Challenging the Status Quo at Matterport?5455
Pages:
1
 WGAN ForumFounder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
Video: Matterport Satisfaction and New Feature Survey - WGAN Forum Founder Dan Smigrod fills out Live Challenging the Status Quo at Matterport Hi All, Did Matterport hire a SVP, Miracles and Heresy tasked with “a highly improbable or extraordinary event[s], development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences” and is “profoundly at odds with the status quo”? I ask this question based on the following questions in the 2017 Matterport Satisfaction and New Features Survey: Question 13: (how important …) ✓ White label (remove Matterport branding for an additional fee) ✓ Add your company’s logo for additional branding ✓ More control over image quality (edit brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure) ✓ Blur out private information such as family photos ✓ Create or manually edit teaser videos Question 18: (how important …) ✓ Easily move, transfer, and copy spaces between different Matterport organizations ✓ More space exposure through syndication to major ILS (Independent Listing Services) ✓ Space footage estimate of how long a model takes to process ✓ Local hosting on-premise solution, or ore private solution Question 22: (how important …) ✓ Easier navigation with Floorplan View in VR ✓ View Mattertag Posts within VR ✓ Offline Matterport VR support for the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift ✓ Public VR SDK (software development kit) for third party developers ✓ White label VR app (applying custom branding and remove Matterport branding) ✓ Room scaling experience (walking around the room six degrees of freedom) Seems like this list speaks to the “wish list” of We Get Around Network Forum Members since the beginning of time (August 2014). The only thing missing form the survey was a backup solution. (So, I wonder if backup is about to be announced.) I could also imagine that the Matterport SVP, Miracles and Heresy has been studying existing and announced (but not yet released) cameras, platforms and 3rd party solution providers to see how and why professional photographers - and large corporations - would switch to a Matterport competitor. What do you think? Best, Dan |
||
| Post 1 • IP flag post | ||
Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Did I miss the part where Matterport had a competitor? | ||
| Post 2 • IP flag post | ||
|
WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Metroplex360 It's likely that I define competitor different than you. I could imagine that you are looking at the features of Matterport compared to any other solution today or announced as coming soon. For me, a Matterport competitor is any solution that a photographer - or real estate agent/broker - can use to differentiate their visual storytelling solutions to get more business. While I obviously like the Matterport platform, I could imagine that other solutions are "good enough" to win business. I suspect that many of the survey questions are as a result of competitors - available today and announced and coming soon. Thus, competition is a good thing for Matterport Pros because the platform will get even better as a result of Matterport responding to the market place. Dan P.S. This may be one of those that we agree to disagree about the definition of "competition" ... |
||
| Post 3 • IP flag post | ||
|
Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @DanSmigrod Yes, I am looking at the features of Matterport as an ecosystem compared to anything else today. And I don't see Matterport as a product that is built for Realtors. If you're wanting to shoot a snazzy interactive tour for a Realtor and we've just talking about stuff to promote a house - then there are quite a few competitors -- iGuide does the job nicely, immoviewer and RealVision have their place -- but beyond the scope of Real Estate, there needs to be a standard that is universally accepted. Standards are so important as they impart notions of 'reliability' and 'interoperability'. With Matterport, their showcase platform has been designed to operate reliably on all platforms (mobile/tablet/desktop/VR), in all locations (global CDN) and on a wide variety of computers and bandwidth scenarios (optimization, pre-loading assets, processing imagery for consistency). As someone with a software engineering mind, the thing that really drew me to Matterport was how it seemed to establish this 'standard' for building an immersive 3D experience from a collection of panoramas that are gathered in a somewhat adhoc manner. As far as interoperability is concerned -- Matterport works towards allowing their technology to be integrated into as many places as they can have it. Right now, I'd like to believe that they are still in early stages -- because obviously it's hard to get people to embrace you as a standard. Examples include Realtor.com, Apartments.com and any large portal that specifically allows 'Matterport' -- or '3D' tours -- and