WGAN-TV | How to Make Potential Virtual Tour Competition Irrelevant with Mashups | Guest: Brisbane, Australia-based Wingman Media Brisbane (@Wingman) Owner Mike Lysov | Episode: 130 | Date: Thursday, 13 January 2022
Interactive Tour by: Brisbane, Australia-based Wingman Media Brisbane (@Wingman) Owner Mike Lysov.
Transcript: WGAN-TV Live at 5 | How to Make Potential Virtual Tour Competition Irrelevant with Mashups
Hi All,
[Transcript below ...]
Are you experiencing a race-to-the-bottom in pricing in your market?
Make potential virtual tour competitors irrelevant with mashups (example above).
If a potential client says - "I want a virtual tour like that!" - it's likely that few virtual tour photographers would know how to do this mash-up (or lack the gear and software) that uses:
1. ThreeSixty Tours for aerial hero image with 3D and 360 location pins
2. Matterport - Look for 3D location pins
3. Leica BLK360 - Outdoor scanning of a golf course
4. Labpano Pilot Era - for individual 360 photo spheres
The creator of the virtual tour above is: Brisbane, Australia-based Wingman Media Brisbane (@Wingman) Owner Mike Lysov.
Mike will be my guest on WGAN-TV Live at 5 on Thursday, 13 January 2022:
✓ WGAN-TV: How to Make Potential Virtual Tour Competition Irrelevant with Mashups
Demo and discussion will include:
1. Demo This Tour - including pointing out which gear and software was used to create each feature
2. Behind-the-Scenes Tour - show the how - backend - of ThreeSixty.Tours hosting platform for this tour
3. Discuss how this virtual tour helps make potential virtual tour competitors irrelevant with mashups
With so many 3rd party tools and solutions for virtual tour photographers, it's likely that you can mash-up services – and gear - to create an offering that makes your potential competitors irrelevant.
Special Offer for We Get Around Network Standard Members
✓ Free use of ThreeSixty Tours (Whitelabel Pro 5 Domain Subscription) as long as you are a Standard Member (Saves $19.99 monthly) | Highlights of WGAN Standard Membership Benefits | Join WGAN Standard Member
Questions I should ask Mike on this episode of WGAN-TV Live at 5?
WGAN Forum Related Discussions
✓ How to Make Money with ThreeSixty Tours; Making Your Competition Irrelevant
✓ WGAN-TV Live at 5: How to Make Your Matterport Competition Irrelevant
✓ Blue Ocean: Make the Competition Irrelevant
✓ Transcript: WGAN-TV Intro to 3DVista Virtual Tour Pro Software for MSPs
Happy New Year,
Dan
P.S. The top-of-the-line ThreeSixty Tours Whitelabel Pro Domain 5 Plan includes:
✓ Responsive viewer embed
✓ Social Sharing with Facebook, Twitter and Google+
✓ Unlimited Panoramas
✓ Unlimited Tours
✓ Panorama Branding
✓ Tour Branding
✓ MLS friendly (no branding option)
✓ Option to override branding settings on a per-panorama and per-tour basis
✓ CSV Data Import/Export
✓ 5 Custom Domain Names (White Label)
✓ Seamless integration with WP3D Models Wordpress Plugin (Model Base: ThreeSixty Tours)
Buy a Labpano Pilot One EE camera and Succeed Faster with a free WGAN-TV Training Academy 1-Year Membership when you use one of these We Get Around Network affiliate links to buy the Camera: Amazon | Adorama | Labpano
Transcript (Video Above)
[00:00:03]
Dan Smigrod: Hi all. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Thursday, January 13th, 2022, and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. We have an awesome show for you today: How to Make Your Potential Virtual to a Competition Irrelevant with Mashups. To talk to us about that is Mike Lysov. Hey Mike, good to see you.
[00:00:30]
Mike Lysov: Hi Dan. How are you?
[00:00:30]
Dan Smigrod: I'm doing great and nice to be visiting with you today. Mike is the owner of Wingman Media Brisbane, Australia on the Gold Coast of Australia.
