Money Making Idea of the Week
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WGAN-TV Podcast | WGAN Forum Podcast
WGAN-TV Podcast: 10 Use-Cases for the Matterport Pro3 Camera to Help Matterport Service Providers Make More Money | Guest: Hopscotch Interactive CEO and Chief Media Officer Emily Olman | Episode: 169 | Thursday, 8 December 2022 | www.HopscotchInteractive.com @Hopscotch | WGAN-TV Podcast | WGAN Forum Podcast
WGAN-TV Podcast: 10 Use-Cases for the Matterport Pro3 Camera to Help Matterport Service Providers Make More Money | Guest: Hopscotch Interactive CEO and Chief Media Officer Emily Olman | Episode: 169 | Thursday, 8 December 2022 | www.HopscotchInteractive.com @Hopscotch | WGAN-TV Podcast | WGAN Forum Podcast
WGAN Forum Podcast: 10 Use-Cases for the Matterport Pro3 Camera to Help Matterport Service Providers Make More Money | Guest: Hopscotch Interactive CEO and Chief Media Officer Emily Olman | Episode: 169 | Thursday, 8 December 2022 | www.HopscotchInteractive.com @Hopscotch | WGAN-TV Podcast | WGAN Forum Podcast
WGAN-TV eBook: 10 Use-Cases for the Matterport Pro3 Camera to Help Matterport Service Providers Make More Money | Guest: Hopscotch Interactive CEO and Chief Media Officer Emily Olman | Episode: 169 | Thursday, 8 December 2022 | www.HopscotchInteractive.com @Hopscotch
WGAN-TV Training U
WGAN-TV Training U (in Matterport): 10 Use-Cases for the Matterport Pro3 Camera to Help Matterport Service Providers Make More Money | Guest: Hopscotch Interactive CEO and Chief Media Officer Emily Olman | Episode: 169 | Thursday, 8 December 2022 | www.HopscotchInteractive.com @Hopscotch
WGAN-TV: 10 Use-Cases for the Matterport Pro3 Camera to Help Matterport Service Providers Make More Money | Guest: Hopscotch Interactive CEO and Chief Media Officer Emily Olman | Episode: 169 | Thursday, 8 December 2022 | www.HopscotchInteractive.com @Hopscotch
WGAN-TV Podcast: 10 Use-Cases | Matterport Pro3 Camera to Help MSPs Make More Money
Hi All,
WGAN-TV Podcast above]
1. Are you thinking about buying a Matterport Pro3 Camera, but not sure how you can justify the cost?
2. Did you buy a Matterport Pro3 Camera and wondering about use cases other than residential real estate?
My guest on WGAN-TV Live at 5 on Thursday, 8 December 2022 will be greater San Francisco bay area-based Hopscotch Interactive CEO and Chief Media Officer Emily Olman who will help answer these questions (above):
► WGAN-TV 10 Use-Cases for the Matterport Pro3 Camera to Help Matterport Service Providers Make More Money
Emily and I will assume that you are a Matterport Service Provider with a Matterport Pro2 Camera (and maybe you previously considered buying a Leica BLK360 (1st generation) to pair with the Matterport Capture app. (The BLK360 2nd generation is not compatible with Matterport (as of Monday, 7 November 2022 and that may not change).
To help understand the use-cases (other than residential real estate) to make more money, I will ask Emily questions by Pro3 feature (that are not possible with the Matterport Pro2 Camera).
For example, use-cases that are now possible because you can:
1. scan outdoors
2. scan large open spaces
3. scan faster
4. scan with greater distance between scan points
5. scan with a higher Level Of Detail (LOD) of the spatial data
6. none (or fewer) misalignment errors
7. order Matterport Add Ons: MatterPak | E57 File | BIM File
8. use third-party solutions (with a better result)
9. use Matterport Partners solutions (with a better result)
10. replaceable battery
What questions should I ask Emily Olman on WGAN-TV Live at 5?
