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MarketingPoll of the WeekVirtual Reality

Poll: Just 26% of You Are Showing Clients VR3903

WGAN Forum
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DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user




Poll: Just 26% of You Are Showing Clients VR

Just 26 percent of We Get Around Network Forum Members/Visitors have showed a Matterport Space in VR to at least one prospective client, according to our poll.

395 Members/Visitors - of 10,900 Monthly Visitors - were asked the following question during a 24 hour period starting on Tuesday, 14 February 2017.

"Have you showed a Matterport Space in VR to at least one prospective client?"

101 of the 395 responded yes.

Participants had to answer YES or NO to proceed to the We Get Around Network Forum. (Please See Screen Grab Above)

I am super-surprised about this LOW number because:

1. Just 26 percent of the We Get Around Forum Visitors/Members have showed a Matterport VR Space to a prospective client, when we asked the identical question four months ago.

2. Since our poll four months ago:

✓ all Matterport Spaces have been converted to CoreVR
✓ all Matterport Spaces may now be viewed on iOS and Android

My observations are the SAME as four months ago:

Wow! I am amazed. I would have expected the percentages to be VERY HIGH because:

VR is a great way to:

✓ get a meeting
✓ talk about what's possible today - 3D - because everyone has a smartphone/tablet/computer
✓ show that you are on top of new tech
✓ talk to business-to-business opportunities (e.g. sales person

VR has a huge WOW factor: even if the penetration of VR Viewers is just 1-2 percent bring the showroom to the client.

We Get Around has been demonstrating Matterport VR since it was first possible. While clients have not engaged us for VR; then have engaged us for 3D. Plus, doing demos of VR has gotten us meetings that would never have been possible.

Everyone has heard of VR. Very few have ever experienced VR. What a great way to get a meeting.

Plus, now that you can get your artwork on VR Viewers in quantities as small as 20, you can brand your VR Viewer (and if you wish, leave it behind - no one will throw it away!).

---

I wonder if the low use of VR for prospective client demos is a result of the Matterport announced pricing of $19 effective 1 July 2017: meaning, how will Pros make money.

I recommend that Matterport announce that it will delay charging for VR conversion (if at all); and, if it does charge, charge by subscription rather than ala carte. This would make it MUCH EASIER for Matterport Service Providers to charge clients separately rather than clients reading that Matterport is charging us $19 for a VR Conversion.

We Get Around used the Popover Genie service to administer this Flash Poll. Popover Genie is a sister service to NinjaPost – the cloud-hosted Forum Community platform solution that We Get Around Forum also uses.

So ...

Why are you NOT showing Matterport VR to prospective clients?

Best,

Dan

We Get Around Network Related Forum Posts

✓ Matterport Virtual Reality (VR) 101: Jump In
Custom Printed Google Cardboard VR Viewers
Which VR Viewer Artwork do you like best?

This post is presented by: Unofficial Cardboard




Video: We Get Around WalkAround Virtual Reality (VR) Tour powered by Matterport | What's it like to experience VR for the first time?
Post 1 IP   flag post
Putten NLD
DannyBasting private msg quote post Address this user
Hey Dan,

It could be that the results are somewhat inaccurate..

I myself got the pop-up 3 times. Possibly looking for IP adress instead of account information to see of the question has been asked.. Got it once on my home workstation, once at the office and once on my phone.

First time I clicked "No" because I was just about to scroll down on my mobile and the poll popped up at that very time. So that was an unfortunate miss click. Second time I pressed yes, and the third time it started to annoy me and I pressed No right away to get rid of the pop-up.

I can imagine a lot of people pressing No right away since it looks more like an annoying advertisement than a poll..

A separate thread with a link to something like strawpoll.com (or something similar) may get you some more accurate results as people that vote on it do so by choice, instead of clicking for the pop-up to go away.

Just a thought though...
Post 2 IP   flag post
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DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user
@DannyBasting

All great feedback.

