As you may already know, we have been holding free weekly webinars for Pano2VR. Starting Wednesday, June 3rd, we will start a series called Pano2VR 101. This series intends to help newcomers to the software and get them familiar with Pano2VR workflows and features as quickly as possible.
For the first part, we will start with the absolute basics of Pano2VR. Then, in part 2, we will cover hotspots, and in part 3, we will go over patching. All of these webinars are currently open for registration.
We usually hold a Q & A at the end of our webinars. But, for this series, we will be taking questions throughout the webinar. We also encourage participants to work along with Martin during the webinar.
We will add more Pano2VR 101 webinars in the future. If you like, you can sign up to get an email whenever we announce a new webinar or keep this page bookmarked and check it periodically.
We’ve gotten quite a few questions on how to integrate analytics within a tour. So, we’ve built a component that you can use and implement in your projects. You will need a Google Analytics account and obtain your Tracking ID.
Earlier, we presented a webinar on how to gamify a tour. Using the tools found in the Skin Editor, we learned that creating a game, or learning experience in a tour provides us with endless possibilities.
Surviving Extinction is an educational, interactive 360° choose-your-own-adventure style experience built entirely in Pano2VR. It’s an exploration of how animals have evolved. You choose an animal to begin and you move through pre-historic time periods up to modern times, learning how your animal evolves as its environment changes.
I chose the tetrapod. I learned what traits my tetrapod had developed to survive. For instance, that it developed four legs so it can live on land, away from its predators.
Surviving Extinction
I also learned about the tetrapod footprint fossils from 350-380 million years ago, that are found in Ireland.
Location Expedition
The project uses a mix of 360º images, computer generated images, photographs, videos, animations, and sounds.
Expedition pop-up video
Along the way, the user earns coins when answering questions correctly about the animal’s environment and its evolutionary traits.
Earning coins
You can also earn battle tokens in battles! The battles are question and answer series requiring you to recall what you’ve learned so far about your animal’s traits that have helped them survive.
Survival Battle
Surviving Extinction was built by Geoffrey Bruce and his team at the Center for Education Through eXploration at Arizona State University. The entire project (research, learning design, and gamification) took a little over two years to create. Geoffrey said that he used almost every feature that Pano2VR has to offer and made heavy use of logic blocks and dynamically changing variables. He also said that our “Super Cookie” component was essential for saving a user’s progress.
We highly recommend trying this game* to see how you can turn your projects into a game using Pano2VR. This project is certainly one of the most ambitious and complicated Pano2VR projects and not only shows what can be done with Pano2VR, but it also demonstrates that a VR tour doesn’t necessarily need to be of a building or a park, but of history and evolution.
If you’d like to try your hand at building a game or quiz, check out our webinar on gamification.
*Please use Chrome or Firefox. Safari and mobile browsers are not yet optimized.
Did you know…
… that you can also use Pano2VR to build interactive projects with flat images? The input files don’t have to be 360º; they can be regular photographs (flat images) or gigapixel images. Check out this example of the London Skyline.
We took a small break from doing webinars, but are happy to tell you we are back! We have two webinars for you this week.
Our regular Wednesday webinar is back, and this week, Martin will continue where he left off in the last webinar about building skins. It will focus on the Node Image skin element which is used to create thumbnail menus and the hotspot’s thumbnail. We recommend watching the More on Skins webinar to catch up and prepare for this session.
On Thursday, July 30th, we are happy to have Thomas Bredenfeld back again. In his webinar, he’ll teach you how to extend Pano2VR’s styling features using CSS.
Next week, Thomas will give another webinar. This one will focus on using JavaScript to add even more functionality to Pano2VR and it will take place on Thursday, August 8th.
All webinars are free and start at 15:00 UTC. All are recorded live and should take about an hour with a Q&A at the end.
Pano2VR 6.1.9 is now available with a new component for accessibility and some bug fixes.
Pano2VR 6.1.9
This update is mostly a bug-fix release, but we’ve also added a new feature.