WGAN Forum Related Discussions
► WGAN-TV Transcript: Matterport Pro3 Camera First Impressions | Southern 3D Tours
► WGAN-TV Transcript: Matterport Pro3 Camera First Impressions | RKO Photography
► WGAN-TV Transcript: Matterport MatterPak and E57 File: Pro3 vs. Pro2/BLK360
► WGAN Cheat Sheet: Cost Worksheet for Matterport Pro3 Camera
► THE List: MSPs with a Matterport Pro3 Camera or a Leica BLK360 Scanner
► WGAN Forum discussions tagged: Pro3
► WGAN-TV Podcast Play List: Pro3
Best,
Dan
P.S. Here are some videos featuring Hopscotch Interactive CEO and Chief Media Officer Emily Olman:
1. Transcript: Matterport Timeline: 2014-2022 | Milestones/Insight/Commentary
2. WGAN-TV Training U in Zillow 3D Home App | Shooting and Post Production
3. Video: How to Edit a Zillow 3D Home Tour (Post Production) Tutorial
4. WGAN-TV Matterport Scanning Training 101
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Matterport Pro3 Camera | Matterport Pro3 Camera Acceleration Kit | WGAN-TV Training U (in Matterport)
WGAN-TV Podcast Play List: Pro3 | WGAN Forum Playlist: Pro3
WGAN Forum Discussion: WGAN Cheat Sheet: Cost Worksheet for Matterport Pro3 Camera
Join the WGAN List | Join WGAN Forum
Matterport Pro3 Camera | Matterport Pro3 Camera Acceleration Kit
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Transcript (Video above)
[00:00:02]
Dan Smigrod: Hi all. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Thursday, December 8, 2022, and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
We have an awesome show for you today: 10 Use-Cases for Matterport Pro3 Camera to help Matterport Service Providers Make More Money.
Here to talk to us about that is Hopscotch Interactive CEO and Chief Media Officer, Emily Olman. Emily, thanks for being on the show again.
[00:00:34]
Emily Olman: Thanks, Dan. It's so good to be here.
[00:00:39]
Dan Smigrod: Emily, before we jump into today's topic, tell us about Hopscotch Interactive.
[00:00:46]
Emily Olman: Hopscotch Interactive is a real estate marketing agency that I started in 2015. We are located in the San Francisco Bay Area and the team consists of myself as Chief Media Officer and then I have six staff that work with us. So six employees.
Then also a number of contractors that we work with in the Bay Area, and sometimes outside of the Bay Area, to provide media services for our clients. I started off as a Matterport Service Partner, Matterport Provider, and from there, really expanded the business and organically grew the company so that we were providing photography, real estate photography, architectural photography. In the beginning it was just me and then I was working on mostly residential.
Then I started to zero in my focus a little bit more on the commercial side of the business, so [media creation for] office space and office leasing. So fast-forward to today, we made it through [COVID] 2020 to now.
Our big shift came in the beginning of 2020, of course, when the pandemic happened and at that time we almost flipped the business and we started doing what we had originally been doing, about 80 percent residential and we switched to about 80 percent commercial scanning at that time and photography.
Then actually from that, we expanded into offering commercial real estate media coordination. So we are marketing coordination. We also partner with commercial real estate brokerages and leasing offices to help them with some of their media coordination like newsletters and social media and those kinds of things.
So we've completely expanded. Another portion of the business, which is not always the one that we monetize the most, but that I'm a huge evangelist for and an advocate for, and that is of course, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). That includes the creation of 360 content, virtual reality content, even Matterport spaces in VR or using
[00:03:23]
Emily Olman: goggles or glasses such as the Magic Leap to create visualizations of the unbuilt world as well. We have a multi-pronged approach to our business and I think that we are responding, of course, to the market, but we're also out there educating and trying to help people. Then I also have a YouTube channel where I share my knowledge and get to talk to people like you, Dan. I have always been a believer in sharing knowledge and helping people grow their pie. So that's what brings us to today.
[00:04:00]
Dan Smigrod: Awesome. www.HopscotchInteractive.com ... Emily, what type of gear do you have?
[00:04:07]
Emily Olman: Well, it's funny you should ask because I keep a huge inventory list of all of the gear that I own and all the gear that we have for our team. Obviously that includes a number of DSLR cameras, and that includes a huge inventory of different kinds of lenses and tripods and all the things that you would need.
Ricoh Theta Z1s, we've got five of those and also Matterport Pro2 Cameras, we used to have Matterport Pro1 Camera, now we have several Matterport Pro2 Cameras. We have a Matterport Pro3 Camera, and we also have, let's see what else is the big gear that we have.
I mean, just anything that we can use to make great content for our clients is something that we typically will invest in. Lots of iPads and scanning devices and things like that. iGUIDE, I have an iGUIDE.
[00:05:08]
Dan Smigrod: All right. So you're using the iGUIDE PLANIX [3D Tour Camera System]?
[00:05:15]
Emily Olman: iGUIDE PLANIX System. That's correct.
[00:05:17]
Dan Smigrod: System. Okay, cool. What was your motivation to buy a Matterport Pro3 Camera?
[00:05:23]
Emily Olman: Well, the announcement came out. I'd known that it was in development for quite some time. I think that at the beginning when it first was announced that we could go into pre-orders, I was a little reluctant to go into it and I had a holdout, we'll talk about in a second.
