Over the coming days, I'll be sharing in-depth comparisons of the Matterport Pro3 Camera and Realsee Galois cameras along with their inherent capture apps and edit dashboards / consoles. I'm going to do this in stages as there are so many details to explore.
Matterport is an advanced system, as it has been operational for over a decade. In that time several cameras have been released and many improvements have been made. I remember years ago using the Pro 1 camera and, as a professional photographer, lamenting the image quality, color balance and HDR limitations. Each year the quality has improved, not only with camera upgrades but clearly coming from improvements in Matterport's processing algorithms. Today the panos are crisp, HDR quite amazing with interiors pleasantly bright without exterior views blowing out. I've been impressed.
The Realsee Galois camera, roughly equivalent, is still quite new. Realsee has made many features available, even some that exceed what the Pro 3 system can achieve, and the company seems to be releasing new features in a steady stream. My first looks at imagery, several months ago, were so-so (I think without any HDR) but the picture quality has already improved dramatically. Exposure and color balance are also improving rapidly. It seems that making any comparison is shooting at a moving target. Nevertheless, it's worthwhile to see how things stand.
Today in "Episode One" I'm going to discuss only zenith/nadir coverage in the capture app previews, a few misc comments on the capture process, and touch on image quality and zenith/nadir in the final models. I'll have more details on the capture process later.
Everyone who uses Matterport will recognize its preview window, useful for checking if anything was caught by the camera that shouldn't have been - like my own reflection in a mirror, which has happened many times. The preview window opens within the capture map, small, but does the job.
The Galois capture app currently works only in portrait mode. As a photographer I would prefer landscape orientation. This isn't a big deal, and maybe Realsee will add landscape viewing, but good to know. When you tap a node to preview, the image opens large, replacing the minimap, which makes it easier to see details. Also note that while the Matterport preview can look up and down only about 60°, the Galois preview sees fully 90° up and down. And notice that you see no "blind spot" even though one exists. This is due to Realsee's AI patching of the zenith and nadir. I must admit, the AI patch is as good as I expect I could do by hand in Photoshop or Affinity. Wow. Note: I have screenshot these images a couple days after the shoot. I think while shooting, there were circles similar to the MP capture app. But since this model has been processed, which includes automatic AI zenith and nadir patching, this populates back to the capture app itself. Anyway, well done Realsee. I can only barely see the wood grain repeating itself in the patch.
Next, here is are the Pro 3 views to the up limit, level, and down limit. You can see the "fuzzy-fill" nadir patches. Up is very small, down a bit larger. Matterport has intelligently tilted the Pro 3 lens upward a few degrees because usually, ceilings are more important than floors. Well done. BTW, in that downward view, the transparent nodal circle is the node the camera is standing on! The fuzzy blur covers all legs of the tripod so yeah, that's straight down.
And here is the Galois views after processing the model. The Galois also sees up and down fully 90°. The image is a little darker but look at that zenith and nadir. Incredibly good AI patch. No tripod or blurred patch in the ceiling. Realsee Galois currently photographs with 3-bracket HDR. 5-bracket is expected next month [May 2024]. Considering how close they are already, the difference may be history next month. Both have quite realistic color. (I scanned on a very dull day with intermittent rain showers.
Final comments for Episode One: I hope Realsee activates Capture mode on iPad in landscape orientation. It's more natural than portrait, more comfortable in your hand, and for professional work I really don't want to work on a tiny phone screen in either orientation. I expect they will add this before long. Another major shortfall at the moment is that in the Realsee capture screen, you can only MOVE one node at a time from one floor to another. This is wastefully time-consuming. I hope they add the ability to select a bunch of scanned nodes and reassign them to a different floor.
You'll note that Realsee adds a gray "veil" to the top and bottom edges of the display to help you see the overlay icons. While this does work to pop out these icons, I hope they will add an option to suppress these shaded areas. As a photographer, I'd prefer the images to be as clean as possible. In Matterport if a background is really light the icons can be hard to see, but it's simple to rotate the image to something darker if you need in order to pop out the icons.
Realsee, like Matterport, has a system for manually realigning a scan to a new location, both laterally and with rotation. I found it worked better than Matterport's. That's a plus. Matterport's minimap is a bit clearer to look at currently than Realsee's but both work fine.
So that's it for Episode One. I'll have another Episode as time permits between jobs. I hope this is helpful to everyone. |
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