Feature: Text to Speech skin component
Fixed: Pinned videos can no longer be downloaded
Fixed: Original color profile is copied to transformation output
Fixed: Floor Plan is now sizing correctly when using percentage
Fixed: Using a modifier key to add patches will no longer lock the patch on add
Text to Speech Skin Component
This component is being shipped with Pano2VR 6.1.9 and makes it even easier for you to create accessible projects. You can add the component as a child to any Text Field or Image element, and screen readers will read the text or the Alternative Text of the Image element. It can also be used as a stand-alone element, reading its alternative text. We’ve added a new tutorial on how to use it.
Update
In Pano2VR, go to Help > Check for Updates. Or download the update directly and install manually.
Today we have another update to version 6 for you. This is mostly a bug-fix release. But, we did add something new!
What’s New
In the Components Toolbox, you’ll find a new skin component: Vertical Thumbnail Menu. This menu compliments the original Thumbnail Menu that was only available as a horizontal menu.
Vertical Thumbnail Menu
In the Edit Skin Configuration dialog, you’ll find two customization options. You can choose to not show the titles and to not show the thumbnails on launch.
What’s been Improved
In the HTML5 output settings, you can set transitions between nodes. We’ve now added to the transitions settings a FoV attribute for both the Before and After transition effects. This gives you more control over the FoV values for both the before effect and the after effect.
The, Has Touch trigger in a logic block wasn’t triggering the action, “Player State Changed.” We’ve changed this behavior so that you can easily add this trigger to an Action Filter and will trigger the state of the player on the first touch.
What’s been Fixed
Lens Flares viewed on iOS, no longer cause the screen to go dark
SVG files can now be relocated when using Locate Missing Files
On Windows mobile devices, the wrong button states were being displayed
Windows users can now create a droplet to create a single tour again
To Update
In Pano2VR, go to Help > Check for Updates. Or download the update directly and install manually.
Did you know that a VR tour doesn’t have to be a walkthrough of a building or home?
Pano2VR can build VR tours, of course, but you can also create impressive interactive pieces that aren’t tours at all. You can make interactive games, as we saw in our previous in the wildpost.
Or you can build an interactive 360º image to showcase collections and articles like what is done here for Vogue Singapore:
This is the interactive menu for Vogue Studio. It’s a single panorama project with an impressive skin built by Thomas Bredenfeld. Thomas worked with Terry Gates, a high-end 360°/immersive fashion photography specialist, to create this stunning interactive piece.
It’s a seemingly simple project but look closely at the hotspots. There is a bit of parallax happening there. Thomas was able to create this using some Javascript code he built and applied it to his project. If you would like to learn more about how to extend Pano2VR with Javascript, you can watch Thomas’s webinar on the subject.
Each model is given an information hotspot detailing the designer the model is wearing. You may also notice that custom fonts are being used. And the parallax hotspots link to various parts of Vogue Studio.
Thomas was able to match the client’s wishes by using custom fonts, their icon set, and even by matching the fly-in animation to the client’s sketch.
Remember that any image can be made interactive, and a project doesn’t have to be a tour, and it doesn’t have to be spherical, either. You can create impressive interactive, custom projects with just a single image, and we hope this project inspires you!
Did you know…
…that we have been holding live webinars? If you’re new to Pano2VR, a seasoned user or curious about the workflow, check out our webinar archive. We cover just about every feature and workflow.
The next webinar will be October 28th, at 15:00 UTC. We will be covering Modifiers in the Skin Editor and you’ll learn how to adjust radar beams, create tooltips that follow the pointer, and how to create custom pointers.
What can we say? 2020 was like no other year in our lifetimes, right? Although it may have been a taxing year, we experienced the pandemic together. Not only did we build 360 objects and panoramas together, but we also experienced lockdowns and quarantines together. This was most apparent during our live webinars.
2020 also seemed like a long year. So long that I almost forgot that before the pandemic took hold, we moved offices in January and launched a new website and a new logo designed by phospho in March.
Webinars
Then, while we were all working from home during the lockdown, we started weekly webinars. We had wanted to do this for many years but this year just happened to be the perfect year to start them. Every webinar is live, but they are recorded for later watching. If you haven’t watched any yet, you might want to start. Martin, our in-house guru, shows so many tricks (that may or may not be found in the documentation, forum, or Facebook group) and explains step by step how to do many projects.
Our most popular webinars are our Pano2VR 101 series. These are good for those just starting out with Pano2VR and seasoned users alike.