But the main reason that I bought the Pro3 was because I actually had a real world example where I was scanning with a Pro2 and we had to get over a hurdle in a space. It was an entire floor, a commercial floor that was over 20,000 square feet.
Getting over that and needing to do it fairly quickly and then to be able to do the next floor with occupied space, which is something more recently challenging because during the pandemic spaces were not occupied. So I have to also be able to quickly scan a space where there may be people and so they always want you out as fast as possible.
Those are the reasons that led me to say, I think we need to have this Pro3 Camera in our fleet, but I have not yet converted all of the cameras to Pro3s like I did from Pro1 to Pro2.
[00:06:50]
Dan Smigrod: Let me see if I can unpack that because there are a number of things that you've mentioned. The first, what was the challenge of doing 20,000 square feet with a Matterport Pro2 Camera?
[00:07:02]
Emily Olman: Well, this is a commercial space and this has challenges that will surprise people. But if they've been using Matterport cameras or a system for long enough, they'll know that large open spaces or repeating geometry can challenge the camera and its ability to recognize where it is in the space.
It has a hard time registering the scan and we will sometimes place it where you already scanned if it looks exactly the same. So it's very difficult to overcome those things unless you have differentiated geometry that the camera can then recognize as a new area.
[00:07:47]
Dan Smigrod: First problem related to the commercial space was the Matterport Pro2 Camera (or the Matterport Cloud) being confused about how to actually build the spatial data because of the repetitive space?
[00:08:03]
Emily Olman: Yes, that's correct. It was open and therefore, we only had two planes of information. You have the floor which is one plane, and then you have the ceiling which is another plane.
I had hoped with the open and exposed ceiling in the shell condition space that we would have been able to have overcome it. That was my hope.
[00:08:23]
Dan Smigrod: Overcome it with the Pro2?
[00:08:24]
Emily Olman: Overcome it with the Pro2, which in pretty much 95 percent of cases in the past we had been able to do. But this space just wanted to be stubborn and difficult.
So the tech, the photographer that was out in space, just had expressed some frustration around it. I said that, well, I know that we have access to a Pro3 if we make a call, so let's see if we can get a Pro3 here and see.
[00:08:53]
Dan Smigrod: Meaning to borrow a Matterport Pro3 Camera?
[00:08:56]
Emily Olman: Yes, to hire another one of our contractors who had a Pro3 and to see if that would solve the problem, which I was fairly certain that it would solve the problem because I knew the range would be much better and therefore, the reading from the core of the building and the ceiling to the window line would give us that enough data that we would be able to, even if they were minor differences, it would be enough for the camera to register the scan.
[00:09:26]
Dan Smigrod: Were you successful using the Matterport Pro3 Camera?
[00:09:30]
Emily Olman: Yes, absolutely. Not only that, but that space was finished in, I believe, an hour-and-a-half after we started. I did a video on this, but we have a half a scan that was shot with this incredible density around the core of the building.
With scans placed just a few feet apart from each other so you have this massive density. Then we were introducing into it halfway finished space. Maybe we'd done about 10,000 square feet or something and then we introduced the Matterport Pro3 Camera and then we were able to, with fewer scans, with fewer time and with fewer errors, we are able to complete the scan in roughly an hour-and-a-half.
[00:10:15]
Dan Smigrod: 20,000 square feet?
[00:10:17]
Emily Olman: No, the the remaining portion, so maybe 10,000 SQ FT.
[00:10:20]
Dan Smigrod: 10,000 SQ FT?
[00:10:20]
Emily Olman: About 10,000 square feet, we wrapped up in about an hour-and-a-half.
[00:10:24]
Dan Smigrod: Hour-and-a-half. Did the client have a challenge that the scans were closer together with the Pro2 or that they were farther apart with the Pro3 or for this particular project it didn't matter how far the scans were apart?
[00:10:44]
Emily Olman: I think that's a user experienced question. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a sample of responses from every person that saw the space, all the brokers that would have seen it. But we also deactivated a number of the scans around the core so that it would blend a little bit better. So I don't think they really had a chance to weigh in on that.
[00:11:09]
Dan Smigrod: Okay. So you hid scans.
[00:11:11]
Emily Olman: Yeah. We hid scans.
[00:11:12]
Dan Smigrod: Essentially using the Pro2, which was just slower in its rotation and slower because it took scans closer together in order to successfully scan this space, you essentially went and hid scans from the Pro2 side of the model and were perfectly happy with the distance between the Matterport Pro3 Camera scans?
[00:11:40]
Emily Olman: Correct. There was really no comment on that whatsoever, and I don't know that we even explained, per se, what we were doing in terms of having a different camera before.
