A traditional virtual tour isn’t really virtual. It’s just a gallery of stationary panoramic (2D 360 degree), photos. Although techniques vary, most traditional tours don’t allow the viewer to move around within the space. At the very most, traditional tours offer 10-15 individual locations to view the space. Traditional photographers capture multiple photos which are then stitched together to form a panorama which is viewed from a player.

Matterport is the industry leader for 3D virtual tours, allowing the viewer to explore the space as if they were really there. We use cutting-edge, state-of-the-art cameras which have 12 lenses -6 optical and 6 infrared – so while we are capturing the optical data, at the same time, we also capture 3D Depth data – 4 million points every 18 second rotation, to create the Mesh.

This mesh is rendered into a dynamic 3D model – the Dollhouse. The Dollhouse is unique to Matterport, a model of a property – 99% accurate to reality, a true digital twin, which can be explored online or even with a virtual reality headset such as an Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR.

The technology allows for almost effortless high-quality 3D scanning and 4k visual capture. Additionally, the powerful Matterport AI and machine learning capabilities reduce the need for human input; speeding up the overall turnaround time to as little as a few hours, rather than days or weeks for a traditional 360° tour.

The time taken to scan depends greatly on the size and complexity of the space. Suggested time would be half a day for a small venue, perhaps on a single floor. Allow a full day for a larger venue, (perhaps over 10,000 ft² and multiple floors).

Yes, Embedding a model is very straightforward; it’s similar to embedding a YouTube video. We provide both a regular link and the embed code, which can be altered, to enable the tour to do some clever things, like open and run automatically, and for the show-reel to begin if the tour is not interacted with after, say 5 seconds. It sounds complicated, but is quite straight forward and we’re here to assist.

Yes – Our 3D virtual tours can be easily exported into industry-standard OBJ files containing both the 3D mesh and textures from your space.

If you are using your 3D data for modelling, you can also retrieve a coloured point cloud generated from your 2D and 3D data.

The Matterport 3D Showcase used to display your virtual tour will work on any browser that supports WebGL, which is most browsers. WebGL is the modern standard for 3D content on the web.

This includes Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, Samsung Browser, Microsoft Edge, and Internet Explorer

No, and for most, that wouldn’t be the best solution either.

Many traditional 360 Virtual tours require you to upload files to your own web server. Not only would this require regular server and/or software updates but it could also cause potentially dangerous security vulnerabilities or “backdoor” access to sensitive customer data.

Also, it would almost certainly result in additional hidden costs both in the initial installation and in the additional bandwidth required to run something so resource-intensive.

By hosting your virtual tour in a fully managed and de-centralised cloud environment, you passively benefit from frequent server performance and security updates, efficient deployment and better support.

You need three things to use Matterport VR:

• Virtual reality headset
• Smartphone
• Matterport VR app

To view via Virtual Reality Headset
Matterport supports the following headsets:

• Samsung Gear VR
• Google Cardboard
• Google Daydream View

Your venue should look exactly how you want it to look for your customers or audience. It should be clean and tidy and with minimal personnel, to ensure the most efficient scan and to bring out the very best in your space.

The system is designed to primarily work indoors, as it requires vertical reference points to position itself. However, 360 degree, 4K High Definition photography can be shot outdoors, though these images are not incorporated within Dollhouse model.

Starting from just £750, our sales team can prepare the appropriate costs for your. To find out more, get in touch with us today!