360 Virtual Tour Starting Position Not Working

Submitted by Mark adaptivle on Mon, 09/14/2020 - 17:37
Mark adaptivle's picture
Forums: 
Content creation

Hi, we're using the 360 Virtual Tour to create a series of scenes which users can navigate back and forth through.

We have set the Starting Position for each scene and the first time you visit the scene, this Starting Position works perfectly.

However, once you leave a scene and then return to it, the Starting Position is ignored and the camera defaults to its own position.

So to the user, they end up facing backwards.

Any ideas as to how to resolve this? Do we need to create multiple versions of the same scene and assign a starting position based on the direction you are approaching from?

Content types: 
360 Tour

Chris_Para

Tue, 09/22/2020 - 05:45

 

I've found this to be a problem also, in the following way:

I am currently using the Virtual Tour feature of H5P for a government / Department of Defence project.

I am uploading multiple, linked panoramas to a single virtual tour. I would like for the user to be able to move freely through the room, by clicking on the hotspot that takes you to different panoramas around the room.

However, I am unable to set the starting point on a panorama that is dependent on the direction you access it from.

For example, if I have two panoramas (Starting Panorama "1" and second Panorama "2") and I can set a starting point in Panorama 2 that allows the user to be looking in a "natural" direction when they navigate from Panorama 1 to Panorama 2.

When I move from Panorama 2 back to Panorama 1, however, the effect is disorientating because the starting point for Panorama 1 is fixed (i.e. facing towards Panorama 2).

As a workaround, I have uploaded a duplicate of Panorama 1 labelled "Panaorama 1 (Back from 2)", setting the start point for the Panorama to be facing in the natural direction, when navigating backwards from Panorama 2.

I find that sometimes this works, and other times it doesn't - often despite adjusting the starting position of the panoramas, the changes don't take effect and I am facing in the wrong direction (the problem seems to be exacerbated when utilizing my duplicate Panorama system).

It feels like a bug, as I don't think I'm doing anything wrong.

Philippe Levesque

Wed, 06/15/2022 - 16:43

I'm having the exact same problem.

The option of multiplying each scene for every direction the user is facing, for each and every scene, even if it would work perfectly, appear to me to be absolutly ridiculous considering the number of scenes you will have to create for a basic project. Take per example a projet of 6 scenes in which the user can see every scene from every position, it means that you have to create a total of 6 different scenes for every position, which will have to be linked to 6 others and so on and so on... It just doesn't make any sens. The realistic option at the moment is, unfortunatly, to live with this inconvenience.

Please, keep us posted. Thank you!

villon's picture

villon

Fri, 06/17/2022 - 19:20

Hello,
as I have not yet worked with 360 Virtual Tour - I don't have the corresponding graphics at the moment - it is a little difficult for me to understand this criticism. Especially since the critics have not uploaded any example files that could make the problem clearer. And Philippe Levesque could take this created motto to heart himself and describe the problem better. Philippe, please show us an example of exactly where the problem lies. That would be more helpful instead of talking about infinity.
Aside. This is not really the place for bug reports. But anyway. Since we are here, it would be better to complain less and improve it.
Regards
villon

gjveltink

Sun, 02/12/2023 - 14:30

Yep, unfortunately I have the same problem as mentioned before in this thread.

Because there is only one single starting point that can be defined, you cannot comfortably navigate "forwards" and "backwards" in a virtual tour.
I have tried to implement the suggested workaround, by defining multiple instances of a scene depending on the "entrance point".

Even this solution is not working because the software starts using incorrect "starting points" in the long run.

To show the effect I have created a relatively simple tour (highly compressed) with 5 positions: 01 to 05.
It is possible to visit the positions in the following order: 01 => 02 => 03 => 04 => 05 => 04 => 03 => 02 => 01
So far everything is fine.
However adding the following sequence to the previous one, will result in an error at position 03: ... => 02 => 03 !#!

Currently, I am on the fence about using the H5P Virtual Tour in my course on “Authoring Systems”, but unfortunately this a show stopper for my students and for me. 

I would be pleased if somebody could take a look at this specific problem first, such that the "workaround" is at least "working".

However, a much much better solution would be to allow for multiple "starting points", each one based on the “entry point” from the previous scene.

Regards

Gert Veltink 

 

H5P file: 
Binary Data Example CampusView HSEL (2022) navigation problem!

gjveltink

Sat, 05/13/2023 - 18:58

Working somewhat longer with the virtual tour content type now, I have been able to find the cause of this problem and an explanation why even the workaround presented does not work (in the long run).

The current position (=rotational value of 360-image) gets initialized with the provided starting position exactly once, namely during initialization of all data structures.
After a visit to a scene the current position will have the value of the last rotation value that the 360-image had, before leaving the scene.
After re-entering the scene, this rotation value, left over from the previous visit, will be used instead of the starting position given.

So actually, for somebody who is familiar with the program code of this content type, this should be a pretty easy fix!

Regards

Gert Veltink