[00:11:55]
Dan Smigrod: It didn't matter, they went in their Matterport tour and the technology behind that process was irrelevant to them. Your photographer is pulling their hair out because they were having a challenge of completing the project.
I'm going to say scan failure or a combination, either scan failure or putting the scans in the wrong place, which is a scan failure and having to delete the scan and then try it again. Maybe get the camera closer to the previous scan.
[00:12:30]
Emily Olman: You're coaxing it into behaving for you. That is always a question of how much patients you have and how much time you have.
Then can you also interpret the scan in a way that you can go, well, "It didn't work here in this location, maybe I need to go back to an area where it's narrow or more narrow and then I can continue? Some of it is scan failure and then some of it can be attributed to approach.
But in this case, this is an extremely experienced scanner who was doing this. I would say it was just a shortcoming of the Pro2 that for whatever reason, made it infinitely more difficult.
[00:13:17]
Dan Smigrod: When you use the Matterport Pro3 Camera; scan errors?
[00:13:24]
Emily Olman: Yes. We had a couple of scan errors in some rooms where we were going and this was on the second floor.
We had some errors, so we finished this floor that was fully empty shell space. Then we went ahead and had this next floor which was above it, a couple of floors that were occupied in that space, there were interior suites and things that had been built out.
We had some errors that we may not have seen in the Pro2. Where are we were scanning on the outside of a glass conference room and we were trying to go into the conference room on the other side. It was similar to when you are trying to go into a bathroom and a residential home and then you don't mark the mirrors. Then you go from the outside to the inside and then it won't register because the mirrors are throwing off the mesh.
But in this case, the error was happening on the outside of the room. That was weird. We were trying and sometimes you just have to re-scan that area, so we did both. We re-scanned the area and we put tons of markings or window markings everywhere and on the TV. That overcame it, but it was a surprise. I was like, wait a second, this shouldn't be happening.
[00:14:47]
Dan Smigrod: But just as a side note, did you try marking the windows as mirrors?
[00:14:52]
Emily Olman: We didn't do windows as mirrors. Is that a preference that people have noticed?
[00:14:57]
Dan Smigrod: I don't know. I just thought that might be a way to. If your windows were acting as mirrors and reflecting back. Perhaps, that might have been a solution.
[00:15:09]
Emily Olman: That might be a solution.
[00:15:10]
Dan Smigrod: But that may be a topic for a different day.
[00:15:16]
Emily Olman: That's the weird part is that when you're shooting in an interior space, you typically don't have to mark glass. Glass; since the infrared on the Pro2 would pass through the glass. I would say it's a very small chance that that's causing a mirror error because the infrared passes through it.
Whereas on a mirror it's showing that as if there were a repeat of that other data. I think it's a really good question, but it was a mystery.
[00:15:51]
Dan Smigrod: Let's save the mystery for another day because we got bigger things to talk about on the Matterport Pro3 Camera. When you introduced the topic about why you were buying the Matterport Pro3 Camera. You also mentioned that you were thinking about replacing all your Matterport Pro2 Cameras.
[00:16:10]
Emily Olman: Yes. I think that's-
[00:16:12]
Dan Smigrod: Why is that?
[00:16:13]
Emily Olman: What's that?
[00:16:14]
Dan Smigrod: Why is that?
[00:16:15]
Emily Olman: Well, Number 1 is speed. Number 2 is speed. The speed is really notably different and I think that-
[00:16:27]
Dan Smigrod: Why is that speed important?
[00:16:30]
Emily Olman: The speed is important because, just for example, like in commercial spaces, which we do a lot of, now that there has been a return to office, we sometimes will only get access to a specific location on a Saturday. Saturday, weekend shoots are starting to be requested more often. There's only so many Saturdays and there's only so many of our photographers that are available on those Saturdays.
If I could send somebody out and they can only shoot one floor or they could shoot two full floors in the same amount of time. Obviously, it's going to be much better for us as a business to be able to schedule with greater ease on a weekend or any property for that matter.
[00:17:22]
Dan Smigrod: You mentioned two floors instead of one. Is it literally twice as fast as a Pro2?
[00:17:28]
Emily Olman: I think the Pro3 is about twice as fast.
[00:17:31]
Dan Smigrod: On a commercial space.
[00:17:36]
Dan Smigrod: I'll ask that, it's faster because
[00:17:41]
Emily Olman: It's faster because the rotation of the device is cut down by a significant amount of time. If I say that was originally maybe, they said it's like 30 seconds or something or but I think it's more like 40 some seconds. Now it's spinning around in maybe 20 seconds. It's half the rotation time.
