Autorotate - Problems with browser and CPU usage

Specific Q&A about the new Flash export
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maec
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Joined: Sun Jun 10, 2007 4:01 pm

Hi there,

sometime ago I bought the pano2qtvr version 1.6.2 with flash pack and right now I´m trying to setup a website with the created 360° flash movies.

My problem is that with autorotate turned on the cpu usage is very high. It seems that the autorotate feature is something like a short timeout with a move of the pano.

When I open more than one tab with an autorotating pano in Firefox, my computer is totally slow and almost out of order (DualCore Intel with 2,0 GHz!!!)

With an autorotating pano, the selection of the tabs in Firefox is not possible anymore until I close the tab with the pano.

Is there a way to optimize the autorotate function and lower the cpu usage?

There are only some parameters where I can set the timeout and the speed of the autorotation, but I can´t see the function itself, because it is integrated into the generated .swf file.

In one thread I saw this:
The static properties are only used during startup to set the values before the pano starts. After that you can use
<mc>.pano.setAutorotate(speed(float),delay(float),returntoHorizon(float),onlyinfocus(bool));
where speed=0 stops the rotation.
I tried this but didn´t suceed because I don´t get the right parameters?
Right now I´m trying to control the movie with this directives, but the delay doesn´t work at the beginning of the movie (after first loading the movie starts to spin)
vr.autorotate = 0.08;
vr.autorotate_delay = 5;

Thanks a lot for any help!

Christian
Last edited by maec on Sun Jun 10, 2007 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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360Texas
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Well, here is how panoramas are displayed

Rotation speed slowest possible rate.
Draw rate is usually 30 frames per second at one display angle

If your video card has on board CPU and ram they will be used. If your video card is using shared CPU and ram.. then your mother board cpu and Ram will be used.

Image is rotated 2/10ths of a degree to the right and screen is refreshed for the new display angle

Image is rotated annother 2/10ths of a degree to the right and screen is refreshed for the new display angle

Image is rotated annother 2/10ths of a degree to the right and screen is refreshed for the new display angle

and so on until the full 360 degree angle of view is displayed.

Because the CPU and RAM are required.. the Task Manager Performance CPU History will show near 100% usage [makes sense its displaying an image series 'real time'.

If you stop your rotation.. the Task Manager CPU History will drop to around 20% because the screen is not being refreshed due to rotation activity.. you are looking at a static refreshed screen...

Not sure having DUAL 2 Core processes actually helps .. but the image data through put is doubled for each CPU cycle. Would help performance if you had RAM on your video card. It would be also nice if the video card had a dual2Core CPU also.. but I have not seen any video cards like that.

Thats sort of how 1 panorama is displayed on your monitor.

Now imagine if you tried to display 2 or more panoramas ?
Dave
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maec
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Hi Dave,

thanks a lot for your explaination on how it all works!

The main problem is that the website should work on every computer, even the slow ones. I tried the autorotation on a 800 MHz machine and i almost broke down. So the pano is very slow and not smooth at all.

Another problem is, that some of the other features of the website don´t load, eg the google maps location window. It´s only loading if the autorotate stops.

I set the framerate to 15 fps and the quality to 3, but it didn´t help a lot. The CPU usage on my machine is over 50% with the autorotation in firefox.

hmm .... some other hints how to get rid of the prob?

Thanx in advance,

Christian
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360Texas
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I need to ask 2 questions:

1 What's panorama name and URL please? I need to see how works on my machine.

2 After I look at your problem panorama I will get back to you about your machine performance.

I will ask you about your CPU name like "Core2duo Intel 7200"

How much physical ram do you have installed on the machine. 1gb, 2gb?

What is the Video card name and number... Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200.

Maybe just some of your componets are just slow.
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hum@no.id
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In that condition, which there is presentday... I did not recommend using 'autorotate' condition...

Impossible define behaviour of end-user (clients) - can tax complaint for damage of the equipment...

pS

In persisting this - "Don't-use-for-use"...
maec
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Thanks Dave,

the question is not how fast it is on my computer with my specific hardware. I want to create a webservice which should be used by many different users - even some users with Pentium III or anything like this...
The website is not online right now, just in my local developing environment.

But one thing could be a solution for that problem:
There is a possibility to rotate the pano just when it is in focus (mouse over pano).

But right now I don´t know how to set this feature.

I found this, but I don´t get it to work:
<mc>.pano.setAutorotate(speed(float),delay(float),returntoHorizon(float),onlyinfocus(bool));

Right now I´m using this:
vr.autorotate = 0.08;
vr.autorotate_delay = 5;

But the delay doesn´t even work when the pano is loaded for the first time ;-(

Is there an API with all Parameters that can be used for this Flashfile???

Thanks a lot,

Christian
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360Texas
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We usually set the autorotate feature "autorotate5sec Sprite " while creating the actual flash .swf file.

In Pano2qtvr on the Flash tab, Autorotoate box we set the mouse over delay to 3 seconds so after mouse has been on the viewer box for 3 seconds it automatically starts rotating.

Only if in Focus is checked with a speed of 1. A negative -1 turns left and a +1 turns right very slowly.