We are currently doing webinars every other week. However, we are taking a break over the holidays. Our next webinar will be on January 13th and it will cover building professional skins. You can register here.
Lots of updates
We squashed a lot of bugs in Pano2VR version 6, but we also added new features. We added several skin components, including Google Analytics and Text to Speech (in the Components Toolbox). You’ll find a few new placeholders, and for our Panotour users, we added the ability to import cubic and flat images from Panotour pro projects.
What we’ve got on the horizon
For 2021, we will continue the biweekly webinars. We are also working on a few other projects that we know you’ll like that we will have ready in 2021.
From all of us here at Garden Gnome, we wish you and yours a happy and healthy holiday season!
If you follow our posts here, you may already know that a VR tour does not necessarily have to be a tour that moves from room to room. A tour can showcase items (like a gallery or museum), an interactive menu, and it can also be a game, to name a few options.
The project we’re presenting today is not only a tour, but it’s also a game built specifically for the geocaching community by Dieter Lukas.
Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity in which participants use a GPS device or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches,” at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world.
Wikipedia.org
What makes this project unique is that the tour starts like any other VR tour. But as you move through the nodes and read and reveal clues, you eventually come to a tour node that officially begins the hunt for the cache.
A Game without Cookies
Also unique to this project is that it doesn’t use any cookies. Instead, it’s all based on logic and using logic blocks. If you don’t answer several clues correctly, the game will end, and you’ll have to start over. Answering clues correctly will open more clues, and the tour continues until, eventually, it leads you straight to the physical cache.
The tour is in German and English, and it’ll be the first decision you make in the game.
Language and instructions
There are information hotspots in every node. You’ll also find the use of 3D distorted hotspots, an embedded PDF, audio playback, polygon hotspots, and pinned images.
Loading…
For Dieter, there were a few goals in creating this project. The first was to show the geocaching community that “the 360° industry can do much more than just take beautiful pictures.” The second was to create a game without using cookies to be accepted by the geocaching platforms. This comes with disadvantages, but the project worked without them.
The main objectives were:
to open the tour without the hidden hotspots
to activate the game and hence revealing the hidden hotspots after clicking a set hotspot (the “forgotten GPS device”)
to show a hint for the geocache after each answer
the order of the hints is fixed but must be independent of the order of the solved questions
the points in the game should be reduced when questions are answered incorrectly
a way to set a minimum score so that the game ends automatically once it hits a threshold
add sounds and animations
That’s an intense list! But they all got done. And all with out the use of cookies.
Behind the Scenes
Dieter was also kind to share more information about how he built the project:
Dieter recorded the sound files during the time of shooting.
Also, below is a screenshot showing the project. Notice that one node is not connected. The only way to see this node is to answer clues correctly.
Showing the node that will only be visible after answering the clue correctly.
What might seem to be a simple tour at first glance, quickly reveals itself to be not just a game, but a treasure hunt. Building the game without cookies, or a way for the browser to remember user input, comes with disadvantages, but Dieter was able to successfully overcome them and gamify his tour using the tools provide in Pano2VR.
If you’re wondering why Dieter’s name sounds familiar to you, it could be because this is his second featured project here. His first post showed us how you can use 3D distorted hotspots to show restaurant menu items, plus a few other neat tricks.
Pano2VR 6.1.11 has been released. This release fixes a number of issues and it includes a few small improvements.
What’s Been Improved
You can now add values less than 1 pixel for the Min FoV setting in Viewing Parameters. This allows for sharper images when zooming in.
There is now a copy button next to Background Sound. If you have a tour using Direct Node Access and background sound, be sure to copy the sound to all nodes so that when a node is directly accessed, the background sound will play.
If you ever need to contact our support team, we encourage you to create a Support Package to send to us. This will create a package file of your project that our team can examine and help you find and solve your issue. In this update, we added the ability to include input videos to the package.
What’s Been Fixed
Manually adjusted order of clips in an Animation sequence is saved
Activate and Deactivate actions on YouTube videos in tour projects have been fixed
If using the Simple Floor Plan, it will now use a higher resolution version of the floor plan on HiDPI/Retina displays
The Floor Plan will open centered when using Zoom levels
Flat images will now properly zoom in Pano2VR’s Viewer
To Update
In Pano2VR, go to Help > Check for Updates. Or download the update directly and install manually.