I will check with our polling administrator to see how we handle de-duping.

Enjoy your weekend.

Dan
Post 3 IP   flag post
UserName private msg quote post Address this user
These stats may be impossible to get even though the actual numbers exist

1) how many people on Earth are shopping for homes
2) how many of them have access to a VR headset

Maybe if someone could run those numbers through an algorithm, we might get a number that might show how many people should be showing others VR homes. Maybe a day arrives when VR tour creators have more business than they can handle when VR headsets become common and sellers demand to show their homes in VR.
Post 4 IP   flag post
Frisco, Texas
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user
Many years ago I read a stupid statistic that the percentage of people briefing the web via mobile write exceed that of desktop users.

I thought this was insane. I was dead wrong.

People have a phone more readily available to them then their computer.

It's no surprise that our mobile devices are the target platform for VR. The only trouble is the hassle of removing our phone cases to clip our phone into a cardboard viewer or a Samsung gear.

I believe that daydream is a step in the right direction as it's soft, collapsible body allows for easy carrying and if I am not mistaken, it accommodates for one's smartphone case.

In addition, web based VR kills the pain point of requiring a confusing setup process where a device needs an app.

Daydream is VR realized and I would stake money that Apple is waiting in the wings with its own webvr headset that will be the subject of their presentation this year.

2017 is the year of VR. 2016 was not.
Post 5 IP   flag post
UserName private msg quote post Address this user
Daydream's on my shopping. Metroplex360, you might be interested in this magic trick if you ever get access to a Gear VR. It makes use of Samsung's experimental API and could help us show VR homes to others without using an app or WebVR.

On my Web server is a special HTML file, call it test.html. If I put on my Gear VR and navigate to that Web page, I find myself inside a 360 panorama -- just as if I'd launched a VR tour, such as Core VR. My Web page is not using WebVR or any type of VR coding techniques. All the HTML file has in it is this Javascript statement:

==
window.SamsungChangeSky({ sphere: 'X.jpg' })
==

X.jpg is the URL of any 360 pano that resides on the Web. Here's a screenshot of the pano running in Gear VR. It's the same beach scene that's in my rear_view demo.


I'd been wanting to see what that looked like in VR but I didn't want to go to the trouble of copying it to my phone and launching an app to view it.

In this test, all I did was put the phone into the Gear VR and that pano appeared, bypassing the normal Gear VR startup screen.

The gray window in the screenshot shows the browser's history. That's useful because you can revisit things you've already seen without taking off the headset.

The white window to the right shows the browser itself. Those two windows float in the 360 panorama scene of the beach that surrounds me.

Samsung described the magic behind the API in this article they called, "Control the world with the Skybox API"
==
"What if you could control the entire world around you with one simple line of Javascript? That would be amazing. Impossible, you say? Well, not in VR with our virtual reality browser"
==

This works because the Window.SamsungChangeSky function inserts the X.jpg panorama into the headset's skybox.. So, users don't have to install an app, visit a WebVR page or download an image file to make this work. In a way this might resemble a CoreVR page that had no waypoints. The only difference would be that the Samsung experience has those two repositional windows that float around you.

More impressive is Samsung's next trick they call "Interactive Skybox."


There we see a Web page floating in front of us. We also see two images on the Web page's right side. If I select either image, the VR scene around me changes and I wind up inside the 360 pano I selected.

This happens because each image on the Web page has an event handler. That handler calls the SamsungChangeSky function when I select the image.

When I get time I might create a Web page that has images of rooms on it. Each room will have an event handler that calls SamsungChangeSky.

I should then be able to "tour" the home by selecting images. It won't be like a full-featured VR tour so I couldn't tap a waypoint in one image to transition to another like we do in CoreVR. But, since the Web page is always visible in a scene I could switch to any room I liked by selecting another image.

If I was a home buyer in a hurry, this capability would enable me to check out all of a home's rooms quickly in VR.

