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Comment by Fission | Hacker News Reader

That's us. https://sendreality.com/318-main-st-a3d/

The biggest challenge about 3D mapping like this isn't about the tech itself, but about actually making it useful for end users. These demos are cool, but the important thing is that you need to build out the part of the software that makes it useful/valuable for consumer/business applications. Otherwise, you should be working on the tech in a research lab vs. a venture-funded business.

This is a trap that even we've admittedly fallen into at times.

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That's a great point, and an interesting example link for two reasons:

1) Real estate seems like a large market for this technology.

2) The specific space in the link looks like it would photograph well, but the 3D version reminds me that it has low ceilings and a lot of areas with limited natural lighting. i.e. it does a worse job than photographs for the purpose — selling the unit — because you can find the unflattering perspectives.

(Side: the red dot is very confusing as regards browser pointer-lock, and the whole thing seemed very awkward to navigate with a trackpad until I discovered that WASD worked.)

The incentives of realtors are not aligned with those of the buyer, which manifests in the cognitive dissonance you've just experienced.

On a different note — if possible, I'd love to chat about your experience with the UI. Do you have an email I can reach out to?

That's awesome! Could you elaborate more on the difficulties of making the model actually valuable? Is it merely the aforementioned problem that even a good scan won't cut it for us picky humans? Or did you run into other issues as well?

Wow. Great. Up until now I knew only such things like [1]. This is what a company I worked for some years ago used (and is still using).

What you are showing is definitely in another league and could be used for an industry like [2] (not that I like the ecological aspect of such travel).

[1] https://diginetmedia.de/virtualreality/360-vr-tour [2] https://www.tuicruises.com/mein-schiff-1

> 3D mapping like this isn't about the tech itself, but about actually making it useful for end users.

Spot on. Body tracking has a similar usability challenge with consumers. I'm finding myself focused more on the E2E experience and workflow integration than the 3D pose estimation itself.

VR ought to be a big application for that, no? A lot of games just leave your torso out of it completely, but some have to include it and it's disorienting to have it drag along like a ragdoll hanging off of your floating head.

Works fine when you're standing up, but when you lean sideways and see your body acting like you took a step to the side and are still standing up straight, that's a little unnerving.

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