Did you know…
…about the solution for uploading tours to WordPress with large file sizes? No? Well, let us share. You can use the Tuxedo Big File Uploads plugin. This will give you a 2TB upload limit. That should be enough, right?
If you would prefer not to use a plugin, you can upload your project to a web server and use a shortcode. Or you can upload a smaller version of the package file and then add the rest of the files to the extracted folders in the upload directory.
We are really happy to announce that we’ve just released mobile apps for viewing Pano2VR and Object2VR projects offline. You will find the app at the App Store and Google Play.
We’ve just released Pano2VR version 6.1.12 and it’s chock full of fixes and improvements. We also added a few small features.
What’s Been Added
Image Mask for Pinned Videos
There is now an option in the Pinned Video settings to include an Image Mask. This is useful for when you’d like to match the video to the panorama, especially when embedding video. This simplifies the existing method of adding a mask because now you can choose to add your mask or use the one that Pano2VR generates.
What’s Been Improved
Close button
There are new components in the Components Toolbox that are intended for the Package Viewer for Desktop. They add a close button to the project when viewed in the Package Viewer, making it easier to close the project when in Kiosk or Fullscreen mode.
What’s Been Fixed
There were a few issues that involved the Simple Floor Plan and they are all now fixed:
Fixed missing floor plan images
Fixed blurry floor plan images
Fixed missing map pins
Plus:
Fixed an issue with panoramas on iOS where white space was showing at the bottom of the page and pushing the panorama up
Fixed an issue where regular expressions were not working with the action, Set Media Visibility
Custom hotspot images were not showing and that has now been fixed
In the animation editor, duplicated clips were inheriting keyframes, but the tracks were missing from the timeline
To Update
In Pano2VR, go to Help > Check for Updates. Or download the update directly and install manually.
Did you know…
….that you can save output templates? If you’re customizing your outputs and find yourself recreating the outputs with the same settings, you might want to try saving the output as a template.
Today we are highlighting the work of Maksim Bobylev. Maksim has been posting his work in our Facebook groups, and they are usually full of surprises. This particular project caught our eyes. The tour is for a store selling sinks and faucets.
The tour’s UI is clean and minimal. The first and only thing we see are navigational arrows at the bottom center, controls in the top left and zoom controls.
Then, as we move into the store, we see our first products. They are indicated by the subtly animated hotspots.
When you click on the information button, a box slides in from the right with all the information about this particular product. Again, a clear and clean design.
Another product, the faucet head, also has a hotspot with a different symbol and includes a surprise when we click it! Now, we see the panorama has changed to include a variation of the faucet.
This technique can be very useful when products are hidden from view. Here, more product examples are hiding in drawers. How to best show this in a tour? Through 3D distorted hotspots.
There is also an information hotspot indicating that there is more information about this product.
What’s more interesting about these information hotspots is that Maksim uses Google Sheets to update the content. This, in turn, means that the client can update the content as well. If you’d like to learn about his process, you can reach out to him on Facebook.
As for the changing images (showing and hiding the images) at the hotspots, these are what we call 3D Distorted Hotspot Images. And you can learn all about the technique here. You can learn how to make animated hotspots icons here.
For more inspiration, check out Maksim’s other projects:
…that you can do a whole bunch of neat tricks with Pano2VR? For example, if you have a pinned video accessed from multiple nodes and the video is playing, you can keep the video’s timing between nodes. For example, if you had pinned a video on a TV screen playing back a company’s promotional video in the start node, and then you move to the next node, where that video pinned again, the video will play where it left off in the previous node.
You can learn exactly how to do this on our forum, where you’ll find a lot of tips just like this one.
Entries are open!! Calling all 360 photographers!! Epson’s International Pano Awards 2021 are currently accepting entries to their yearly competition. This is the twelfth year of the competition, and as always, we are happy to support it.
Entries are open until Monday, August 2nd, 2021. You can still catch the early-bird entrance fee discount.
