After using the promo license at both a world renound 3d VFX studio and at home for 8 months I feel like I can safely write a review people can trust.

Reality Capture Has been a massive part of my daily work, producing solid 3d models for a big VFX pipeline, The interface will take a fair bit of time to use as the way it works is fairly unique, however once a basic understanding is aquired you can really speed up your Photogrammetery.

One thing I feel needs to be highlighted higher up is that you NEED an nvidia graphics card, as CUDA processing is the backbone of this software.

When Comparing RealityCapture to Its main competetors, you tend to find yourself looking at just how quick it is, And its amazingly simple workflow which can be delved into to change each individual setting related to almost everything.
This is great for people like me, who try to configure the software to produce the best results for each different scan type. Sometimes spending more time configuring than processing!

One thing I must say to newcomers to this software is READ THE HELP PAGE INSIDE REALITYCAPTURE. enable tutorial mode, it will walk you through all the settings and how they work.

For people who are unable to remove images. Change the workflow of a 'pane' to 1ds mode and then select the images you want to remove from calculation, then in the 'component view' below the 1ds pane, click the dropdown box where it says 'enable in alignment'.

Pros:
The software is Fast and can handle massive datasets
Control point addition tools are incredible
Fast turnarounds for exports
Mesh outputs are very detailed
Simple mesh decimation/reduction tools
Quick UV/Texturing
Processes a simple shoot in seconds, 12 frames of a facial capture at 2k will produce roughly 1.2m polygons


Cons:
Lack of 3rd party documentation
Requires nVidia GPU
8bit texture exports
Expensive if wanting to use it as a command line based program.


Conclusion:
While the software may be confusing at first, I really suggest reading the help documentation. It is incredibly in depth!
I also highly reccomend joining the 3d Scanning Users Group on facebook for help, we are really into this stuff and are more than happy to support newcomers!

The software is very good but the cost of the subscription for one or three months is absurd.

Excellent photogrammetry software, trapped within one of the most consumer-hostile business models I've ever seen outside of an MMO.

Let me start by saying that RealityCapture is the best photogrammetry software on the market. Full stop. I've tried plenty of other solutions (Zephyr, Metashape, COLMAP, meshroom), and none of them match the quality that RealityCapture can produce. However, that praise is overshadowed by how actively hostile their business model is to subscribers.

To give some background, there are two ways to pay for using RealityCapture. The first is on steam, as a 40 USD/Month subscription. The other is their PPI model, usable if you use the demo version, where you pay roughly 1 USD per 357 megapixels of data. That's about 30 images on your average cell phone, or a little over a second of video. That is a reasonable price for anyone looking to only make a model or two, but it's absurd for anyone who wants to make more models than that. That's where a subscription model would be ideal, if RealityCapture didn't treat its subscription customers with nothing but contempt.

Don't try to process anything with the demo. The demo only works for the PPI model. Attempting to open a demo file using the subscription model fails, because they want to make sure they slow you down as much as possible during your 1-3 months. There is nothing useful you can transfer from a file made using the demo/PPI version to the subscription version. The word demo is a misnomer - the "demo" is the fully featured version of the program, while the subscription version is limited.

Do you have coded control points in your dataset? The PPI version has the ability to automatically detect them, but the subscription version doesn't - again, purely to slow you down.

Speaking of arbitrary limits, you can't use more than 1000 images on a model under the subscription plan, and you can't use more than 24 megapixels per image. With limits like that, you'd think you were using an online service, but no such luck - these limitations are all on you and your CPU.

By using the subscription model, you automatically agree to send any and all usage telemetry to Capturing Reality (the company that makes this program) and there's no way to opt out of that or block that telemetry, because in their eyes you're basically using a free to play version of their program. They make sure to remind you of that too each time you export a model - they want to make sure you know you're a "freeloader". Ubisoft, Activision, Bethesda, and EA could only dream of treating their paying customers this poorly.

I wish I could recommend this software, I really do. It's amazing, and I'd be happy to pay any subscription they asked for. However, Capturing Reality makes it plenty clear that they absolutely do not want to sell their product on Steam. Fair enough, Capturing Reality. If you don't want anyone to use your service on Steam, then I won't recommend it.

Edit: The insults continue. If you export too many models in too short a period (I don't know how many, I did 5 within like an hour) it hits you with a capcha for using your own computer resources.

From an industrial engineering point of view this software is not ready yet. I played around with demo, before purchasing one month sub to conclude my anlyses. I compared it to Agisoft Photoscan side by side with same photosets. Agisoft stays as my choice, while I will keep an eye on this for further improvements.

Overall is very good if you are interested in doing objects which you have access to from all sides or on a turn table. If you are reconstructing installed items in tight spaces with access only from 1 out of 6 sides you will find it losing details as well as forcing watertight mesh. Usage of DSLR is advised as it does not work properly with mobile phone cameras.