I invited Mike to be on the show today because he published to the Wee Get Around Network Forum (www.WGANforum.com) a mashup of a virtual tour that I just thought was awesome as a way to make the competition irrelevant.
Mike, how about you show us that tour and take us through all the different tools, solutions that you used to create it?
[00:01:14]
Mike Lysov: Let me just share my screen. Let me make it full screen. Now it's ready. That's the front-end. I would say it's a 'splash' image, whatever we used to call it, and then we can see some points of interest with every tour that starts.
Why are there so many of them? Because as you can see, 3D icons represent Matterport tours. They've been made purely for promoting the venue of this place.
They have some venues in the restaurant over here. I'm not sure what [kind of events are] happening at the coaching center over here, but I was asked to do it as [an event] place or maybe it wasn't [an event] place.
Anyway, what this all about is my partner providing some website tour for the clients when they asked for something like this. Purely they focused on capturing just spaces for venues to be listed on the marketplace, but when the customer asks, they can create a tour and let them use them on their website. I don't think they're allowed to use any of the Matterport tours, but when it's part of the bigger picture, my partner lets them use this.
[00:02:50]
Dan Smigrod: What platform are you using here - for this 'hero' image - this aerial shot?
[00:02:57]
Mike Lysov: This is the: www.ThreeSixty.Tours platform, I've heard a lot about it. I've seen a lot of examples of things done even the same way as mine, so you have a 'splash' image which can be an aerial photo or aerial 360. I would prefer to have aerial 360 here because you can see more because there's a lot of golf fields hidden here.
Probably not much to see on the left side, but still the 360 would look much better. In fact, I believe if you use 360, you're going to be on a [Business] subscription tier because for you to be able to use [this 2D image], just the [individual tier].
Because that's what this feature introduced, but if you're using the Individual [pricing plan], you don't need to do [a 360] here. If you have an Individual subscription tier, but you can just use the 360, because 360 is adjust the panorama, so you just start with that then you start building your hotspots on top of it.
[00:04:08]
Dan Smigrod: Just for clarification, the platform is: www.ThreeSixty.Tours That's spelled out: www.ThreeSixty.Tours
[00:04:19]
Mike Lysov: Yeah. That is correct.
[00:04:21]
Dan Smigrod: Your 'hero' image: you chose to use a 2D still image that could've been a 360. I'm just dying to see that 3D of that building. I just imagine that's a Matterport tour that's under that 3D icon?
[00:04:36]
Mike Lysov: There's two of them actually, so one represents the Coaching Center.
It's actually really small so we can just quickly jump to it. It also done with some 360s to show a golf course because like I said, the tools are made for the client to be listed on the venue marketplace, and this tool is specifically done for the client website, so we can repeat ourselves, so you can actually walk through the miniature golf in a Matterport tour, but at the same time there is a separate walk inside the website tool. This is a small area, and this was done before sunrise.
You can see shadows and then later when we go through the driving range, you can see the sun is going up. This was easy. Like everybody says, if you need to scan something outdoor, do it before sunrise or after sunset. That was a 30 minute window to scan every single route. You can actually see it's very good.
[00:05:51]
Dan Smigrod: Okay, good. So in this tour here, you're using Matterport. You have a Matterport Highlight Real. You've shot 360 Scans to do the walk around and then we see some 360 Views that are on the exterior?
[00:06:06]
Mike Lysov: Yeah. I was trying to actually capture the driving range with my camera and I started doing that, but it was every step, it was getting brighter and brighter and I just stopped. I think I went behind that beam. Look, sometimes clients don't clean stuff and there's nothing I can do.
You can see it stops here, but in fact, There are probably three other 360 Scans here. That's why I actually went to the first section here, and then it just stopped aligning because it was already bright with sunlight and things like this.
[00:06:42]
Dan Smigrod: We were talking before the show began that since you did this tour that you now own like a BLK360. So I could've imagined that you might have used the BLK360 to shoot the driving range in sunlight?
[00:06:59]
Mike Lysov: Yes, I would definitely brought it there and tried to use it. Sometimes it's just really time consuming. I usually [use the BLK360 set to medium scan/HDR off or HDR2]. That's three minutes for each BLK360 scan.
