Support needed. Poor performance with 360° Video in Firefox Browsers

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AgenturLiquid
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:09 pm

Hi everyone,

We're using the Pano2VR 6.1 Pro Version to create an interactive tour. In this tour several 360° videos are embedded.

In Chrome/Edge/Safari on different machines everything runs smooth but as soon as I switch to Firefox, it is a total mess with around 6 fps.
I've tested this on several machines/OSes so it's not a hardware problem (RTX 2080TI/16 Core AMD CPU as the highest machine, 4 year old iMac and other PCs).

Current videos have the following resolution: 4096x2048, 25fps; compressed with h264 to around 6 - 10 mbit.
Tested the export from Adobe Media Encoder as well as Handbrake and several other tools. No video is over 10 seconds long and it isn't a bandwidth problem.

I've also tested this with webm/VP8/VP9 and get the same results. Changing the resolution to half the original size get's about 5 fps more but that isn't enough.

What can be done about this problem?

Also, is there a possibility (I know that multiple alternative files can be linked via the GUI), to tell via script to load a specific video file? E.g. half resolution for mobile/webm for Android, etc. ? This would be very helpful because we need to target a wide array of devices/configurations with this tour and just letting the browser decide isn't that helpful.

Thanks in advance,
Leo Bergmann | LIQUID - Agentur für Gestaltung
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3DV
Posts: 145
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:44 pm
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This type of behaviour can sometimes occur due to a virus scanner (Kaspersky in particular) or with certain plugins/addons in FireFox.
You could try temporary disabling to see if that fixes the issue or if that can be ruled out as a possible cause.
Ruud van Reenen
3DV - Real estate artist impressions and animations
VR Tourviewer - Experience Pano2VR tours on Oculus Go, Quest, Rift, Pico and Cardboard VR headsets
AgenturLiquid
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:09 pm

Hi 3DV,

Thanks for your reply.
On these different systems I checked, there are no additional anti virus scanners running (MacOs/Ubuntu are free; the Windows systems are just running Defender).
Also I used an out of the box installation of Firefox as well as a portable version without any add ons to check this.

So I guess this can be ruled out.
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Hopki
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Location: Layer de la Haye, Essex UK
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Hi Leo,
Do you have a link to the project?
It would be interesting to see.
What I would try is firstly do not go above 3840 x 1920px, at this higher end of resolution how browsers handle the video is very unpredictable.
Also, use something like HandBrake as this has a web Optimised setting.

Pano2VR is using the native browser support for 360 videos, from what you are saying it suggests Firefox has an issue but it could also be you have hit its resolution limit.
How the Alternative File work is the browser looks at the top of the list and works down, when it gets to a video it thinks it can play it will use that one.
Regards,
Garden Gnome Support
If you send an e-mail to support please send a link to the forum post for reference.
support@ggnome.com
https://ggnome.com/wiki/documentation/
AgenturLiquid
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:09 pm

Hi Hopki,

Thanks for your reply. Since this is currently an unreleased project for a client I'm unable to share a link to the project but I will create a new project with one of the videos in it and mail you the URL if that's OK.

I used Handbrake with the Web Optimized Box ticked as well as with the Fast Decode option on and off. I also tried scaling the video down to 3840X1920. The effect in Firefox isn't noticeable, but I will scale it down to this resolution for the demo project.

I read about the way the alternate files are accessed in the manual but thought there might be a hidden function/script functionality to target a specific video for certain devices. The only solution (which is quite a hacky one) that I can think of is, creating a little JS in the index.html that checks for the browser/device type and then loads a specific pano.xml file which has only the videos in half resolution for mobile or full resolution for desktop. If anyone got a better idea I'm open for anything ;-). I'm mainly an application developer/3D artist and all this web stuff isn't my greatest strength.

Thanks and regards,
Leo Bergmann | LIQUID - Agentur für Gestaltung
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