[00:18:06]
Emily Olman: The registration of that data, you're really able to move on to the next scan a lot faster. That just means that you're moving at a much faster pace and you're spreading your scans out distance-wise much greater.
You have to do fewer scans and fewer density of scans instead of doing 300 scans for a 20,000 square foot commercial office, you're doing that in maybe 150. All of those reasons are there.
[00:18:34]
Dan Smigrod: I think the highlight there on the speed is most might read the Matterport Pro3 Camera specs and be focused and obsessed on how quickly the Matterport Pro3 Camera rotates and completes a scan versus a Pro2.
But based on what you just said, the greater time savings may be the fact that you can scan farther apart if that's appropriate for a space, which means you're reducing the number of scans that you need and the camera never has to rotate. If you're going to do, as you mentioned, if you can do 150 scans instead of 300 scans already, you have the savings that is in half even if the camera rotated at the same speed, just the fact that you can put the Matterport Pro3 Camera a greater distance.
[00:19:23]
Emily Olman: I agree, Dan and I think also for folks like myself who have gone from a Pro1 all the way to the Pro3. We're not at this point anymore where it's like, I'm just I love this and I am happy to spend all day doing it necessarily, I think that there is also somewhat of a ceiling in terms of even if you love scanning and it's the most exciting thing and you find it really satisfying and you think it's just so cool.
At a certain point, you're going to be like, "This should be faster. I'd like to do something else with my time today." Or you start to feel like it is suddenly anything that you realize you could be doing faster, why wouldn't you want to do it faster?
[00:20:11]
Dan Smigrod: On this speed, do you think that this will change your pricing in any way because it takes you half the time to do a project perhaps? Or is it, "We can actually do twice as much work at the same rate of pay and our tool happens to cost more. We can still justify the expense."
[00:20:31]
Emily Olman: It's really the latter. I don't see, although I would have to say that there may be disagreement on that from Matterport, you may find yourself in a situation which has happened historically. While when say perhaps Matterport because they have Capture Services On Demand.
I know that's a whole can of worms, but because Matterport has Capture Services unless they suddenly start trying to push down on commoditized pricing because they are a bigger company that has the possibility to do that across many markets all at the same time.
They may say, which is what they did with Capture Services, "No, we're going to try to anchor prices at a certain place. The Pro3 enables us to do that." Don't be surprised if that happens.
But I've seen, people do lower priced scans if they use the RICOH Theta Z1 and they use Matterport Cortex AI as the way that they could create scans because they can just do them so much faster. But I would say that this isn't really equivalent to that per se.
At least you could have a good argument about why or why not that's true. But no, I don't think prices should change, if maybe prices should go up because there has been so much downward pressure on prices over the last couple of years.
[00:21:56]
Dan Smigrod: At the top of the show, I said: 10 Use-Cases for the Matterport Pro3 Camera to Help Matterport Service Providers Make More Money and I know we need to actually focus on that. But before I get into some more use-cases, I still want to ask you: first impressions of the Matterport Pro3 Camera?
[00:22:17]
Emily Olman: First impressions are; a lot of it was round the design decisions that they made and you as an operator, it's almost like it rotates too fast. You feel like you can't tell if you're in the shot right away and so it's spinning, you're looking down at your iPad,
It's going really fast, and then you have to then check your shot to make sure you didn't appear in the shot, and I feel like I was doing that a lot more because I'm so used to the timing of the Pro2. Let's just say a little bit more relaxed.
[00:22:56]
Dan Smigrod: I'm a little bit confused because I thought I heard you say on benefits: speed-speed-speed. Now you're complaining that it's rotating so fast that you might end up in the shot. It's giving you angst. ;-)
[00:23:10]
Emily Olman: Yeah it's giving me angst and I think this is one of these oxymorons. It's like if you want to be slow-fast. It's like you can't have it both ways. Yes, but that requires us getting used to it and I would say that we've
[00:23:32]
Emily Olman: done at least seven full floors now with the Pro3 and the ability to be able to do all of those full floors and to say yes to those jobs in a way that I knew we could hit the expectations and do it quickly; vastly outweighs the fact that yeah, we might be in a shot or two.
[00:23:54]
Dan Smigrod: Okay. I'm going to call that a high-class problem about your angst of being in the shot and we'll take speed as a first impression benefit. You mentioned doing the seven floors. Have you had an opportunity to use the Pro3 Camera outdoors?
[00:24:14]
Emily Olman: No. I haven't used it outdoors yet.
[00:24:16]
Dan Smigrod: Was that part of your thinking in terms of buying the Pro3 Cameras because the Pro2 from a practical standpoint, you really cannot scan outdoors.
[00:24:26]
Emily Olman: We can scan outdoors if we do it at certain times of the day...