[00:07:20]
Dan Smigrod: Leica BLK360. Setting it on medium scan/HDR off or HDR2 takes about three minutes?
[00:07:28]
Mike Lysov: About three minutes and actually if you're scanning during the 'civil twilight' - which is before the sunrise and not the sunset - the Matterport camera works and it's not that faster to do it with the BLK360.
The BLK360 will help you if it's not that 'civil twilight' time. You need to do it during the day, and that's where Matterport simply won't work and I wouldn't want to use it. [Even doing this ThreeSixty.Tours with the Matterport scans] ... [I used two or three of the Matterport scans] but then you start generating a lot of [scanning] errors and that's just not nice.
[00:08:08]
Dan Smigrod: That's the example of Matterport. Then I think you have some stand alone 360s within the tour. Maybe we can go back out to the 'hero' image. We can close out of that Matterport space.
[00:08:18]
Mike Lysov: Maybe I will try to do the walk around the golf course because it's much nicer. When you go through the driving range, you see that bright sun and not much you can do about. This is at least not affected by the sun. I don't remember exactly, but I believe it was done during midday, even by my shadow ... I think I just disabled the full 180, so there is no vision there.
[00:08:55]
Dan Smigrod: Was this shot as a Matterport 360 View within one of those other tours?
[00:09:02]
Mike Lysov: This one was shot with a Labpano Pilot Era: which is a fantastic camera. I tried many others and unfortunately I can't find the match for a cheaper price.
[00:09:13]
Dan Smigrod: I'm sorry, just for verification. This is a Labpano Pilot Era camera that you use to shoot standalone 360s for this?
[00:09:25]
Mike Lysov: Yeah, that's correct. It provides 32 megapixel resolution, or so it is called 8K; so it's quite good. Not maybe as detailed as Matterport.
[00:09:42]
Dan Smigrod: I see some 'bubbles' in there so I imagine those are other 360s that you can go from 'bubble' to 'bubble.'
[00:09:50]
Mike Lysov: Yeah exactly. They asked me to capture, for example, the seating area for the parents if the kids are playing or just a seating area for anyone. You can jump to that spot and you can see what it looks like from that spot.
[00:10:05]
Dan Smigrod: I also apologize to WGAN-TV viewers. I know it can look a little 'herky jerky'... But it's actually silky smooth when you look at this tour: not within all the technologies that we're using for WGAN-TV Live at 5 [to view this tour].
[00:10:23]
Mike Lysov: I'll try not to rotate it fast so it's less affected by this. After that, you can jump to this, for example, to another spot. There are actually many spots there and maybe we can see it somehow on the interface inside the backend. I just didn't want to have a lot of 'bubbles' jumping everywhere.
[00:10:49]
Dan Smigrod: Yeah.
[00:10:49]
Mike Lysov: I was trying to create some walk...
[00:10:53]
Dan Smigrod: If you could close out of this for a second and then maybe what we could do is to see there's other information on this screen, for example. Maybe you could tell us about everything that is being displayed within this ThreeSixty.Tour?
[00:11:11]
Mike Lysov: As I said, the 3D icons, they represent the Matterport tours. Everything that is jumping here - pins - are mini-tours included in this one and represents separate walks. For example, this one will go through the driving range like this.
This one represents a separate venue, they call that the food truck lawn. I don't know why, but that's what they call so they wanted to create the walk-throughs for that. Little bit boring. I don't think you need to walk through that.
[00:11:49]
Dan Smigrod: Yes. But I think what we can see here for clarification, you did not put all your ThreeSixty.Tours on the 'hero' 2D image. You put a couple of key - either Matterport tours or 360s and then once you click on, let's say this food truck area, you have yet more 360s that can be viewed.
[00:12:13]
Mike Lysov: Yeah. I don't know why I had decided to do it that way. As you said, I can definitely do it on the 'hero' screen, as you call it. But I saw it's much better to separate them. You see there is actually the name of the truck shown here.
[00:12:35]
Dan Smigrod: Yeah.
[00:12:36]
Mike Lysov: You know what actually you're exploring.