This is a minor release that fixes a few residual bugs found in iOS and iPadOS 14. We’ve fixed a bug on iPadOS where a white bar was showing in fullscreen mode. Another pesky issue was where the image was getting stuck after switching between landscape and portrait. This occurred on some phones and has been fixed.
To Update
In Pano2VR, go to Help > Check for Updates. Or download the update directly and install manually.
Circus is a company focused on building virtual brand experiences. Part of their expertise is building virtual tours. Their photography, concepts, and designs are top-notch. So, today we are more than happy to feature their work!
One of their latest projects, created in Pano2VR, not only features stunning photography, but videography as well. The project was a direct result of the global pandemic and the need to move trade shows to a virtual platform.
They created a virtual trade show stand for the crafts brand, Ellison. For each node, they added live action video using Embedded Video in which a person describes the area and the products in that section.
It’s no secret that getting embedded video just right is no easy task since the quality, color, and resolution of video and still images are very different. But Circus have meshed the two expertly.
We recently added a feature to help with blending the two mediums. Pano2VR can create a feather mask around the pinned video file. Or, you can add a custom mask file. This was introduced in version 6.1.12.
The skin design includes animated hotspots, popup galleries, and popup videos. The popup galleries are a great way to showcase products, while the popup videos are perfect for adding a little more information about the product or about the people behind the products.
One last feature to highlight is the menu at the bottom. It’s low-key yet easy to navigate. And not only that, there’s some great animation happening that makes it surprisingly fun to run the mouse over.
Circus built a lovely tour that is expertly photographed and designed. We highly recommend checking it out. Special thanks to our team member, Martin Hopkins, for providing some expertise to the creators on not just this project, but many others. Thanks for all the help you provide, Martin!
…that you can use hotspots to not only show and hide pinned videos, but you can also make it so that when you change nodes, the video continues from the point of the node change.
For every node that the video plays in, add the same pinned video. The rest is done with a timer and javascript. But have no fear, Hopki (Martin) has created an example project and provided instructions on how to do it all. Check it out on the forum.
Today, we’re sharing the fantastic work of Dobiison VR. A company out of Ghana that provides interactive virtual tours and experiences. Their portfolio is expansive in that there are realty tours, gallery tours, and guided VR tours.
Cape Coast Castle
Let’s start with Cape Coast Castle. It’s a tour that explores the castle’s history, including its role in holding enslaved Africans before they were sent across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.
For each node, there is a snippet of that location’s history in an information popup. Where needed, a scroll area is used.
The animated hotspots are subtle and reveal a preview of the linked node when the mouse hovers over the hotspot.
The simple dropdown menu mirrors the clean user interface and provides an alternative way to navigate the tour. Not only that, it’s part of the navigation bar.
Peduase Valley Resort
Now, take a look at this tour of a hotel resort. The tour provides a complete overview of the resort’s facilities. Dobiison has several resort tours, and each has its unique characteristics and details.
Before jumping into the tour, you’re presented with a splash screen with an animation showing how to work with 360º interactive content.
The tour opens to an aerial view of the resort. Again, we see gently animated hotspots, and instead of a preview of the linked node, we have the node title that appears.
Animated hotspot with a title.
In the top right corner, we can book a room, view what the resort looks like at night, or continue to explore the resort.
Appolonia City
Appolonia City is a tour of numerous real estate plots. The tour begins with a bird’s eye view of the entire area that is being developed. Each section or neighborhood is highlighted using Polygon Hotspots with floating tooltips that follow the mouse.
A helpful feature for prospective home buyers is showing and hiding all the plots, which is a graphic laid over the image.
Physical Chaos Digital Calm
The last project I’d like to share is a tour of a digital art installation. This tour uses narration to guide you through the installation. Each piece of art is interactive and will open a popup of the artwork and additional buttons.
What is appealing about the work done here by Salasie Awity is the ability to create unique skins for each project. Yet, the skins share specific characteristics suggesting the Dobiison brand. The projects all have a fluid and intuitive way of moving throughout the tour. The subtle animations both help lead one through the tour and add the right amount of creative design. Thanks for the inspiration!
Here are more projects you’ll find at Dobiison VR that should not be missed:
…that you can replace nodes in a tour without deleting all the elements and information connected to it? To replace a node with a new panorama, go to Properties and click on the folder icon to the right of the image file path. Navigate to the new image.
