Why are Cross Dissolve transitions fading to Black? Feature Request.
Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2020 5:48 pm
I first had this with the Lite version, and I thought it had just been crippled to differentiate it from the Pro version, but it's also a problem in Pro.
In Lite, each node (actually separate URL) would fade to black, then the hotspots would appear, then bits of the cube would load and break the illusion of 360, then it would finally be complete and you could explore. Depending on platform, sometimes the hotspots would load after everything else, but mostly before. Maybe some HTML or DOM reason?
I had wondered why the cube sides didn't load in the order that would make most sense: i.e the way you were facing, so you didn't have to look at black space for so long, but figured I'd have to upgrade as Lite wasn't the priority and they just loaded in order 0,1,2,3,4,5, even when you were facing 4. Slower the bandwidth, the longer the wait for the 'box' to get fully drawn. The 'Loading' bar just emphasised the problem.
So I upgraded to Pro...
But Pro is just the same, when I had assumed it would be more coordinated when all the code was in a single pano .XML file rather than one for each 'Node' (URL) in Lite. Although I'd tested it locally, I'd never uploaded a mini-tour to my website.
Now it makes more sense why no one really noticed the broken Zoom In transitions pre v6.1.10; you'd never really get to see them anyway if not running locally on your own machine.
This is in Single-Res mode, where there are 390 files and directories in a 26 node tour.
Firstly I removed the loading bar, so there was less distracting the loader and it could get on with loading and I didn't want to be reminded of 'reality', but a simple cross dissolve first halves the resolution of the current image (so you see 'jaggies' appear in it) then it fades to black, then it loads the box in sequential order, so you see it happening, sometimes with a split second of the lower-res tile, but most often the full-res versions only. It semi-fades up from back to 100% while it's loading, but it's still very visible.
It seems to be down to timing of the loaded tiles, and rather than wait for the next image tiles to load before making the transition (and setting the 'Wait for Transitions' flag makes no difference, when that's only connected to Zooms before or after the Cross Dissolve), it displays what it's got when it gets it, whether it looks good or not.
That might work 'better' if it loaded tiles in 'most likely to be seen first' order, but not if just 0-5 order; whichever way you're facing.
This might also explain why Cross Dissolves are fairly random in length (from 1 to 0 seconds) when testing this out locally. They sometimes load too fast to show the Transition and the code just doesn't wait.
Single vs Multi?
I prefer using Single-Res tiles, but thought maybe Multi-Res would be better, as it could load up the smaller versions of the tiles and Cross Dissolve those more quickly, then fade in the Higher-Res versions over them.
Multi-Res produced 10,001 files and folders (quite a jump from 390) and the data size went up from 40.7Mb to 198Mb. It also took a long, long time to ftp to my website.
But, was it better? No. Actually worse. Now it still fades to black, but fades up from it to a low(er)-res version of the tiles, then refreshes them piecemeal with higher-res versions over the next second or two. May be slightly less obvious that it's drawing a box - as slightly faster loading of the low(er) res tiles - but still visible where you are facing 'the wrong way' and the tiles you're looking at are loaded last. Also still does the 'jump to half-res' of the current set of tiles before it does the fade through.
Re-exploring locations works better, as the image data is cached somewhere, so the transitions more often do actually do the cross Dissolve, but that jump to 'half-res' before it does them is quite jarring.
So, Feature request: an option to Load in the next panorama, then always wait to do the Cross Dissolve between the images, as any extra delay on slower connections is only a second or so and I'd rather it was showing the old panorama for a second longer than what it's doing now.
Also, if it's a bug: not to quickly flip the currect location to half-res before the transitions, so the transition looks smoother.
If it's not a bug, why is it doing it? Can that be changed with a setting anywhere?
In Lite, each node (actually separate URL) would fade to black, then the hotspots would appear, then bits of the cube would load and break the illusion of 360, then it would finally be complete and you could explore. Depending on platform, sometimes the hotspots would load after everything else, but mostly before. Maybe some HTML or DOM reason?
I had wondered why the cube sides didn't load in the order that would make most sense: i.e the way you were facing, so you didn't have to look at black space for so long, but figured I'd have to upgrade as Lite wasn't the priority and they just loaded in order 0,1,2,3,4,5, even when you were facing 4. Slower the bandwidth, the longer the wait for the 'box' to get fully drawn. The 'Loading' bar just emphasised the problem.
So I upgraded to Pro...
But Pro is just the same, when I had assumed it would be more coordinated when all the code was in a single pano .XML file rather than one for each 'Node' (URL) in Lite. Although I'd tested it locally, I'd never uploaded a mini-tour to my website.
Now it makes more sense why no one really noticed the broken Zoom In transitions pre v6.1.10; you'd never really get to see them anyway if not running locally on your own machine.
This is in Single-Res mode, where there are 390 files and directories in a 26 node tour.
Firstly I removed the loading bar, so there was less distracting the loader and it could get on with loading and I didn't want to be reminded of 'reality', but a simple cross dissolve first halves the resolution of the current image (so you see 'jaggies' appear in it) then it fades to black, then it loads the box in sequential order, so you see it happening, sometimes with a split second of the lower-res tile, but most often the full-res versions only. It semi-fades up from back to 100% while it's loading, but it's still very visible.
It seems to be down to timing of the loaded tiles, and rather than wait for the next image tiles to load before making the transition (and setting the 'Wait for Transitions' flag makes no difference, when that's only connected to Zooms before or after the Cross Dissolve), it displays what it's got when it gets it, whether it looks good or not.
That might work 'better' if it loaded tiles in 'most likely to be seen first' order, but not if just 0-5 order; whichever way you're facing.
This might also explain why Cross Dissolves are fairly random in length (from 1 to 0 seconds) when testing this out locally. They sometimes load too fast to show the Transition and the code just doesn't wait.
Single vs Multi?
I prefer using Single-Res tiles, but thought maybe Multi-Res would be better, as it could load up the smaller versions of the tiles and Cross Dissolve those more quickly, then fade in the Higher-Res versions over them.
Multi-Res produced 10,001 files and folders (quite a jump from 390) and the data size went up from 40.7Mb to 198Mb. It also took a long, long time to ftp to my website.
But, was it better? No. Actually worse. Now it still fades to black, but fades up from it to a low(er)-res version of the tiles, then refreshes them piecemeal with higher-res versions over the next second or two. May be slightly less obvious that it's drawing a box - as slightly faster loading of the low(er) res tiles - but still visible where you are facing 'the wrong way' and the tiles you're looking at are loaded last. Also still does the 'jump to half-res' of the current set of tiles before it does the fade through.
Re-exploring locations works better, as the image data is cached somewhere, so the transitions more often do actually do the cross Dissolve, but that jump to 'half-res' before it does them is quite jarring.
So, Feature request: an option to Load in the next panorama, then always wait to do the Cross Dissolve between the images, as any extra delay on slower connections is only a second or so and I'd rather it was showing the old panorama for a second longer than what it's doing now.
Also, if it's a bug: not to quickly flip the currect location to half-res before the transitions, so the transition looks smoother.
If it's not a bug, why is it doing it? Can that be changed with a setting anywhere?