[00:12:40]
Dan Smigrod: If you could close out of this and maybe just take us up to the top, I see a couple of options or something that says more. It looks like there's a sharing screen.
[00:12:52]
Mike Lysov: I think that just the information panel.
[00:12:56]
Dan Smigrod: If you go up to the top. There's this one.
[00:13:01]
Mike Lysov: There's a sharing button which allows to share on Facebook, Twitter and allow 'Copy URL' if you want to insert it in the SMS or maybe emails. This button, I think just show what trucks they are inside the tour.
I didn't see that feature. Maybe it's a new one. Look, when you actually hover over the names, you see the highlighting in the yellow. I didn't see it before. That's interesting.
[00:13:38]
Dan Smigrod: You could charge more for that now that you know that you offer that ;-)
[00:13:44]
Mike Lysov: I don't see that you can jump inside them using it. I'll just try. Unfortunately no.
[00:13:49]
Dan Smigrod: Then I think there was one other item on that top. If we close out of that menu and we look at the top, we saw sharing, we saw the markers, we saw a contact. I see a map.
[00:14:08]
Mike Lysov: I think that just shows the same map. Maybe there is a way to separate what's shown here. Maybe you can have an actual map, just drawn map. Maybe it can be reducing [what you see on the screen].
But at this point it just shows the same 'splash' screen. I think I assigned it that way because that's actually a map. It is a map just represented with an actual photograph.
[00:14:33]
Dan Smigrod: That sounds good. I'm going to stop you there. What I'm going to ask you before you show us the behind-the-scenes of how you created the tour is -- how about telling us about Wingman Media Brisbane?
[00:14:50]
Mike Lysov: We started about three years ago. I first started there was my friend and neighbor who is a videographer. I don't think we were focused on Matterport tours. It was mostly drone related thing and mostly related to cinema because my neighbor is doing some documentaries...
But he actually told me about the Matterport camera. At first, I didn't even pay attention to that so I said no, let's just focus on the drone thing and stuff like this. But then we decided to buy it. We found one that was sold by a guy from a rural Queensland.
I can't imagine how hard it was for him to sell anything. There was Matterport. I think they just gave up and decided to sell. We bought the camera and I started drilling into Matterport things and I realized that it's actually really nice.
It can be a good business tool to use and actually didn't even see it in Australia, anybody using it, I bought my own property. I'd never seen these tours on property listings and things like this. It was really interesting.
We started doing it together, but then we split because my neighbor was focused on cinema. He dreamed about a really expensive drone and we decided that we could not afford the drone at that point. We split and I primarily focused only on Matterport tours. I didn't want offer photography at the beginning.
I don't have a degree in photography. but I had a camera - even a film camera - when I was 12. I was running around with that camera trying to capture everything I could. I spend hours trying to develop films and [print] photographs as well.
[00:16:46]
Dan Smigrod: I'm sorry, are you describing me or you?
[00:16:50]
Mike Lysov: I guess we all have some similarities in that.
[00:16:54]
Dan Smigrod: Offer Matterport I think I heard you say you offer photos. What other services does Wingman Media Brisbane offer?
[00:17:02]
Mike Lysov: I'm trying to offer aerial 360s because there is a demand for that. Especially for when you [have places like the golf course]. I've done race courses where they would benefit from 360 aerial. Golf courses as well.
That picture that we were talking about here a picture, it's actually not mine. I was supposed to take 360s (for the golf course) but the client invited some photographer and I had a drone and they took a picture for them and they had no idea that such just a flat picture. They told me not to bring a drone, so I came without drone. When I started building the TheeSixty.Tour I didn't ever know what's coming and then the two default came instead of 360s.
[00:17:45]
Dan Smigrod: Yeah.
[00:17:47]
Mike Lysov: What else?
[00:17:48]
Dan Smigrod: Google Street View?
[00:17:50]
Mike Lysov: Street View, as well, and I tried to get some expertise in the Google My Business listings because the Street View is attached to that, you need to understand why you are offering that to people. Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense.
[00:18:03]
Dan Smigrod: So, you have a Matterport camera. What are you using to shoot photos?