2021 wasn’t much different than 2020, in that it was another year of the pandemic. But, work still got done and tours got produced! Here’s what happened at Gnome Headquarters in 2021:
Webinars
In 2021, we continued our weekly webinars. By April 2021, we had covered just about every topic or feature of Pano2VR. If you didn’t get a chance to see them live, or are just now hearing about them, then go ahead and check them out. We added filters to help you find what you may be looking for (there are over 40 of them!). Or you can tune into the YouTube or Vimeo playlists.
Package Viewer Apps
In April, we released apps for iOS and Android for viewing Pano2VR projects offline. Transfer the package output (GGPKG) to your phone and open with our app.
Third-Party Services
We created a list of 3rd-party services that you may find helpful when looking for someone to build a skin, edit your panoramas, or even for sound design. If you’d like to be added to the list, let us know by sending an email to support@ggnome.com.
Pano2VR version 7
We’ve been working hard on version 7 and we’ve added a lot of new features. We can’t wait to tell you more! We have a beta version ready very, very soon!
Pano2VR 6.1.14
And finally, we’ve released another update to Pano2VR version 6. We fixed a number of issues that you reported. Thanks for letting us know. Don’t forget to Check for Updates. As always, if you’re having issues, write to us at support@ggnome.com.
We’d like to wish you a relaxed and wonderful holiday season from all of us at Garden Gnome. We’ll see you in 2022!
Finally! We are excited to get Version 7 into your hands! This release is a beta release, meaning it’s fully functional and stable, but there could be a few lingering issues.
There are too many features and changes to list here, but the video below highlights all the major ones. You can also find your way to the Pano2VR 7 page to learn more about the latest features.
In short, we added 7 new built-in skins, translation support, new skin elements for PDFs and Code, added the ability to track hotspots, and added support for Lottie animations. Additionally, we added custom keyboard shortcuts, Live Update to the output, support for subtitles, and more. Check it all out:
We made extensive changes to the Skin Editor as well. Rather than list all the changes here you can read them on the changelog or watch the following video where Martin takes you through the major changes:
Eventually, we will start up our weekly webinar sessions to show you how to use all the new features. Keep an eye out for our announcements via this blog, the newsletter, the forum, the Pano2VR Facebook group, or Twitter.
License and Download
A new Pano2VR 6 pro license includes a free upgrade to Pano2VR 7. If you already have version 6 or an older license of Pano2VR and would like to upgrade, log in to your account to see what options are available to you. (You may have noticed there is no light version. With version 7, we will have a single version of Pano2VR to streamline our product line-up.)
Download here and follow the instructions to install and activate.
We’ve just released our second beta for Pano2VR 7. This fixes the peskiest bugs like thumbnail and preview images missing in the new skins, translation files not getting translated because of apostrophes, and wrong FoV settings being used.
There are still many issues we need to fix. If you’ve sent us an issue report and it’s not fixed yet, just know we’ll get to it. While we’re at it, we’d like to thank everyone testing and using the beta and thank you for taking the time to send feedback! If you’d like to keep an eye on current issues and what’s been fixed, refer to this page.
We’ve also added a few small features. One, in particular, you’ll find in the Skin Editor. There is now an Accessibility panel and you can add a tab index to each skin element. This allows for a user to use the Tab key to move through the skin and then activate the element with the Enter/Return and Space keys. ARIA attributes (labels, descriptions, details, and roles) can also be added to elements. We’ve added these accessibility features to the Orb skin (feather_orb.ggsk). Turn on Keyboard Accessibility in the Skin Configuration.
Webinars
We are dusting off our webinar equipment and will be firing it up next week! Join us next Wednesday, March 9th at 5 pm CET/4 pm UTC for our first of many webinars for Pano2VR 7.
Next week, we will present a full overview of the new features including custom properties, the web element, and the VR skins. This will be a good one to attend for anyone who is already working with the beta and also for anyone who would like to know more about the beta before committing to the update.
We plan on holding free webinars every Wednesday. If you’d like to be notified about upcoming webinars, you can sign up for the webinar mailing list. You’ll get an email every time we update the webinar page.