[00:24:30]
Dan Smigrod: Yeah. Yeah. There's a way to do it with a Pro3, but from a practical business standpoint, it's really not using the Pro2 for outdoors.
It's doable, but now with the Pro3 you don't have to think about it. Was that part of your thinking at all and what were you thinking about in terms of outdoor scanning, in terms of what might be use-cases that you couldn't do before practically with the Pro2 Camera?
[00:25:00]
Emily Olman: Well, it's a little bit hard because of the timing of the year right now; Matterport introduced the camera in the fall of 2022, but what I think you're going to see in terms of trends are that in the spring, certainly the ability to scan outdoors was part of my consideration.
I have a strong preference for not really liking the whole indoor to outdoor scans with the Pro2 because I always feel like we don't have a ton of range therefore, we get a lot of 3D artifacts that look incomplete and I feel are more confusing than they are helpful for marketing. We do not scan –
[00:25:42]
Dan Smigrod: Ah! I'm sorry, go on.
[00:25:43]
Emily Olman: No. Please go ahead.
[00:25:46]
Dan Smigrod: I think that the aha was to say if it's a marketing use-case, then it's likely not scanning outdoors. That's the conclusion. Unless you hide the dollhouse view.
[00:25:59]
Emily Olman: No. Now we can trim the mesh, so we can trim and we can make it look clean, but otherwise, it's not great.
[00:26:11]
Dan Smigrod: It's not great. So I'm going to put a period paragraph there and say, okay, if you're planning to do marketing scans outdoors with Matterport Pro3, you might think twice about that because the dollhouse really isn't nice. It's kind of geeky.
People might look at the dollhouse and go, "oh, that's pretty cool, you can do that." But the client, from a marketing standpoint, since I need to sell a $5 million, $10 million, $20 million property; that looks like a train wreck.
[00:26:42]
Emily Olman: If it's the Pro2, if it's the Pro3, I would actually argue that the potential for the grounds for the piece of land that it's on for other features like being able to connect between a main house and an ADU or a cottage or detached garage.
[00:27:02]
Dan Smigrod: Yes. But I'm hearing that 80 percent of your businesses are now swapped into commercial. Let let's focus on the commercial aspect.
Today. Thursday, December 8, 2022, I think most Matterport Service Providers that have built their business related to residential real estate are actually thinking, "Oh gosh, I really need to make the leap into other verticals. I'm hoping to tune into today's show and find out, well, what else could I do with the Pro3 other than residential real estate?"
When you're talking about scanning outdoors with the Matterport Pro3 Camera, do you have vacant lots that you're asked to do? Has that come up?
[00:27:41]
Emily Olman: We get a lot of requests to do drone shots of vacant lots and I think that that's very interesting.
I think also in the pre-renovation phase, other properties we may be able to use the Pro3 for elevations and I have to test this and I don't know if anybody has done this test yet, but I want to know if the Matterport Pro3 is comparable to a site survey done by a surveyor, that we'd be going to a residential property to do that site survey, whatever you call it and also is there a cost analysis that can be done as well?
[00:28:27]
Dan Smigrod: Yeah, so interesting questions. We did a WGAN-TV show (sorta) on this topic with a Matterport Service Provider that uses typically a Leica BLK360 scanner or higher and I think his conclusion was if the client needs to specify the Level of Detail, the LOD and typically in that discussion about the Matterport MatterPak, the E57 files, and doing elevations of properties, he had some angst because he would describe the Pro3 Level of Detail, LOD as I want to say LOD 100. I may have that wrong, but whatever that language is for a surveyor, they might say, "Oh, we really need LOD 200, LOD 300, LOD 400."
It probably is asking the client what LOD do they require because I'm going to guess that Matterport Service Providers using a Matterport Pro3 Camera are not going to replace people whose title are Surveyor that show up with a $40,000 $50,000 $60,000, $80,000 LiDAR scanner.
[00:29:46]
Emily Olman: You may be surprised though because you don't know, for some people the lower LOD is enough to do the sketches, but yeah, I wonder.
[00:29:54]
Dan Smigrod: Point taken. If you can bring out a laser measure with you and take some points from A to B and be able to, I know what the term would be, scale the model property properly so to say, if you did a very large space and the Pro3 Camera is off by x number of inches or feet even, then, you could scale the model by taking some critical measurements in order to get it to a level of scale that might be necessary for doing those elevations.
[00:30:33]
Emily Olman: Yeah. That's such a good question and I feel like there were definitely on the forums that I was reading on this particular topic. There was more angst than there was relief.
