Lack of Response from Pano2VR Staff

[DaveM]

A few days ago, I posted a suggestion for the next version of Pano2VR. As yet, I have not had any acknowledgment from the Pano2VR team that the posting was even read. I see that the posting was viewed, but don't know if one of those viewers was from the Pano2VR staff. Months ago, my bug reports were treated the same way, time and time again. As my current suggestion works its way downward on the forum, I wonder if anyone will read it. I also see that a user named Hrvoje has not gotten any response on his worthwhile suggestion. All the staff needs to do is respond, and besides, since some of these suggestions are from experienced users, they are worth considering. And to be frank, if someone takes the time to organize his or her thoughts and posts a bug or suggestion, it should be acknowledged by your staff. Something like, "Thank you for your suggestion," would be enough.

[panox]

Months ago I submitted a short suggestion. I got an answer that the issue would be resolved in the next version. And it was.

But I must admit: This was a very easy solution: "Instead of "Vorn-Hinten-Rechts-Links-Oben-Unten" the same but without capital letters.

I would like to have answers which I can follow step by step, as Hopki had done, but better illustrated with some screenshots.

It's frustrating failing on the last step. The documentation didn't help - too abstract and without any examples for my issue of hiding image-hotspots.

[Hopki]

Hi Dave,
We try to make sure that questions are answered in a timely manner, however if you feel a forum post has been missed, just send me a PM or as others have said to you in the past send in an e-mail to support@ggnome.com.

I am happy to say in the main our customers get very good service and support with many of our customer requests and suggestions making their way into the software. If you have an idea or a problem first do a forum search to see if its not already reported, this particular request has be raised before a few times and is in our system as a feature request targeted for a later version.

For now and the simplest thing to do is modify the output path of the HTML page.
Example change output/index.html to output/name/index.html. The name being the unique name of the tour.
You can also replace name with the placeholder $n which will use the file name of the first input image.
What will happen is a sub folder will be created which will have the index.html, player.js, images folder and skin.js file.
The tiles folder, XML file and other folders like Media will be a level above in the output folder.

This has the advantage that one set of images can very easily be used in different outputs, example normal pano and a cardboard pano.
The problem with doing this is you must make sure you rename correctly or when uploading to the single folder you can very easily overwrite existing files.

If you are going to do the above I would strongly suggest changing the default filename to $n in the settings. The current default is pano, so all Pano2VR outputs use the file name pano.xml, with using $n you would then use the name of the input image.
Again as an example pano_one.jpg would make pano_one.xml, the name is used from the first pano in a multi node Pro project.

Under the Advanced tab of the HTML5 output you also need to make sure you select a naming convention for the multi resolution that uses $n.
Pano2VR 5.1 beta 2 and above will use $y as default which will use the node ID rather than the node name. This was to prevent problems with special characters braking the path to the tiles. But of course every project will have a node 1 and node 2 so again if you do not change this the tiles will get overwritten.

I do think putting all files for all tours in the one folder is probably going to cause a problem further down the line especially if the odd special character is used.

Regards,
Hopki

[DaveM]

Thanks for your response, but your answer dealt with unique names for tile folders, using $n, etc., but that wasn't my request and I do understand unique naming of tiles, etc. Maybe I wasn't clear. Please see my feature request called "Feature suggestion" which asked for the ability to uniquely name the skin.js file since we can uniquely name the tiles, the image folder, etc., etc. Take a look at the links with examples. Also, if you look at the example link I included, it shows a panorama within a panorama, a technique that would be much easier if I could name the skin.js since I have 2 skin.js files in the same folder, using the renaming technique I mention. Also, as I mentioned, I realize one could put each tour in a separate folder and have different skins in different folders, but it also would be better organized and clearer when you look back at a project if you could see a skin.js file that reflects the name of the skin. As an example--let's say you have 10 tours in 10 folders, and for this example, each tour uses a different skin. When you look at your work, each folder contains skin.js, but each skin.js will be different. Also, when you call for a video or slide show, the folder (using my own programming--once again, see the Mark Twain pano in a pano example, with slideshow in the last panorama) hierarchy can get tricky, depending on the server used.

[DaveM]

Here's another example, but this time 3 skins and 3 skin.js files in the same folder, and as I suggest, it would be nice to be able to name them like you can name the images folder, tiles, html, etc., rather than have to rename the skin.js and alter the accompanying html file. This was really an experiment, and while technically very interesting, I have to admit I can't think of too many practical situations where I could use it. But, this set of 3 panos also shows how versatile, capable, and interesting Pano2VR can be when it comes to skin features, skin graphics, etc. There are an endless list of features to explore and experiment with.

http://bd2.sysmotech.net/panopanopano/lcmpano1.html

[Hopki]

Hi Dave,
As said this is already in, and was only trying to come up with a solution that may help for now.
BTW, cool project.
Regards,
Hopki

[DaveM]

Link should be:

http://www.bd2.sysmotech.net/panopanopano/lcmpano1.html