alone camera. You're not going for kits or anything like that, just a standalone camera. Then you add a coupon code. You can see here in Step 2, you can have a coupon code.

Put that code that you were just emailed in there and that is what's going to automatically add the tripod, the memory card, and 2 selfie sticks. The reason why you're getting 2 selfie sticks is because, obviously I don't have mine with me, these selfie sticks are actually really, really awesome.

They're very compact and they just twist it and it expands. But they might not be 1, it might not be quite high enough for all use cases. So to be as versatile as possible you're getting 2, and what you can do is thread 1 into the other and then you get more than 2 meters worth of selfie stick, which is huge and more than enough for any use case. That's it.

That's going to be automatically added at a 0 charge along with, I believe, free shipping to your cart and then you can go ahead and place that order and get the discount on BET stuff. The combination of the discount for the Pro plan as well as the discount for all the stuff that you're getting with Insta360 all adds up to 25% off. With that, let's go hit up some questions.

You can reach us at webinars@matterport.com. I encourage you to visit us at matterport.com. There's a lot of how-to materials there. You can find it under the resources tab that we've put together if you are giving into this and want to know more about the scanning process and so on. With that I think we are set. Let me go ahead and stop sharing. You don't need to see this anymore. I'll open up the questions panel.

First question is, will a 2D floor plan be exported automatically from a 3D model? 2D floor plans are something that do require something like the Matterport Pro 2 to get through Matterport. There are third party applications that I believe it's just a matter of sharing your Matterport tour with them. If you've captured it with a 360 camera right now unfortunately, Matterport is not currently set up to generate a 2D floor plan.

But like I said, there are third party applications that will do that for you based on your model that was captured with the Insta360. So yes, you can do that, it's not automatically exported along with many other things that are automatically exported.

Can the camera work outdoors in yards and fields? It just depends on how far away you are from the structure itself. Actually, it wouldn't depend on what time of day with the Insta360. It's different technology. With the 360 cameras, we're using cortex to convert it to 3D, and so it's not about the time of day, it's just about what it is that you're seeing. So yes, it can work outdoors.

It's just not trained as well to work outdoors as it's been trained to work indoors. Ideally, more indoors is better, but you can work your way outdoors, especially if you stick to within, I don't know, something like 5 to 10 feet from walls, furniture, things that it can recognize. If it's just an open field, no, that's probably not going to work just because there's not enough structure there to grab onto. That's where the 360 views come in very handy.

What I was showing how to transition from the inside to the outside. You just place the camera outdoors, grab a 360 view, and then you can pin that manually to the model. Will there any point b, a floor plan only option? How fast will the camera shown scan the property per 1,000 square feet? 1,000 square feet goes very, very quickly. Giles, you can probably speak to this better than I can. You've done more of these scans. How long would you say a typical scan takes?

[00:39:18]
Giles Atkinson: -I think we suggested it was 10 to 15 minutes in the property and that would be properties that are larger than 1,000 square feet. The only thing that makes the tour slightly longer is the stairs, you need to be quite sensible when you're going up the stairs so that the image is stitched to one another. If they're in a standard 2-bedroom in a single floor apartment, it really is very quick.

[00:39:44]
Amir Frank: -Yeah, it's 3 seconds. You step out, you click the button, 3 seconds. It doesn't take very long. It captures.

As soon as it's captured it, you go back. You move it to the next position, run around the corner again, and capture again. Like I said, it's a lot of walking back and forth to the camera. You're definitely getting in your exercise, which is also nice benefit, and it's quick. I would say about 10 to 15 minutes with my experience for 1,000 square feet, and if you are doing stairs, my personal recommendation is set it every 3 steps.

[00:40:23]
Giles Atkinson: -Yeah, I agree.

[00:40:24]
Amir Frank: -It seems like a lot, but it just makes navigating a little bit easier, and it makes the stitching process for capture a little bit easier, allowing you to move on to the next scan position faster. Can you combine the 360 1X or 1X2 with Pro 2 in one tour? Yes, absolutely. In fact, you can combine any other supported cameras into a single tour. It doesn't really care where the information is coming from, what your capture device is. Yeah.

You can definitely scan both Pro 2 and 360 and a single tour, and it's a really good way. Sometimes I know we say, if you are scanning with a Pro 2, wait until the sun goes down.