[00:30:46]
Dan Smigrod: Yeah, it's an interesting thing to be able to say, to your point, sometimes less data is actually better and if you use a $40,000, $50,000, $80,000 LiDAR scanner and you're creating a lot of data, a lot of point cloud data, a lot of mesh -- the overhead -- the processing, the importing, exporting, moving data around is maybe unnecessary.
You're going to put a picture frame up on the wall. You may just need a hammer and a nail rather than a motorized nail hammer that you might use to add the roof on a house.
Maybe the Pro3, I guess I would probably say it's probably up to the client. Is for the client to be able to specify "oh, well, as long as you have Level of Detail of 100, I'm okay" and if Matterport says Matterport Pro3 is a Level of Detail of 100, then you're probably okay. But that's probably a really interesting question. I don't know if we'd get that resolved today; can you use Matterport Pro3 Camera to do outdoor elevations?
That's a good question. It may be sufficient for the architect who needs to re-imagine what that existing space looks like and doesn't necessarily need it to be millimeter accurate.
[00:32:09]
Emily Olman: I think, Dan, that in the same way that photographers purchase Matterport cameras because they need to be able to make an easy virtual tour and then, "oh look, they also make floor plans."
I think that if you're coming from the photography side of the business and then you're moving towards the AEC applications of the tools, you will at some point get into an area where it's beyond your expertise, but you're learning enough and you may have asked the right questions so that you feel confident enough in moving forward with the project and saying, "yes, we have what you need."
If you are coming from the AEC side instead, and then you have a BLK360 scanner or higher, with Faro system or Trimble or one of these guys and you're moving towards a Matterport Pro3 Camera, you may also get uncomfortable as well, but at least you would have that knowledge of the Level of Detail in a way that you could talk as an expert about what we're missing if we're going in that direction.
[00:33:18]
Dan Smigrod: Yeah. I have to think since Matterport does have Matterport Capture Services On Demand, that that group was probably very instrumental in the design specs of a Matterport Pro3 Camera to be able to say, "hey, all those projects that you're using, $40,000, $50,000, $80,000 scanner, you could be using a $6,000 Matterport Pro3 Camera and the Level of Detail is 'good enough' for your use-case."
[00:33:50]
Emily Olman: Yeah, sorry to cut you off, but I think here's the other thing, the other side of that is that, for example, when working with the iGUIDE folks on their PLANIX camera system, which is also LiDAR versus infrared.
They are also based in Canada and one of the things that I learned about Canadian laws was that if your floor plan and the measurements that you're using are more than two percent off, then you are liable for that. Not only that in North America, we have this new ANSI-Z765, I believe standard for floor plans and measurements. I looked on Matterport website, I didn't see that they outright said that they were ANSI-Z765 compliant, but maybe they've changed that since, but I believe that might have been another reason why the Pro3 was an urgency for them so that they could actually say, "look, we're compliant with the standard of measurement on floor plans."
[00:34:56]
Dan Smigrod: I think that's a great question. I was just looking up in the We Get Around Network Forum www.WGANForum.com ...an IGUIDE show that we did about iGUIDE ANSI floor plans with this standard that could make your eyes glaze over. ;-) But I think it was –
[00:35:13]
Emily Olman: Except for the big nerds. We love that stuff, right Dan?! ;-)
[00:35:18]
Dan Smigrod: I am thankful that (Planitar) iGUIDE Marketing Manager Chris White took the time to help us understand ANSI compliant 2D floor plans. I don't believe I've read anything anywhere on a Matterport website that addresses ANSI standards.
[00:35:48]
Emily Olman: I searched their website for it some time ago and I didn't see it and this was around the time where the standard was rolled out and or where it was a thing that I was thinking about often, especially because we started doing a lot of CubiCasa floor plans and there's are compliant and so that was one of the reasons why I started favoring the CubiCasa floor plans especially because of that.
[00:36:15]
Dan Smigrod: This is an interesting question because I think to really break this down because it is super-geeky, bear with me, I'm going to guess because Matterport outsources its 2D schematic floor plans to a third-party company, it's white-labeled through Matterport that I'm going to guess that my hypothesis that the Matterport Pro3 Camera captures the data that's sufficient to create an ANSI compliant floor plan.
But the amount of money that Matterport pays the third-party company to create the floor plans from the Matterport scan is not sufficient for the vendor to say we will take the time to create ANSI-compliant floor plans.
[00:37:28]
Emily Olman: That's an interesting hypothesis.
[00:37:29]
Dan Smigrod: My hypothesis in part because again, super-geeky, but I had a GIS Manager reach out to me, whatever that is, and their problem was, they were using Matterport to do a park system and then they were having the Matterport floor plans created, and then they were trying to lay the floor plans over their existing floor plans and what they were finding there was this disconnect and what they were finding was that the Matterport floor plans were much more stylized... I don't know how to say that.