it's a Matterport tour -- not a 'stick in your own virtual tour' place. Matterport is a camera. Matterport is showcase. Matterport is a cloud processing platform. But more important than all of that - Matterport is attempting to establish a standard that can be syndicated, automated, aggregated and understood across many platforms. We hear Matt Bell and Bill Brown make crazy statement about wanting to map out the world or be ubiquitous for 3D/VR -- and as content creators who generally have most success in Real Estate, these statements may seem a bit contrived, but in reality, we've found some of the first places that this technology can accelerate. I could wax on and on, but basically consider a Matterport Showcase tour like currency. In the US, only USD currency is accepted. Matterport want to be the Internet's currency for 3D Tours. If multiple currency is accepted, things get confusing and weird. We don't see JPGs, WebP files, GIFs and PNGs on the MLS or used on large syndicated platforms. Clearly, we see JPGs because they make the most sense and it's a standard. WebP actually makes more sense, but they are a bit late to the game (https://www.webmproject.org/. Remember when GIF images used to dominate and how now they are really only used for animated images (because no other format has really seen a need to be an animation format). So, I see Matterport as being a company focused on creating a widely embraced standard for storytelling through 3D environments and photographic media. And I don't really see any other company putting together all of these elements with an end-to-end solution for content creation that generates standardized results. I do like many other platforms -- but I don't see any other platform that is tenaciously attempting to be a universal de facto standard that is universally identifiable. There's so much more that I could say. I do want to add that I'm 100% impatiently open to competitors attempting to solve the same problem that Matterport is. Obviously, Google Street View seems positioned to be the product that does this as it has a unique position of being a Google product and being tied to search. Unfortunately, it's not really positioned to be usable as a consumer product that extends beyond Google. There are many companies that provide tools that allow custom tour building from data that is being submitted to GSV through their system -- or data already on GSV -- but that's providing non-standard niche applications of data. We're clammoring for features for our niche purposes from Matterport -- but in order for Matterport to be broadly accepted on dream destination sites like AirBNB, Zillow, and dare I say Facebook and Google? The feature set needs to be clear, simple, and kept to what things are standard needs. That's why the problem of embedding a video that is masked to a wall, or adding a video spokesperson overlay really isn't something that we should really want or expect in the base program (An SDK / API for adding custom layers -- sure). -- So I guess the million dollar question is -- at the apex of their potential -- will Matterport Spaces (generically - 3D tours with photographic walkthroughs) actually be interesting enough to be a standard that people WANT beyond niche industries such as Real Estate? It's very easy to say 'no'. But you know ... let's say that I'm in a city I don't know and I slide on my AR Glasses and look at a restaurant and instantly the Matterport Tour loads and I'm freely looking inside that restaurant in VR so that I can quickly assess whether or not I want to actually go inside. The biggest obstable to this would be Google Street View - as it's position would allow it to be the accessible solution over Matterport.... but GSV is seemingly in a stage of regression and Matterport is not tied to any one portal for content (it's not Apple, Samsung, Google or Microsoft)... the sole provider for their VR Ready platform is Matterport (We'll hold our breath for NCTech's entry) Imagine if Matterport became Street View for Bing Maps and the integration became the killer app and we found ourselves building content for Microsoft in a few years after Apple and Microsoft pool resources to overthrow Google's Maps monopoly? Or Facebook? Matterport is playing a long game in establishing itself as the leader in 3D content... and it's an interesting gambit. So that's why I don't see any other competitor right now. No one else is thinking that big. NCTech is one to watch, but they have yet to launch the LASiris, and by the time they do, who is to say that Matterport don't also launch a LIDAR based line of cameras? |
||
| Post 4 • IP flag post | ||
|
WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Metroplex360 While I agree with you, Matterport does have a BIG competitor. I write about this competitor (and what Matterport needs to do) in this WGAN Forum discussion: ✓ Matterport's single biggest competitor is ... Best, Dan |
||
| Post 5 • IP flag post | ||
Pages:
1This topic is archived. Start new topic?