I could even email someone a URL to a Web page that has pictures of rooms. They wouldn't have to tap anything, download images or use any WebVR. They'd simply open the Web page on their phone and put it in the Gear VR to explore the rooms I sent them.

Again, this only works if you use the Samsung Internet browser. The Samsung browser is not a bad one to choose as your default browser. In January, Forbes said,

"Samsung Challenges Google As New Android Browser Beats Chrome"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/01/31/samsung-android-browser-v4-html5/#5c92a81145ce

When Matterport WebVR launches for Cardboard and Gear VR, I'm guessing that I could view a model using my Samsung mobile browser and plug the phone into the Gear VR. Ideally, I'd see the Matterport Showcase.

I'm not sure how smoothly WebVR might run since some Gear VR sources say it's best to enable the phone's global low-persistence setting since that, as Road to VR puts it, yields

"a much higher quality, motion-blur free experience"


This Reddit user even posted what it takes to activate Developer mode which adjusts that setting ..

"Using WebVR with the Gear VR headset"

The steps for using Cardboard in a Gear VR are the same as using WebVR in a Gear VR if you don't go the Samsung browser route. I haven't seen Samsung address that setting in regards to this hack because I doubt if they want people to change developer settings and shut down the Gear VR service.

But, if it's true that this setting needs to be enabled to achieve the best WebVR experience on a Gear VR, users will have to decide if they want to disable and re-enable it. Thank goodness Daydream is here.

I will guess that what I saw in my Gear VR was not using WebVR since my Web page only had that one line of Javascript code. THere's also nothing bewteen the body tags. It's basically an empty HTML document. Maybe the Oculus software is doing something unique to make all this possible.

Imagine a video floating around as you explore a CoreVR room. that may be possible with the Samsung browser if we play a video on the Web page as a user explores a room. The video could describe the room, etc. I'll put a video tag in the HTML and see what happens.
Post 6 IP   flag post
Frisco, Texas
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user
I think that Samsung's idea is very simple and it's a great idea.

I have a major problem with Samsung though. They create proprietary things for their own platform and I don't like their platform. I've owned a few Samsung phones. I always root and load a custom ROM simply because I do not like Samsung's stack of applications that are preloaded onto Android. I love stock Android and love stock iOS. I loathe to think of a non-stock iOS experience wherein Samsung replace all Apple iCloud elements with their own things.

WebVR is an open platform that Apple can integrate. Samsung can choose to support it too. I believe that open standards like WebVR are the ones to hedge one's bet against and for that, I tend to just ignore GearVR.

--

Lastly, I can imagine a video floating around as one explores in CoreVR. I see that as something Matterport need to implement.

I feel very strongly that Matterport should pay attention to my simple extension of MatterTags that include video and image embedding. These things would easily translate to WebVR.
Post 7 IP   flag post
WGAN Forum
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@DannyBasting

About de-duping, our Polling Service Admin writes:

"The de-duplication is a 'best effort' process based on the user's IP address and the user's ID (if they are logged in). We can remove obvious duplicates and prevent abuses like 'stuffing the ballot box"' but it is indeed likely that votes by some users are counted twice.

That is not ideal but we can still draw useful inferences from the data because the sample size is reasonable given the site's overall traffic level (even if we assume that a small percentage of votes are double votes)."

Some additional insight:

Breakdown of responses - forum members vs. non-members

Members - Total of 142 unique votes:

Yes = 51 of 142 = 36%
No = 91 of 142 = 64%

Non-Members - Total of 253 unique votes:

Yes = 50 of 253 = 20%
No = 203 of 253 = 80%

---

So, I feel better that 36 percent of registered We Get Around Network Members (signed in) have shared Matterport VR with a client.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, the percentage drops to 20 percent for Visitors (not signed into the Forum). I could imagine that many people are researching buying a Matterport Camera rather than they have a Matterport Service Provider business and are showing off Matterport VR.

Additional thoughts?

Best,

Dan
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