[00:38:13]
Emily Olman: "This drawing is not to scale." "This drawing is not to scale." I think that really sums it up. I think that there's a certain amount you have to sort of take it with a grain of salt and I think that we are in an awkward position because REALTORS actually are then wondering what data can I trust and so if they do come and say, I'm like tapping on the [Pro3] case here. I have the [Pro3] Camera right here.
But if Matterport could for once and for all say "the Pro3 is ANSI-compliant for these floor plans," ...
[00:38:55]
Dan Smigrod: Emily, I think the difference here is the Camera probably captures the data that's capable of being ANSI-compliant, but Matterport has chosen not to deliver ANSI-compliant floor plans. My hypothesis, and maybe we'll see that they'll come out with a new product and maybe it'll be priced differently. But otherwise, drawing is not necessarily to scale.
[00:39:20]
Emily Olman: But I have a question that I mean, it's always perplexed me because I wanted to understand why Matterport had the TruePlan product. The TruePlan product is a very expensive and higher level of detail floor plan or a 3D plan of properties.
[00:39:43]
Dan Smigrod: It's different. The TruePlan is really the Matterport brand name for an Xactimate®... Then an Xactimate floor plan is actually used in the insurance claims space.
[00:40:03]
Dan Smigrod: The Level of Detail, that's an interesting question.
[00:40:10]
Dan Smigrod: The insurance industry, my impression has embraced Matterport and whether Matterport is providing the TruePlan, which is the Xactimate , or whether someone is using Matterport. There's plenty of people in the insurance space that take the Matterport floor plan view, not the Matterport floor plan, but the Matterport floor plan view, and trace over it or create their Xactimate.
I'm not sure that we can equate Matterport TruePlan and Xactimates with the floor plan product because they're used for different industries. But, I'm so sorry, I've taken this down a rabbit hole.
[00:40:55]
Emily Olman: No, I think it's an important rabbit hole though, because if the Pro3, one of the selling points and people are buying it because it has LiDAR and they want to know that this is going to be a scan or a mapping of a space where the errors and the amount of tolerance of discrepancy in measurements of this space, it will be a more accurate scan and also that those sort of errors won't be then spreading throughout the model.
Then from what I understand, the LiDAR will assist with that because it is not going to be creating the same errors that with infrared we create and therefore expand throughout the model and giving you something like six inches of being off by 6-8 inches. That matters when --
[00:41:47]
Dan Smigrod: If it is off, you could adjust for that in the drawings by taking some laser measurements with a laser measure and say, okay, we need to true-up this model as we draw so that it truly is it at scale.
I think we probably lost half our audience on that [sorry guys], I would say that the Matterport Pro3 Camera is more accurate than the Matterport Pro2 Camera, including outdoors, but as a Matterport Service Provider, careful what you promise a client and I think you'd be way better off asking, "what Level of Detail do you need?"
That would typically be an architect, might ask that question and for that matter, if you're working with an architect, you might say, "hey, I'm happy to scan your office, provides you with the data and you tell me if this example is sufficient for your needs" and that might open up a lot of business for outdoor elevations, it might open up other use-cases as-built, all kinds of things.
[00:43:15]
Emily Olman: I'd like to see it go there and I'd like to see Matterport's value proposition to people who have invested in the systems.
[00:43:30]
Emily Olman: We've invested in the systems, do they invest in us as service providers? I think that this boils down to educating people and I know that there are a lot of Matterport ShopTalk webinars that they do. But I think that this is actually a really important point because it can get a company into some uncomfortable situations.
Also you want to be able to express to a client what you can and what you can't do and set those expectations and that also reflects all the way down to the bottom line of how much you're going to be able to charge a client because then they will feel that level of confidence in what you're doing.
[00:44:10]
Dan Simgrod: Let's put the accuracy aside for the moment. I'll keep an eye out for whether Matterport says anything official on ANSI standards: iGUIDE is all over it.
[00:44:23]
Emily Olman: They're all over it.
[00:44:25]
Dan Simgrod: Using it as a differentiator, particularly in Canada, but probably in the United States over the next X number of years is that standard gets adopted and the Level of Detail, the accuracy of floor plans becomes much more important.
We were talking about the distance of how far the camera can see that probably translates into being able to do atriums within commercial office spaces. Have you stumbled into having clients that have these ginormous ceiling heights in the lobby and all of a sudden the Pro2 just can't see the ceiling and now this is an opportunity for you to say, "We can now create a beautiful dollhouse that actually captures the scan data.
If you need the measurements, we have that for you as well."
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