This is a very useful feature.. mouse off or click on the viewer box .. stops rotation. Mouse hover over viewer box.. after 3 seconds.. begins rotation. Also there is a feature just below.. "Return to horizon" set the slider mid way... and the effect is... if the current view is 60° above horizon... on mouse hover over view box... autorotate begins after 3 seconds with a roll back to the horizon.
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dlgreene
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You are not the only one that has this problem... And it doesn't appear to be limited to Firefox. I am an exclusive IE user with "plenty" of cpu and ram and I have the same problem with autorotate and Flash.

I originally had the same feeling that it may be related to the "current thread" being "hogged"... However I'm starting the think it may be "grabbing" all window input and therefore "dogging out".

I notice that when I turn off autorotate the window focus is as it should be... However when autorotate is on for the *.swf the focus is on the <object> and can't seem to be "unselected".

I've done some C++ and what's happening is more like the function(I can't remember the name) that "grabs" all window input. It has a very similar "feeling" as the current thread being "hogged"...

Clearly I have no idea if this is valid in terms of what is happening but, I do believe the "feeling" is accurate.
maec
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Ah OK,

thanks a lot for this comment to see that other people have the same probs. I really tried a lot of stuff to get rid of this problem, but it didn´t work out at all.

I think that this autorotate thing is really a major problem because it causes severe problems on all browsers. So in fact for me it is not usable in projects - for what I bought this Pano2QTVR software.

For me it seems that this problem is a task for the programmers???

Any comments from them?

Thanks,

Christian
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360Texas
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High CPU usage should not be an issue.

While looking at the panorama rotate, what other background task are you doing that would demand CPU usage that is being slowed down?

Usually, when a person is looking at a rotating panorama.. they are not concurrently processing another task in the background. So what if the CPU is running near 100% during panorama ROTATION ? When you stop rotation the CPU usage drops to around 30%.

High CPU usage is not an issue that I can see. During rotation the computer is doing alot of work displaying each image slice at a fast enough speed not to create image flicker.
Dave
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dlgreene
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My previous message about the focus is COMPLETLY WRONG. Sorry.

However I have read about this problem in other forums particularly in the Adobe forums and the problem is across the board... Mac, Win, Firefox, IE, the only thing that seems to be common is Flash? For VR's that are the "focus" of this forum may exacerbate the Flash bug?
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360Texas
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"My problem is that with autorotate turned on the cpu usage is very high. It seems that the autorotate feature is something like a short timeout with a move of the pano. "

All my comments have been made to reply to the above "My problem is".
Dave
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dlgreene
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That may be very true but, why do DevalVR and QuickTime seem to process "as desired"?

The only thing I can do is show you...

http://www.dlgreene.com/asp_testing/vr_ ... 8_15-00-02

"Florida Backyard"
This is the only flash movie in the set that Autorotate is on: I've inserted the config file at the end of this message. Please note that you can view DevalVR or QuickTime and I don't have any problems with them.

You can check the code by clicking the code link... Even if you don't know xsl you CAN assume the results within <xsl:template name="vr-object">... I use no trickery or strange function calls. xsl:element makes an xhtml element and xsl:attribute makes xhtml attribute. The declare=declare attribute is W3C and does seem to help a very little bit... At least the page "draws" itself on startup... sometimes...
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_object.asp

You can see what the value of the variables are by looking at:
http://www.dlgreene.com/asp_testing/default.aspx

If this works on your computer, and suspect it will... The problem might be that you have some "develpment stuff" that is giving you what many of the rest of us don't have... I don't have any Flash development stuff. I've spent more than I care to say on Adobe stuff but Flash isn't one of them.

It would be the only thing left for "developers" to check as you can't really believe that this many end users are complaining about nothing.

Please be aware that http://www.dlgreene.com/asp_testing/ has an obvious purpose and is NOT for general public consumption. You can view
http://www.dlgreene.com for a "public consumption" page.

Pano2qtvr file:

meta.version=1.6.2
# Automatically generated configuration file for Pano2QTVR

# The basic project files
input=2006-10-08_15-00-02_sRGB-c.tif
output=2006-10-08_15-00-02.mov
cubefile=

# Parameters
movie.qtvrflattener=1
stitcher.tiff=1
thumbfile=2006-10-08_15-00-02_thumb.jpg
stripfile=2006-10-08_15-00-02_strip.jpg
htmlfile=2006-10-08_15-00-02.html
flashfile=2006-10-08_15-00-02.swf
flash.controller.pos=2
flash.preload.image.anchor=0
stitcher.tilesize=1372
movie.width=640
movie.height=480
userdata.title=Florida Backyard
userdata.author=David L. Greene
userdata.date=10/8/2006 3:00:02pm
userdata.copyright=David L. Greene
userdata.information=www.dlgreene.com
sprite.12.filename=C:\Program Files\Pano2QTVR\sprites\autorotate5Sec.mov
tilt.min=-90
movie.motionquality=4
flash.autorotate=1
output.format=1
movie.cylinder=0
movie.cube=0
movie.object=0
hotspot.enabled=1
hotspot.1.title=David L. Greene
hotspot.1.url=A<http://www.dlgreene.com>
flash.changequality=1
html.template=normal_flash.html
flash.autorotate.startloaded=1
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