Matterport revolutionizes the real estate sector with interactive 3D models
Matterport was founded in 2011 in California and was announced as the 3rd fastest growing tech company in Silicon Valley in 2017. Matterport is a media technology company that delivers an end-to-end system for creating, modifying, distributing, and navigating immersive 3D and virtual reality (VR) versions of real-world physical spaces on the Web, mobile devices, and VR headsets.
These navigable virtual reality tours are presented in Matterport’s photo-realistic digital media format. Users are then able to experience places through Matterport’s interactive 3D models online as if you are physically there.
Their core focus is sales for the residential property sector. However, any physical space can be captured by the technology. Thus, Matterport are also serving customers across multiple industries including travel and hospitality, architecture, engineering and construction, business listings, insurance, commercial property, shopping centers and others.
Matterport’s products and services are streamlined and user-friendly; users would have to download a “Capture” app to their iPad or iPad pro and connect it to a purchased Matterport Camera. Matterport Pro2 retails for USD 3395 and Matterport Pro2 Lite retails for USD 2495 or, even a Leica BLK360 laser scanner can be used together with a Matterport camera.
The price point for Matterport is considered to be on the high-end side; however, there is also the option of working with more affordable devices with spherical lenses such as the Ricoh Theta and Insta360 ONE X, which retails for just under USD 400.
The new option of working with these devices is for customers who do not require the accuracy, performance and image quality when compared to Matterport’s professional products. It is made for entry-level applications and is suitable to scan small spaces like apartments or condos.
Matterport Cloud 3.0, which utilises AI, is able to convert 2D panoramic and 360-degree images into 3D images. They’re also using it to recognize and identify different types of rooms, which is a valuable tool for facility and property management which includes facility inspection, insurance appraisal, mortgage appraisal, and insurance risk evaluation.
To date, Matterport has the world’s largest VR library of real-world spaces, with 3D models of over 700,000 spaces that have been visited over 250 million times. At the rate that it’s going, Matterport is aiming to expand its library to 100 million scanned images of buildings in the coming years, positioning it as a Getty for 3D enclosed images.
With this technology, users or businesses are able to manipulate the images however they see fit. They can remove all of the furniture in a room and re-stage it digitally without needing to physically do the work ahead of listing the property.
Presently, Matterport is focusing its efforts in geographic expansions to Europe, the Middle East, and African regions as well as the Asia Pacific region.
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