Pros:
Amazingly incredible Processing Times
Better quality dense clouds
Understands depth and overall dimensions of objects better than Photoscan
Vertex coloring scale settings
Does not run out of memory on highest settings (32gb)
Supports 3D scanners, but not all kind.
Reconstructs better meshes of small, round and curved objects

Cons:
Alignment algorythm is worse than Photoscan, had to manually create control points several times.
Alighnment in draft mode results in single merged component, while higher settings alignment splits the model into different components.
Loses details which are beyond primary object but are clearly seen, even with background detection off. While they are reconstructed just fine in Photoscan.
Dense clouds are sparser than Photoscans.
Difficult to navigate UI
Forced Watertight meshes
Enormous file size of exported meshes
No .wrl or .stl export option
Settings are poorly explained
Works bad with mobile phone cameras, usage of DSLR is advised
Currently aimed at hobbyists and 3D Artists.

Overall the main selling point is SUPER FAST PROCESSING TIME. Another point i ticked for myself is more precise (even though sparser) dense clouds and meshes.

I compared this product to Agisoft Photoscan and calculation speed of RealityCapture is unbelievable. RealityCapture can align standard 100-200 photos datasets in minutes and in Photoscan can take it hours. For me, this is top product on photogrammetry market. When i am doing simple statue, i can have preview on the spot with notebook with incredible speed. Inspection tool for analyze quality of my shooting is very very helpfull. RealityCapture can handle huge datasets i never seen align/matching of thousands of photos calculated so quick on my desktop. And quality of high-resolution outputs, like texures and meshes is unbelievable. And in-app simplifying ability of high-res meshes is excellent. I can not believe what I see and i can do in this piece of software.

been using it for a while and its good, but annoying license model so when i saw it on steam i figured that'd be a good way to deal with it, not so much since i can only run one steam game at a time and i'm usually running reality capture for a day plus+ so that means i'm locked out of my primary usage for steam. but it is a very good app.

Reality Capture is extremely cool. Its one of the fastest photogrammetry programs around and also one of the most reasonable in price. Until they changed their license coming up in Feb 2020. Cutting the amount of images you can process from 2500 to 1000 and limiting the number of lazer scans you can bring in. Why? These restrictions are arbitrary and probably designed to get you to use their "pay per scan" model (eyeroll here) or one of their other plans that are sitting at 250 to 750 euro per month.

This program is cool- dont get me wrong. You can still do some cool things with the new unwelcome changes. But you are way more limited now. If you are a small indie studio / freelancer like me- then reality capture isnt quite as worth it as it was before.

This version of the software is rendered inferior in my opinion due to the right out garbage licensing system that sometimes loses the connection to Steam and locks you out of your project without the ability to save, despite that Steam is connected and everything is working just fine. It has a button that re-tries the connection but it never works despite there being absolutely no problem with Steam or my internet connection what so ever. Don't get this version unless you absolutely need to be able to use it on more than one PC, something any other of the licensing options they have available won't allow you to do.

This of course also means that if your internet connection fails for whatever reason, the program won't allow you to save or do anything until it re-establishes the connection, something it appears incapable of doing in any scenario. This can and will make you lose work.

App doesn't open, and when trying to "Launch" it via Steam, I get a notification that it can't be launched because the "app is already running". When their pricing structure is subscription-based, this means that I'm losing time and money because their application is buggy and won't run.

There is also a note that "you will be billed automatically" after the initial 3-month subscription, and there is no clear way to turn off auto-billing or auto-renewal of this so-called "subscription", because right now I definitely do not want to renew it, since it's essentially unusable.

UPDATE: Finally got the application to launch - I had to run Steam as an administrator. Loaded some images (an image set that I've previously run with RC) and the app promptly crashed due to a "mini dump". Example of crash: http://imgur.com/a/xfrOr

Further Update, because one of the developers has come on here and accused me of "trolling":

"CapturingReality", the company behind "RealityCapture", released this program as a free-to-use-as-long-as-you-let-them-collect-information-on-you beta in December 2015. I've been working with photogrammetry for the past 5-6 years, using primarily Agisoft Photoscan. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to test out a new software that claimed to be faster and more accurate. At first, all was great, despite the weird user interface and random crashes and sometimes inaccurate-looking models. There's no doubt that it's a very fast software: it can do in 30 minutes what it takes photoscan a couple hours to process. However, and it's a big however, I'm not convinced of the "accuracy" of this software's results, and the developers have shown themselves to be very arrogant, time and again.

So, in short, I've been using this software for almost a year: I have experience with it. In some respects it's great, but overall, between their pricing strategy and general attitude, I just get a bad vibe from it. If you're a professional who makes more than 80k per year from laser- and photo-scanning, it might be a good investment, but for the STEAM community, which is mostly made up of hobbyists and independent developers, I can't in good conscience recommend this software over any number of open-source or cheaper, non-rentware programs.

DO NOT BUY THIS SOFTWARE ON STEAM! The licensing system can cause it to crash if you have a long build and will render your project useless. Not only that, if your build time is over 2 hours (mine was 22 hours), Steam won't let you refund the license because they regard it as a game. What a complete waste of $99.