Capture your world in interactive VR with the new Matterport Axis phone mount

Matterport Axis
(Image credit: Matterport)

Matterport has been a specialist in capturing VR interiors for years – it calls these ‘digital twins’ – and while its bespoke scanning cameras are expensive, it’s been steadily developing its systems downwards to allow for much simpler and easier VR capture. And it can hardly get simpler than this.

The Matterport Axis is essentially a motorized phone mount that works in conjunction with the Matterport mobile app to capture a spherical rendering of your surroundings from any spot you choose. The Axis itself is an affordable $79 gadget that works with a phone you probably have already.

The VR capture is just the first stage of the process. The rest is handled by Matterport’s online VR hosting service.

The Matterport Axis is a rotating photo holder that turns your phone into a 360 VR capture device for Matterport's hosted VR 'digital twins'. (Image credit: Matterport)

How the Matterport system works

Once you’ve made your VR capture, it’s uploaded to Matterport’s own site where it’s assembled into a full VR environment that can be viewed in a regular browser just by following a shareable link. 

The key to the system is that you don’t just make a single capture, but a whole series, as you move from one room or interior to another. This way, visitors can ‘walk through’ your virtual environment, pausing to look around at the surroundings at key points.

You can see how this works at Matterport’s sample digital twin of the UK’s Warwick Castle. The system even generates an interactive 3D VR floorplan so that you can get an overview of how the rooms are laid out – or you can just ‘walk’ from one room to another.

Take a VR tour of Warwick Castle with Matterport! (Image credit: Matterport)

Matterport Axis and account pricing

Matterport’s hosted VR system is aimed both at professional real estate vendors and owners of tourist attractions (for example) who want to give visitors a flavor of what they can see. 

Accounts come with a monthly subscription, but they start at just £7.99 per month (about $10.49 USD/AU$14.00) for two users and five ‘Active Spaces’.

The Matterport Axis itself will sell for $79 (about £60/AU$105), but there also bundle deals which include capture devices like the Ricoh Theta, Insta360 ONE X2 and Matterport’s own Pro2 scanning camera.

Previously available at early bird pre-launch pricing, the Matterport Axis will now be available from major resellers including B&H and Adorama.

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Rod Lawton
Contributor

Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com