[00:18:10]
Mike Lysov: Using Canon 5DS. I bought it. It's probably not the best camera for real estate. Maybe my lenses are crude, but I can't get really sharp pictures out of it. Another reason, of course... I shoot with the F11 [smartphone] with a very small aperture just to get that every thing in focus. Maybe that's the reason. Maybe I can't find the right aperture for my lens that will make the picture sharp at the distance I needed.
[00:18:40]
Dan Smigrod: I think I heard you say BLK360.
[00:18:43]
Mike Lysov: Yeah. I'll try to make them in the order of purchase. My wife is laughing. The next one is a Labpano Pilot Era.
I love this camera. Like I said, I can't find the new replacement, then it cheaper and I use it all the time even sometimes just to do the community tours. I've done some tours in the local forests so people can walk on trails inside the forest. The last picture was a BLK360 scanner.
[00:19:17]
Dan Smigrod: I like a BLK360, it's a little bit pricey. Why did you end up getting one?
[00:19:23]
Mike Lysov: Mostly because of the jobs I'm doing for my partner who has a marketplace because it's benefits and they agreed.... I remember the story. I was asked to do a convention center in Brisbane. It was really big argument on how long it will take. I was absolutely sure it would be a 10 day job because it's huge. There's multiple floors, big areas, open areas.
I didn't have it, so I didn't have BLK360. I started chasing where I can rent it from. I found the place that rent it for $400 a day. But if you take the camera, if you hire it for 10 days, they drop the price significantly. I think it's $1,500 for ten days, which is quite affordable.
Then I started realizing if I start using a rental camera, the whole money goes to the rental company, not to me. The retail price brand new, which is about AUD $31,000, wasn't an option for me. I don't have these funds, it's big money. I started chasing used ones.
Even, found a lot of scammers selling them really cheap, stayed away from them. Then I called the actual distributor, and we had a chat. They said they have one for AUD $21,000. Then it was more than I could afford to pay. I just left them my e-mail address.
In a few weeks, they send me an email that they want to get rid of their own demo unit. They want AUD $15,000 plus GST and I said, sorry, I can only afford AUD $15,000 with GST included. They agreed to that and that's how I became an owner of such beautiful device.
[00:21:19]
Dan Smigrod: That's good. What did your wife say? ;-)
[00:21:24]
Mike Lysov: She left. ;-) About that. It's hard. It's really hard. Even though I mostly borrowed money from my mother who is living with us because she's old. Not many of them came from the actual... our account.
The problem was I received a big payment from my partner for the previous jobs. That was supposed to be partially fund at least 40% of the purchase. But it's still funny to find another AUD $10,000. She's still complaining but she understands it now that it brings some extra money. Sometimes it makes me work really hard and long, but at least I can build something I can be proud of.
[00:22:14]
Dan Smigrod: Well, I think one of the exciting things about having a Leica BLK360 mashed up with Matterport and other things that you're doing. It is a way to differentiate yourself because if you have a job that's outdoors and it's a big space or a big convention center and there's a high ceiling and that's important, then that BLK360 is going to differentiate you from anyone else in the greater Brisbane, Australia area that could possibly shoot the space.
They either want it or they don't, and they want it at the price that you charge or too-bad - so-sad it's not an option because you now have mashed up Matterport, Leica BLK360, Labpano Pilot Era, and you use this platform, ThreeSixty.Tours.
All of a sudden what you're offering, no one else can touch you because they either don't have the expertise of mashing together the different platform/software tools, or they can't afford to go buy the BLK360 because it's an expensive camera scanner. In the United States, I want to say it's $18,000 or $19,000 plus tax. But if you make that decision, you at least now have something that makes you unique.
[00:23:43]
Mike Lysov: Look, I do offer even for residential, I've done jobs where I used BLK360, but I told all the vendor from the beginning that it's going to be expensive. A. sorry. And B; it's going to take a lot of time. I spent six hours doing a house inside and out.
The house was not really big, but it has another house. The reason why I was doing that, you need to transition from one house to another. That makes sense to use a BLK360 and at the same time, not just to create some small paths, but actually go around the house, in front of the house, in front of the small house, behind and around the small house and actually capture the whole driveway just to show what's possible.
