Dive Brief:

• A California startup called Matterport has developed a 3-D camera that will sell for $4,500 and feed data to cloud software so contractors, architects and others can quickly create and manipulate on-screen models of rooms.
• The company wants to nail down its place in a market for dependable, usable technology, leaving experimental uses of 3-D to others.
• The product allows for fly-over and walk-through examination of the models, and the company says it is possible to change colors and textures inside the space and to insert or remove objects.

Dive Insight:

Matterport is counting on ease of use at relatively low costs to make its mark. The company says its camera captures data that the software can manipulate into an image that would take two days of human data-collection effort and CAD construction ordinary 3-D modeling and would cost $20,000 to $30,000.