Street View Struggles - indoor shoot with no GPS/floor plan

Post Reply
markpalmos
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2018 4:57 pm

Hello peeps,

Please have a look at this quick youtube video
https://youtu.be/CtifbFyMAss

I am not sure if I'm missing something, but I am trying to create a very simple tour, but the method I am using is almost impossible, am I doing something wrong. As the title says, there is no floor plan and no GPS.

Thanks,
Mark.
Don
Posts: 143
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2013 2:59 pm
Location: Southern California

Mark, perhaps this how-to video dated Mar 13, 2018 helps you?

Adding Floor Plans -- Pano2VR Pro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ4JJpJiVSQ

Two things about Google Streetview:
  • Google Maps & Google Streetview of old did not allow private indoor floor plans, only public indoor spaces. I believe this is still true?
  • Zooming in on a world map is not very close at all. For example, 2 meters is closer than the resolution of a world map. Floor plans are much higher resolution. So, it's best to create your own custom floor plan and then geo-locate it within Pano2VR. Hence, the video how-to above.
PS: If you don't have a floor plan, maybe take a screenshot of the Google Map of your building, edit the screenshot as a Roof Plan of your building, and use the same steps outlined in the how-to video above. Just a thought.
User avatar
Hopki
Gnome
Posts: 13005
Joined: Thu Jan 10, 2008 3:16 pm
Location: Layer de la Haye, Essex UK
Contact:

HI,
Firstly I have moved the topic to the Street View forum.
With regards to the map zoom, this is a bug and will be fixed in the next beta release. This should help with many of the issues.
The problem with using "in pano" or in viewer hotspot placement with GPS is that it does not describe distance.
Example, if you take each pano 1 meter, as per Googles guidelines, apart then use the viewer to set your hotspots then what happens if you take it 1.2 meters or the map is 2 - 3 meters out. Then next pano will then inherit this distance problem and then compounded it in the next, then the next and so on. So on a 10 + node tour your nodes could be way out of placement.

Our solution was to use a floor plan.
This will keep the accuracy with the distance between the nodes when the floor plan is Geo Located.
Also there is a huge difference in Maps, if you use Satellite View and then switch to Road Map, its meters and in some place's a few Meters.
Of course the new select all pins and transform found in Pano2VR 6 pro will allow you to move the constellation to better place on the different Maps.

As Don says, it May be that you take a screen shot of a map before you go on the shoot then take a measurement while there.
Then on return Geo Locate the screen shot and place your pins.

Regards,
Hopki
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/
markpalmos
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2018 4:57 pm

Hi Hopki,
Hopki wrote: Sun Mar 25, 2018 12:25 pm The problem with using "in pano" or in viewer hotspot placement with GPS is that it does not describe distance.
Yes, and most pano tours I do do not have perfect grid structures, so being able to tweak the position of a target pano while still "viewing" another pano is really important... so you can see how the target arrow is changing position.
Hopki wrote: Sun Mar 25, 2018 12:25 pm Our solution was to use a floor plan.
This will keep the accuracy with the distance between the nodes when the floor plan is Geo Located.
Well, to an extent... but if you have a floor plan the exact position of each pano WITHIN each of the rooms still needs to be determined/tweaked... often there are aisles/furniture etc which are not on a floor plan, or a room might be very big, so exact position is not necessarily accurate with a floor plan. I have only every had two clients who actually had floor plans, and one of them was pre-remodelling... so placement of furniture etc was different.
Hopki wrote: Sun Mar 25, 2018 12:25 pm Also there is a huge difference in Maps, if you use Satellite View and then switch to Road Map, its meters and in some place's a few Meters.
Of course the new select all pins and transform found in Pano2VR 6 pro will allow you to move the constellation to better place on the different Maps.
With Google Street View, the actual exact position and size of the tour does not matter, as long as it is at the correct property. You could shrink your tour down to a tiny fraction of the size of the building and still it would render perfectly, it is the relative position that matters, not the actual position of each pano.
Hopki wrote: Sun Mar 25, 2018 12:25 pm As Don says, it May be that you take a screen shot of a map before you go on the shoot then take a measurement while there.
Then on return Geo Locate the screen shot and place your pins.
This would not help in most cases, because there are many rooms, aisles, objects, doorways, features etc which are in very specific positions, and an image of the outline of the entire building would be almost useless... it does not show rooms or any of the other details, so you'd still have to guess and tweak, and would still be faced with the severe challenge of working out relative positions trying to use the tools in pano2VR.

I will explore pano2VR for doing interactive projects, but for Google Street View projects, I'm sad to say it falls far short of what I had hoped it would be capable of... Thanks for your help clarifying the issues for me.

Mark.
User avatar
Hopki
Gnome
Posts: 13005
Joined: Thu Jan 10, 2008 3:16 pm
Location: Layer de la Haye, Essex UK
Contact:

Hi Mark,
Its always good to get feedback.

• If you have the Tour Map open you can click and drag the position of the map pins which will change the position of the hotspot in the viewer.

With Google Street View, the actual exact position and size of the tour does not matter
As far as I know it does as you get the cross on the floor where the node should be in the tour.
Have a look at this three node tour: https://goo.gl/maps/EQNF2W13rYz
You will see the cross on the floor, this indicates where the next node will be, but if the distance is wrong this the cross can be closer or further away then the node. In the above the cross is about 50cm out.
I used Satellite view which is not great.
Regards,
Hopki
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/
markpalmos
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2018 4:57 pm

Hi Hopki
Hopki wrote: Sun Mar 25, 2018 8:50 pm • If you have the Tour Map open you can click and drag the position of the map pins which will change the position of the hotspot in the viewer.
Yeah, that, I think, is what I was doing in the youtube video I posted... https://youtu.be/CtifbFyMAss which shows just how difficult/impossible it can be to properly place and tweak the position of panos.
Hopki wrote: Sun Mar 25, 2018 8:50 pm As far as I know it does as you get the cross on the floor where the node should be in the tour.
Have a look at this three node tour: https://goo.gl/maps/EQNF2W13rYz
You will see the cross on the floor, this indicates where the next node will be, but if the distance is wrong this the cross can be closer or further away then the node. In the above the cross is about 50cm out.
I used Satellite view which is not great.
I admit, the X on the "floor" has always seemed very hit and miss for me, possibly because my constellations are not always exactly to scale. What I mean primarily is that the entire constellation can be shrunk or expanded to any size, and the relationship between the panos, where they point, where you are facing when you go to the next pano etc, will remain the same.

I would LOVE to have had some good tools, probably the best of which are the ones GoThru has to offer... where you can tweak positions of pins while viewing from another pin, so you can see the way the direction arrows adjust. For me, a must have feature...

Kind regards,

Mark.
Post Reply