Maybe I was under-paid even though like $600 is not that small money to earn on six hours job. But at the same time I've got something to show. I can tell my customers now, "you can get this; and this is a premium or you can get just the internals. If you use 360 Views." I'm doing rentals now for one agent and that's what I do.
I scan inside, I create one 360 View on each side. That's all people need technically. But for those who are selling something really expensive or ready to pay more, I can actually create the whole floor plan in Matterport actually, the whole site plan, including the internal scanning.
[00:25:19]
Dan Smigrod: Yes. You want to get your wife back? ;-) We're going to explain that to her that, "look, this is really a good investment because you are beginning to make."
[00:25:26]
Mike Lysov: She would be laughing a lot. ;-)
[00:25:28]
Dan Smigrod: Because you are able to differentiate yourself from any potential competitor through the tools, solutions and gear that you're using to create this mashup. I think it's super-exciting. Take us into the back-end of ThreeSixty.Tours ... Please, show us how you created the tour that you showed us.
[00:25:52]
Mike Lysov: I'll show then, just a second. [Setting up to share his screen.]
[00:25:58]
Dan Smigrod: Incidentally, while Mike is setting up. On Matterport tours, he offers optional extras: Highlight Reel, the video teaser, floor plans, virtual staging, lead generation for Matterport, so full-service in terms of Matterport and optional add-ons.
This is the back-end to ThreeSixty.Tours - www.ThreeSixty.Tours I imagine that you signed in -- ID and password, -- boom, here's your account. Tell us how you created the tour that you showed us earlier.
[00:26:39]
Mike Lysov: The demand to use ThreeSixty.Tours came from my partner because they used it for another client in the UK and they loved it.
I don't think they're ready to use any other platform because I could do the same tour in Pano2VR and it would be much easier for me because I know it better. It's desktop software, so everything's here, no need to upload anything anywhere until it's ready, of course. But this is what it is.
I have to do it in this platform and that was what I was given as a tool and sent in the field to do something with that. It actually represent all this what you see in the tour. This is just a 2D image that acts as a 'splash' screen.
There may be some other ways to build the tour, but I just watched some videos, and I thought that's the way to do it. Interesting. It's actually kicking me out of interface, so I'll just have to switch between these two. Each tour was done with Labpano Pilot Era only.
[00:28:00]
Dan Smigrod: I'm a little bit lost. Let's go a little bit slower for me. How did you bring the digital assets into the platform? Maybe you could start with the panoramas. You took some individual panoramas with the Labpano Pilot Era camera. What was the process for uploading those tours to ThreeSixty.Tours: those panoramas?
[00:28:24]
Mike Lysov: If you scroll down, you can actually see the interface for uploading. It's all here. So if you want to create a new panorama, just click this bottom.
[00:28:34]
Dan Smigrod: Okay.
[00:28:36]
Mike Lysov: You can upload the image. I think it's here, just save panorama. Just a second. It's switching interface, so it's a little bit hard.
[00:28:46]
Dan Smigrod: Okay.
[00:28:47]
Mike Lysov: There is a button called Batch Upload. That's what I was talking about with you before (the show).
[00:28:53]
Dan Smigrod: Okay. A little bit before the show. So you have a choice? You can upload either an individual 360 panorama, an equi-rectangular JPEG image, or you can upload a Batch of them at one time?
[00:29:06]
Mike Lysov: No. I think that's the single upload button. It just say Batch because you can drop multiple files in it or you can drop a single file. There is no separate button for uploading any single file just for that.
[00:29:24]
Dan Smigrod: Okay. Let's go back, if you would. Let's just stay on 360s for the moment. I see one that says, Mini Golf Course 1, and then there's some options there to see it. I can imagine it's a 360, so that's okay.
Then there's a little pencil there which I imagine is to edit it. Could you open that and just let us see what is associated with that particular panorama?
[00:29:55]
Mike Lysov: Actually, that's interesting. It's supposed to let you actually edit the title. Let me try it again.
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