I’ve noticed there’s only been limited discussion or identification of potential competitors to Pointerra. I’ve done some rough research and compiled a list of some companies that appear to be partly (Data Visualisation Only) or largely (Data Visualisation & Data Management etc) in the same market space.
Some services are funded as branches of very large companies (Leica, Trimble, Aveva) and others are smaller start-ups purely focused on the service. I work in the geospatial industry in GIS with a small background in surveying but have only scraped the surface of working with Point Cloud and 3D data, so by no means am I an expert, but I can recognise many of the formats and features described.
Why would I bother making this list? I’ve previously invested in Nearmap, Spookfish and currently Pointerra from about a year ago, each purely based of the tech offering fundamentals, as I have experienced each of these products through my work. While the 3D data storage/visualization market seems to have plenty of room for competition at the moment, I feel it’s still key to keep tabs on major competitors and be aware if their products start to have superior offerings.
After attempting creating this list I was actually very surprised how many companies are starting to replicate this service, especially since around 2018. This became a little exhausting after a while so I’ve left the list as is, but I know for sure there are a least a few others services not mentioned.
I had originally started writing comparisons to Pointerra features on each product, but it became way too subjective, especially based off some of the limited information/demos available (I couldn’t try Aveva or Leica for myself).So, to put it very broadly in my own opinion:
I believe Pointerra has excelled at it’s online interface and has great measurement and navigation tools. The Pointerra performance remains steady across all dataset sizes due to its IP around data retrieval of only camera facing areas, whereas many of the other demos below will perform very slowly constantly trying to load a lot more data than needed. I sometimes find Pointerra loses the detail required up close, and becomes a little too 'Thinned'. (However, comparisons can be difficult due to the point cloud size variations and details used in the examples by each program). It’s great to see Pointerra adding more features on a regular basis such as camera fly-through recording etc.
Where Pointerra is getting ahead of most, if not all competitors so far is it’s built in data management options so far such as archiving(compressing), Resampling/Reprojecting conversions and data clipping (cropping) for export. While of course the traditional desktop based software can do this and much more, the web browser-based offerings from competition is very limited.
The Analytics as a Service (AaaS), whilst an optional extra, really raises them to the front of the list again just for the sheer convenience of uploading giant datasets and having Pointerra do all the work of classifying (E.g. extracting features such as power lines). If they build more libraries of Analytics like this, that could gain an even greater edge.
Probably one key area I think Pointerra must get involved in is allowing their datasets to be read by other desktop based CAD/GIS packages such as ESRI, AutoCAD and Bentley. I’m not actually sure if that’s currently available, please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m seeing a couple of the larger competitors with this integration already.
So that’s all the subjective ramble I’ve got! I think we are positioned ahead of nearly all of the competition and if the developers keep up the pace of new features and integrations I reckon we can keep the head start and create more use-cases to drag in customers away from purely traditional desktop point-cloud applications(Although those will always have their place too).
I know I will be keeping my eye on the competitors in the coming years to ensure we are staying relevant! I hope the list is of some use
**And a big thankyou to GlutenFree and some of the other regulars who have kept me informed over the last year or so.
The Incomplete List (In no particular order):
Online Externally Hosted Systems:
Pointerra
·Year Created: 2015 (Perth)
·Employees: 13 (LinkedIn)
·Interactive Demo: https://app.pointerra.io/tryit/
·Features:Link
Faro Scene WebShare
·Year Created: 2014? (Florida)
·Employees: FARO company -1,941 (LinkedIn)
·Interactive Demo:Link
·Features:Link
Leica TruView Cloud
·Year Created: Possibly 2018-2019? Going off youtube videos and articles
·Employees: Owned by Hexagon ~50,000
·Youtube Demo:Link
·Features:Link
·Link
Trimble Clarity
·Year Created: Clarity Web Viewer launched late 2019
·Employees: ~11,500+
·Interactive Demo:https://cudemo.dev.clarity.trimble.com/viewer
·Features:https://clarity.trimble.com/
NavVis Indoor Viewer
·Year Created: Oldest video of their Indoor viewer product dated 2016 (Munich)
·Employees: ~200
·Interactive Demo:Link
·Features:https://www.navvis.com/indoorviewer
Aveva LFM NetView
·Year Created: Unsure, videos range from 2010- 2016 (Cambridge UK)
·Employees: ~4,684 (LinkedIn)
·Youtube Demo:Link
·Features:https://www.aveva.com/en/products/point-cloud-viewer/#features
Euclideon udStream Browser
·Year Created: July 2020 (Queensland)
·Employees: 50 (LinkedIn)
·Youtube Demo:Link
·Features:Link
·Link
3DMapping.Cloud
·Year Created: July 2020 (Belgium)
·Employees: Owned by Orbit GT ~15 (LinkedIn)
·Interactive Demo:Link
·Features:https://3dmapping.cloud/capabilities/
Voxxlr
·Year Created: Possibly2017?
·Employees: 1? (LinkedIn)
·Interactive Demo:https://www.voxxlr.com/1586179279434
·Features:https://www.voxxlr.com/
PointSharePlus
·Year Created: 2018 (Perth)
·Employees: 4 (LinkedIn)
·Interactive Demo: Link
·Features: https://www.pointshareplus.com/
3DUserNet
·Year Created: 2017 (London)
·Employees: 3 (LinkedIn)
·Interactive Demo:Link
·Features:https://www.3dusernet.com/features.php
FlyVast
·Year Created: 2016 (France)
·Employees: Owned by Geovast 3D ~4 (LinkedIn)
·Interactive Demo:https://flyvast.com/case-studies/
·Features:https://flyvast.com/
Raw Open source code with self-hosted system:
Majority of the above web-based viewers build off these open source code libraries for the point cloud/3D data visualization. With the right IT skills, a company can utilize them without paying for one of the above services (with limited features of course). Pointerra uses Cesium on the back-end for example.
·Potree: https://potree.github.io/
·Cesium: Link
(20min delay)