If it's just below the horizon, you can scan outdoors. Having a 360 one with you, you can actually transition to doing the outdoors with a 360 camera and that's going to make that process a little bit faster. Again, as long as you stay, if it's the chapati or something like that and you stay relatively close to structures and familiar objects like furniture, things like that, it should have no problem, and you'll be able to transition outdoors in the middle of the afternoon. Is there a shortcut to upload a Matterport tour to Zillow when you do in shoot?

I don't know of a shortcut. You might be referring to the collaboration with realtor.com where as long as the addresses match, it just synchronizes with the listings that realtor.com has, and it just posted up there. There's nothing like that was Zillow but Zillow, from what I understand, is pretty easy to go in there and just add a 3D tour. They do accept Matterport tours.

What's the advantage of using Insta360 camera to scan over iPhone 11 or 12? Can it also shoot outdoors as well as using the iPhone? Basically, your advantage is speed. I've used both the iPhone and the Insta360, and it's definitely still a lot faster with the Insta360.

Again, it's a single shot, so it's also seamless. There are no stitching artifacts in a scan with Insta360, because it's capturing the entire 360 just designed to see a full 360 sphere in one shot. While with the iPhone, good image quality and certainly great in a lot of different use cases. But I think if speed is what you're going for and you want to be in and out, I definitely think the Insta360 is a better tool.

[00:43:03]
Giles Atkinson: -I tried the iPhone, and it's quite a labor-intensive, I'd say versus the static camera.

[00:43:10]
Amir Frank: -Yeah. With the iPhone just hand-holding it is probably not going to work very well, and you really want to use a tripod. Again, hand-holding, maybe in a pinch. But if you're using this as a capture device and you want to get a full model out of it, you want to set it up with a tripod. You want to use focusing rail to get the lens centered with the center post of the tripod and so on. It's a little bit more involved. It can do it.

The image quality is great, but you do see more artifact stitching issues, and it is a little bit more involved and not nearly as fast. Any Android phone compatibility? Yes. If you're referring to connected devices and capture for Android is fully compatible with all the Insta360 cameras. You can definitely use your Android phone to connect to Insta360 and take advantage of it. No problem at all. Can I get to watch the recorded session later? Absolutely.

We are recording this, and I will be posting it soon after the webinar, so you will be able to watch this later. Do I have to set the HDR function in Insta360 before starting to do the 3D scan, or is it set automatically by Matterport? It is set automatically by Matterport.

You don't have to remember to do it. We're actually controlling the HDR. Some of you may have noticed this. When the HDR quality of just a single snapshot with your Insta360 is a little different from Matterport because of how the system works. We have to basically control the HDR ourselves, and so there is going to be a slight difference in the image quality.

But yeah, because of that, you don't have to remember to set it yourself. Every time capture connects, we're automatically setting that for you. Louis asks, "Could I add an audio during the scan process?" Not during the scanning process, but you can definitely add in audio after. Post scanning, you get your complete 3D model.

You can embed the things like audio files from SoundCloud or other platforms into Mattertags. Giles, is that something that you guys do is use Mattertags to further inform, or do you just leave it with the Matterport model and let the Sales Agent do it?

[00:45:39]
Giles Atkinson: -Yes, the latter. We tend not to use Mattertags. I'm aware of them. I didn't realize you could use audio files in after effects, but we normally leave the sales guy to do. If someone expresses an interest, then they'll do the walk-through, share their screen. Because the conversation is two-way.

[00:45:57]
Amir Frank: -Yeah, if you've got a sales team, that's probably preferred because like you said, it's two-way, any questions from the prospects, you can answer right there on-site or online, I guess.

[00:46:09]
Giles Atkinson: -For us, the tour is a sales tool. We're trying to promote the idea that the real-life viewing does take place. We don't want it to replace our sales guys.

[00:46:20]
Amir Frank: -It makes perfect sense. Cliff has a question. What's the quality and performance difference between the Insta360 One X and the Pro 2? There is a difference. It's hard for me to describe. I would say what we always say here at Matterport is using the right tool for the right job. Every one of the cameras that we support is done with purpose.

Whatever your job is, if it's being in and out faster and the increased measurement accuracy of the Pro 2 is not of any advantage to you if you're, for example, in a promote use case, then Instan360 is brilliant. I don't think you need any more than that.

But if you are needing something that the measurement accuracy is higher, then yeah, then we've got the Matterport camera that's available as well. Obviously, small difference in price. Do I need any special requirements in my website to show the tours? Nope.

