Different 'sharpness' for different sizes

[Andrew H]

Hello

When I was working with Quicktime I would make my pages initially open with my panorama displayed in a window of, say, 700 x 500 pixels. When making the .mov file I would optimise the cube face size and sharpen the image to suit that window size. Most pages would have a button within the html page to allow the visitor to select a full screen version to open in a new window (not truly full screen, of course, as the browser's navigation bars would still appear top and bottom). This would open an alternative version of the panorama, for which I would have optimised the cube face size and sharpening to suit the larger display size.

Now that I am using Pano2VR I still have my pages open with the pano in a 700 x 500 window, but include the full screen button in the pano itself. The full screen display is now so much better, in that it is truly full screen, with no extraneous clutter, and the visitor's pan and tilt settings are preserved as the size switches. However, as far as I can see, with this approach I can only optimise the pano for one viewing size, and obviously I choose to do this to give the best result for the full screen option. This results in a somewhat unpleasant display at the smaller size, in that any fine detail is over-sharpened for this size and 'shimmers' really badly when the pano is panned or rotated.

Does anybody know a way to overcome this, please?

One possibility which occurs to me might be for Pano2VR to allow a 'blur' filter to be applied to the rendering of the image at display time, the strength of which could be controlled from within the skin editor, and linked to the user's toggle full screen button. Thus I could have the filter applied at the small display size but not at the larger size. Any thoughts on this, please, Thomas?

Regards

Andrew

[Hopki]

Hi you can add a load next pano in the full screen button. This means that the pano can open in low resolution and when the full screen button is clicked, not only will the screen go full screen but loads the high resolution panorama as well.

ExampleHere:

The example opens with a pano of 715kB and on full screen click opens a 2.65MB image.
Open the example turn and look at the writing on the posters on the wall. Zoom in and you can’t really read the text. Now hit the full screen button and all becomes clear.

Of course once the high resolution image has been loaded there is no need to load the low resolution image again. You will also note that the second pano opens in the same position (Tilt and Fov) as the first pano.

Have a look at Place holders and see if you can figer out the settings used, as a hint it’s a place holder that goes in the target of the open next panorama action.

Also as a hint the full screen button that open the second pano hides and then shows another full screen button with just toggle full screen action.

All the best

Hopki

[Andrew H]

Thanks Hopki - you're a genius! I've figured it out and got it to work, so thanks for that.

My present project is a tour with 14 panoramas, each accessed by clicking on an appropriate button in a map in the skin. I would like to be able to have each pano available in two resolutions and have the correct one loaded depending on whether the visitor is viewing my 700 x 500 pixel window or has clicked the button to view full screen. It seems that to be able to do this I am going to have to double up on each map button, so that one button loads the high res pano and the other the low res, with the appropriate button being made visible, and hence clickable, when the full screen button is clicked. Looks like I've some work to do!

What might make life easier in this example and eliminate a need to double up the map buttons would be for the skin editor to allow the Pano2VR user to declare simple Boolean variables - flags which are either true or false. With a new action to toggle these flags, and a means of testing them later, my problem could be solved a little simpler if I could -

i. declare a flag which I would name, say, 'fullscreen', with an initial value of false

ii. in addition to its normal action, assign the new 'toggle flag' action to the full screen button so that my 'fullscreen' variable changes state when the button is pressed, in addition to loading in the alternative resolution pano as in your post (I guess in my example there would actually need to be 14 stacked full screen buttons with the appropriate one being made visible when each map button is clicked)

iii. in the 'Open next panorama' action assigned to each map button test the state of the fullscreen variable, declaring the url along the lines of -
if fullscreen then load pano 'largepano.swf' else load pano 'smallpano.swf'

I guess there could be other scenarios where the availabilty of such flags would be useful. Any thoughts, please?

Regards

Andrew

[dp.math]

Very interesting Hopki, just similar to krpano multires.

I'll try it.

Cheers.dp

[mhc1]

Andrew: that would be a great idea.

One could easily find more usage of this boolean function within the controller, map, hotspots ... then.

Short question OT though:
I don´t get a loading bar, only on my first pano when "next pano" is loades - no loading bar s sown I´m sure i missed s.th. though
See: http://www.netzserver1.de/virtualtours/burger-museum/

(Shots where made within 1 hr - a real shooting rush, otherwise THIS would had surely been made with brackets. Nice excuse )

Firts pano load the bar - all others don´t.

Any hint ?

[Andrew H]

I don´t get a loading bar, only on my first pano ...

Hello Mike

Have you included a 'Reload' action in the elements of your loading bar? I'm fairly certain that without it you will see the bar only as the first pano loads.

Regards

Andrew

[mhc1]

Ups- Andrew: that might be it.

I´ll have a look at this ....................

edit:
YES that was it.
Thanks Andrew for the help