Competitive position versus ESRI, page-2

Esri have a desktop software product ArcGIS Pro which can do various processing/visualization of point cloud data, however a more relevant comparison would be their web browser based product ArcGIS Online.

It's been about 1.5 years since I last used both these Esri products, but this is my understanding/experience of the difference to Pointerra:

- ArcGIS Online like most GIS products have been mainly 2D focused in the past. From memory it didn't accept the point cloud data (such as .las) and required conversion within ArcGIS Pro to a scene layer package (.slpk) file first. Using this converted file, ArcGIS Online can view point cloud data in it's 'scenes', but I experienced a lack of detail and poor performance.

- The applications of ArcGIS Online are more large scale visualizations and not the close up 'inspection' or 'engineering' level detail that Pointerra can offer. This is due to the fact Pointerra have more detailed camera controls, annotations/attachments, measurement/cross section tools and high performance rendering regardless of the point cloud file size.

- Sharing visualizations/data on ArcGIS Online is limited to the expensive paid accounts required by the sender and receiver, unless the data is made public for all (not private).

- ArcGIS Online point clouds in 3D is mainly visualization only with none of the growing number of data management tools of Pointerra. E.g. Sharing data privately with anyone externally with no requirement of them having a paid account, clipping subsets of data for download, reprojecting/resampling data, analytics as a service (Classification etc.)

- To be fair I should mention ArcGIS Pro being a desktop software, can do some specific processing on point cloud that Pointerra can't but that's almost always the case with the Desktop vs web browser-based software. Part of Pointerra's selling point is that you don't need expensive computers or software and it is all handled from any computer/phone by simply logging into a website.

- Esri with ArcGIS Online have been moving further into the 3D space lately, mainly in the BIM/3D Building model space. No doubt they may look to improve the point cloud support in future, but at this stage Pointerra trumps them easily with the advanced functionality and detail. I wouldn't consider Esri competition at this stage, they are almost in seperate but complimentary services e.g. ArcGIS Online (can?!) may be able to stream point cloud data hosted from Pointerra.