They embed very easily. How did you find that process as far as the GIF images that you're using in emails, that's just downloading an image and including it in your email, but embedding that in your site, is that something that you found to be pretty easy?

[00:47:53]
Giles Atkinson: -Really straightforward, actually. I think it just goes into an iFrame. In actual fact, I think the example you gave was on a desktop on a mobile which 85, 90 percent of our clients, their first access to the website, the emails is on a mobile platform. It shows it really well and it's pretty straightforward to embed in the website.

[00:48:21]
Amir Frank: -Yeah, great. Let's go on here. Is the Instan360 camera a good option for large single-family homes as well, or just smaller properties, condos, and apartments? To be honest, I don't think it's about the size of the property so much as it is about your use case and what you're doing with the model. As we mentioned, with Insta360, it's really about the speed advantage. You have a massive advantage with the speed and how fast you can be in and out of the site.

If you are doing a lot of properties, especially in the case of residential real estate, you may be scanning 3, 4 of these a day. In order to get that kind of frequency done, that number of properties done quickly, almost for sure you're going to want the Insta360. Otherwise, you're going to have more people on-site.

They're reducing the amount of time on-site and the number of people that actually have to go out to all these different properties because it's so much faster. Here we've got one for Giles. Does your field team take 360 images and still images and do you switch cameras, or are you just using the results from the Insta360 to generate the 2D images that you use?

[00:49:50]
Giles Atkinson: -We will use the images on Matterport and we'll extract the static image for marketing purposes. The example you saw on our website earlier, the static images there are taken from the 360 when we've carried out the tour, and then the virtual tour is there as well. It's all done with one process. Then the GIF image, the asset, the GIF image that we put into the email for marketing, again is done with the one process.

[00:50:21]
Amir Frank: -We talked a little bit about the differences between the HDR qualities. If it's just a standalone Insta360, they can do a better job with HDR. Do you find that to be not as good as you would like it to be? Is the image quality that you are extracting, the 2D images that you're extracting from the Matterport model, have you had complaints about that, and do you find that to be good enough?

[00:50:46]
Giles Atkinson: -The image that we have on some of our high-end sales, the image quality with a static camera is definitely better.

There's a limitation on when you can extract the image. It depends upon the value of the property, it depends upon the volume.

With lettings, we tend to do higher volume. The life cycle of the property will be on the market for 7 to 10 days, it's not particularly economic to have professional photos taken on those. But if we're selling properties for reasonable sums, then we make it separate images taken in static images as well as having the tour carried out.

[00:51:28]
Amir Frank: -Yeah. It's interesting because we started the webinar talking about how conceptually people think of Matterport as really great for luxury tours in the States. But you're actually saying that with things like the Insta360, it's actually much better suited for the smaller lettings and things like that because of its speed and agility. You don't want to spend the extra money on a professional photographer to come out.

[00:51:56]
Giles Atkinson: -Now if we find, as well, there's something to be said. Professional photos, they can be something of an anti-climax. They make the property look really good. When the prospective tenant purchaser comes to see the property in real life, the property doesn't look as good as the photos, whilst the virtual tour gives a real true depiction that the property looks like it does when you go and view it, which is a huge advantage.

[00:52:26]
Amir Frank: -Yeah. That's why we call it a digital twin. Great. We are just about out of time. I want to get one more question in here. Let's see here. Does the annual plan start immediately or can I start it after I received the camera along with the toolkit? Michael, how long roughly would you say? It shouldn't take very long. The plan does start immediately. How long after the order is placed with Insta360 should someone expect the camera?

[00:53:00]
Michael Shabun: -Depending on where you are in the world, it could take anywhere from 3 to 10 days, approximately.

[00:53:07]
Amir Frank: -If you're doing the promotion and you're getting one and then the other and you didn't get your camera, obviously, right on, I would say reach out to support and see if there's anything that we can do.

I honestly don't know. But yes, the plan does start immediately and you do get the camera up to about a week after. With that, unfortunately, we are out of time. I would just like to thank Giles and Michael so much for joining us and helping me out with this webinar. A lot of really great information. I appreciate your being with us.

[00:53:41]
Giles Atkinson: -Pleasure.

[00:53:42]
Michael Shabun: -Thanks for having me.

[00:53:43]
Amir Frank: -Thank you very much for attending and listening and joining us this morning or afternoon or evening, wherever you might be. Look forward to seeing you in the next webinar. All right, take care, everybody. Bye-bye.