A Matterport virtual tour is a great way to market commercial and residential properties. The tour itself can be viewed from multiple devices or a VR headset. We can also present the spaces as a 4K video, panoramic image or a 2D photo as we’ll see here:
This is a typical 2 bedroom apartment for long-term rent, that can be viewed as a regular virtual tour. It is embedded in the webpage, but can also be shared as a regular link, in other convenient ways such as email or SMS. For the above virtual tour, the URL is https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=aMK6JMFsPiU
So those are two popular ways of sharing a Matterport virtual tour. The business is a Southern California based senior living community, that may also want to showcase their common areas in Central Park Flower Valley, Gurgoan. As an option, the highlights are autoplayed in the below virtual tour:
These panoramic (360 degree) images can also be uploaded in Google Maps – Street View, so that viewers can pan around within Google apps.
Let’s look at a couple more panoramic images that are hosted in Google Maps. The best practices for such media is that people should not be included (or their faces blurred) to respect their privacy. Another detail is license plate numbers, which should be blurred if it’s unavoidable to remove the parked vehicles at the time of scanning.
All these images were captured with a Matterport Pro2 (135 MP, the same as the LiDAR-based Pro3). Adostrophe does not use consumer cameras such as the Ricoh Theta or the Chinese Insta360 series.
In this project, other devices such as a DSLR or drone weren’t employed. For traditional videos, a gimbal-based DSLR can be used to capture the property, however, a viewer would not be able to pan around if they choose to do so.
2D images can be extracted from the Matterport tours, for various purposes such as social media sharing or if a potential guest wants it that way. There are plenty of photo-sharing websites out there, including WeTransfer, where the image quality is not lost during uploads. For our demo carousel, the images are optimised for web sharing, so that mobile-based renders are faster without consuming too much data.
For the sake of simplicity and illustration, Adobe apps weren’t used for editing the images. These high-fidelity HDR photos can be presented with dramatic angles – which is one of the advantages of a Matterport tour captured with a professional scanner.
Now, we get into videos!
One of the properties’ virtual tour that’s presented in the beginning of this article is shown as a YouTube video here. The convenience of the platform is that it automatically adapts to a user’s internet settings – 4K resolution if the bandwidth allows, of just SD. A potential guest can choose to download the video, so that she can view it later while offline in a flight.
For our demo purposes, we didn’t add any audio or text overlays, although it’s a great idea to do so. Slideshow transitions can be sped up, but our target audience is Indian Americans who may be middle aged, so the highlights are at default speed.
Now, the common areas:
The first video was a regular embed, but the one above uses Elementor’s video block in WordPress. The advantage here is that we can set it to “Lazy Load”, which means, it won’t consume data unless the viewer scrolls down to this point in the webpage.
On a blog post, we optimise the images and videos so that they are mobile-friendly. For print and other collaterals, the full-sized files are shared.
We hope this article was useful in showing how a Matterport virtual tour can be presented in multiple ways. As Indian Real Estate companies are gradually adding virtual tours to their marketing agenda, we believe this helps build trust because what the viewer sees are actuals – without any misrepresentations or editing.
Packages:
Going forward, all our Matterport scanning services will be offered as packages, which will include the following:
- The complete Matterport virtual tour,
- Hosting for one year,
- 60-second 4K video,
- 10 2d images and
- Optional Google Street View uploads with chevrons.
- Google Ads campaign setup, worth $100.
These 5 offerings are for clients who pay ₹ 10 per square feet, or higher. For others (free and discounted services), hosting may not remain activated for more than a month. This is due to Matterport’s revising pricing plans.
As always, no extra charges for:
- Travel,
- Expenses,
- Accommodation,
- Equipment, including LiDAR scanners and
- Post processing – editing for a lifetime.
Contact us if you’d like to rescan with the Leica BLK360 G1. The newly released G2 is not compatible with Matterport though. We do not use commercial 360-degree cameras like the Ricoh Theta Z1 or those from Insta360.
From 2024, we’ll be using the Matterport Pro 3 scanner, which uses LiDAR as opposed to the Pro 2’s InfraRed. The difference is measurement accuracy for architecture purposes, however, the image quality is the same in both cameras.
