Central Park Video Virtual Tour

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360vrguy
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2018 6:18 pm
Location: Stuart, Florida
Contact:

Hello,
I have been shooting Virtual Tours for a little over a year now, and up to this point have just been using YouTube and Facebook for the end product. I really like the way Pano2VR allows for more interactivity such as hotspots, info links, google map integration, etc.

I love visiting NYC, especially Central Park, so decided to do a tour of it. The purpose was to give my potential future clients something to look at, and what can be done with the interactivity that the tours provide, especially utilizing video rather than just photos (my background is regular video production).

I chose 27 areas of CP, and could have done over 50! Each scene is a video clip lasting around 30 seconds. I shot using the Kodak Dual SP360's 4K cams, and have recently upgraded to the Yi 360.

Stitched using the Kodak Stitch program, edited in Premiere Pro.

I decided to dedicate a separate website for this tour: http://www.centralpark360.com

Direct link to Tour: http://bit.ly/2HNUjE6

Please let me know what you like, and needed areas for improvement...would love some feedback.

Thanks, Rick Miller
missingman
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon Apr 16, 2018 10:05 am

Interesting and clearly quite a labour of love. Takes me back to when I visited NYC for sure.

As to the tour, well if someone has never been to Central Park it puts you right there and in that way it works

My constructive comments would be that I'd lose the controls that skip to next and previous. I thought they were Fast Forward and Rewind. I suppose you could give them labels but the point of a tour is that you click and move round, seeing one place relative to another. You lose that as soon as it's done with buttons.

The filmstrip would benefit from being centered I think, taking the whole screen width. and then I'd lose the pause/play control. I don't think anyone would use them.

The map is good, though I nearly didn't spot the control to switch it on and off!

Finally though, and this is pretty much the first 360 video tour I've seen, I don't think they offer anything over a photo tour. In fact, I think they lose a something. Image quality is obviously a huge compromise and in a park you're just looking at the same people walking by each time you visit a node. I'd rather see high quality images of trees, flowers and lakes than highly compressed video.

I hope the above is helpful.
360vrguy
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2018 6:18 pm
Location: Stuart, Florida
Contact:

Hey missingman,
Yes, thanks for the response, appreciate the feedback.

Since starting to use P2VR, I have not noticed a lot of users doing video, but for certain topics/subjects I think it can be beneficial.

Advance Buttons/Play Controls: adding these was to make it easier for viewers to travel around. For my tours, I am designing assuming the viewers are new to viewing a tour. Since Video, most viewers are used to a Play/Pause option, and to a certain extent, the advance buttons. But yes, it does clutter the screen, so a tradeoff. Maybe I should rethink both.

Map - yeah, back to viewers not familiar to the tours, that Map Button Symbol to turn map on/off - We know what it means, but I bet non-users have zero idea what it is, so I used the Text Button. Maybe I should make the Show/Hide button bigger...just didn't want to cover screen too much.

Video vs. Photo - yes, the quality drop is a bummer. I did a lot of testing for Video Playback on devices with various internet speeds. What I decided was to reach the highest amount of users, while sacrificing a bit on quality. Since P2VR outputs as Progressive Download, video playback all depends on internet download speed. So targeting slow 3G cell connection users as a base, I wanted to make sure they could view the videos without any playback pause issues. That seems to be a video bitrate of 2mbps, which looks OK. I've toyed with the idea of developing a "High Quality" and "Low Quality" tour option for users. The high quality looks so much better as far as color, sharpness, etc. I use the HQ version when I show clients locally, bypassing the online option.

Video Content - it's kinda a niche. I think there are some productions that can benefit from having moving video compared to just static images. I have completed a couple other videos, though not a full tour made thru P2VR. These have on camera talent speaking, which I think is the biggest benefit. I have attached a couple below:

Domino's House Cat Rescue (watching cats all around you, what could be better!): https://youtu.be/w5Jzcx4YFEc

Molly's House (Home Tour for Cancer Patients families): https://youtu.be/yNZm0yoQRS8

Thanks, Rick
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