We’re stoked for the next IVRPA conference from June 1-3. What better place to have it than in the majestic red rocks of Utah. This will be our first adventure as a team since the IVRPA Belfast conference, and it’s long overdue!
Our founder, Thomas, will be giving a talk, and our support guru, Martin, will be holding a Pano2VR workshop. This is an excellent opportunity to meet the team and learn directly from us.
Martin aka Hopki leads a Pano2VR workshop at the IVRPA conference in Belfast.
As of this writing, there are still Early Bird tickets available. We hope to see you there! Learn more.
Pano2VR 6.1.15
Pano2VR 6.1.15 is now out, and it is a bug-fix release. Most of the issues are minor, but one significant issue was a missing media folder in the package output and that’s been fixed. To see all the fixes, head over to the changelog for Pano2VR 6.
To update, go to Help > Check for Updates. Or download the update directly and install it manually.
Pano2VR 7 beta 3
Beta 3 is out as well with a lot of fixes, added features, and a few changes.
Pano2VR 7 beta 3 now includes a native version for Apple Silicon (ARM) Macs. Expect improved speed and much faster load times on M1 Macs. With the switch to Qt6, the toolkit we use to build Pano2VR’s interface, the minimum system requirementschanged tomacOS 10.14, and Windows 10 (1809 or later)/Windows 11 21H2.
One of the major changes we added is the option to choose smooth motion for the hotpots. This is found in the Advanced settings of the Web Output. The Smooth Motion option will cause the hotspot icons to appear less sharp, but they will have a more fluid movement with the panorama. Sharp will make the icons appear sharper, but the hotspots’ motion will be more choppy or rough.
We also added an auto-detection for the Map API. This means that Pano2VR, by default, will use the first custom/added map added to the Tour Map to determine which map API to use (Google or Leaflet).
To see the complete list of changes, see the Changelog for Pano2VR 7 beta.
To update, go to Help > Check for Updates. Or download the update directly and install it manually.
★ Pano2VR 7 is still in beta but is available to purchase. If you’d like to buy a license for version 7, log in to your account to see what options are available. Please note that if you purchased Pano2VR 6 pro after January 26th, 2022, you will receive a license for version 7 with your purchase. If you bought a license before January 26th, 2022, you will have to pay a small upgrade fee for the version 7 license.
Package Viewer
Finally, in addition to the updates to Pano2VR, we also updated the Garden Gnome Package Viewer to 1.5.0. Download the latest version.
We’ve been quiet lately, but that’s only because we’ve been busy working on getting out a new beta.
Today, we’re releasing Pano2VR 7 beta 4. Again, we thank all of you who use the beta and report issues and wishes.
We’ve fixed several issues, including support for Intel Graphics, the HTML template background color not changing, and variables not available for use in multiple Animation clips.
We also added a few more features. The Skin Editor’s Cloner can now also display a list of hotspots in the current node, floor plans, and languages in your project.
Here we see multiple translations added to the project and an output where the cloner was used to create a language menu.
There is now a Text Editor for most text fields. You’ll find them in the User Data, and in the Text Box in the skin. The editor supports rich text, plain text, and markdown.
The rich text editor. Markdown (CommonMark) is also supported in the new text editor.
In the Skin Editor, for added fun, there is a new logic block for corner borders so you can make animations like the one below.
A few ways to use the logic block for corners are represented here. First, in the On/Off switch, the corners turn into pointers. And the second example is that we see a circle and square animation.
There is a lot more we fixed and added in this beta. You’ll find the complete list of changes here.
To update, go to Help > Check for Updates. Or download the update directly and install it manually.
★ Pano2VR 7 is still in beta but is available to purchase. If you’d like to buy a license for version 7, log in to your account to see what options are available. Please note that if you purchased Pano2VR 6 pro after January 26th, 2022, you will receive a license for version 7 with your purchase. If you bought a license before January 26th, 2022, you will have to pay a small upgrade fee for the version 7 license.
Webinars
We’re excited to announce that our next webinar will be on Wednesday, June 29th. Join us and learn how to build out a multilingual project using Pano2VR’s translation tools. More information and registration are found on our Webinar page.
Don’t forget to browse that page while you’re there. We’ve added filters so you can search the webinars by topic.
