Let me clarify my point with an actual use-case example-
A person has a bunch of panoramas-
The person goes through and sets all the various default viewpoints of how they would like each of them to look when opening. Some of these default views are at zero tilt, but perhaps quite a few have default views set so they are looking at something a bit more "centered" or otherwise re-composed in the frame. A slightly downward pointing view off of a high balcony for example, or a view angled slightly up showing a staircase.
Then they decide to have *equirectangular* thumbnails for their thumbnail menu. But, they want these new thumbnails to reflect the new orientation of their views. So they match.
The easiest way to do this would of course be to just check the "Use default view" checkbox in the Node Image panel.
The problem however, is that these new equirectangular views take the new viewpoint literally- and are set with tilt to match the default view the user has set. This seems logical from a programming point of view, but the visual effect of having warped thumbnails (because of tilt values)is bad for the presentation/design/appearance of the tour previews.
Please see the example screenshot-
The large background image is the new default view of the panorama.
The first thumbnail was created from the pano "as-is", without setting any default view in the tour viewer. Note how the stage is split at the edges of the image. Hence why a new default view would be set in the tour viewer.
The second thumbnail was created by selecting the "Use default view" checkbox. Note how the stage area is now better centered in the thumbnail and thus has a better appearance than the first. However, because the "Use default view" for an equirectangular image is set, new tilt values are applied warping the appearance of the thumbnail.
Now- this can be corrected using the program as it is, by unchecking the "Use default view" checkbox and manually inserting the new "Pan" value and leaving the "Tilt" value at ZERO.
Note now the better appearance of this new thumbnail in the third position.
However, this is not a very efficient work-around. Because of the following-
1. The format of the Pan values do not match between the Viewing Parameters and Node Image (see green boxes drawn on the screen shot). One uses negative values the other does not. This makes manually transferring and calculating new values to be entered into the Node Image tedious and more prone to error. Especially if many panoramas are involved in the project.
2. Any changes made to th Viewing Parameters need to be re-entered again in the Node Image panel.
3. One must go back and forth between the Tour Editor and the Skin Editor to copy these values over. On Windows, this is more troublesome because the Skin Editor is always "in focus", so one has to save and close the Skin Editor, then open it again each time to manually enter these values for each of the panos (unless one writes them down first).
4. Manually setting the values on these was possible because I had three separate "node images" in the Skin. If one is using the Cloner, I don't think this would be possible, if all the panoramas had different values?
Proposed Solution/Change-
When P2VR is generating Equirectangular thumbnails (or other projections which are effected in the same manner), using the user's new Default View setting, tilt value should not be applied (or should be an optional setting). This will preserve the visual integrity of the thumbnails.
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