Flash Panorama Player 2.2 announcement
There is a time to update your panorama players. New version brought a lot of new possibilities. You can buy it here right now. All future updates of Flash Panorama Player are free! Thank you for using my software.
Main changes for new version of the player::
QTVR files in mov format can be loaded inside Flash Panorama Player at runtime (including multi-tiles panoramas and cylindrical QTVR panoramas). You do not need to have installed QuickTime player to see QTVR files with Flash Panorama Player, only Flash Player.
QTVR movie example (loads this QTVR file).
Cylinder QTVR example (loads this movie).
I can’t guarantee now all possible QTVR files support, but it should work with all contemporary QTVR creators (tested with RealvizStitcher Unlimited, PTGui, pano2qtvr, PanoCube, Panorama Factory, 3D Studio Max and some others). No QTVR hotspots, QTVR objects or advanced settings supported now, use FPP’s hotspots and advanced settings if you need. I will continue to improve QTVR decoder in future.
From now I should recommend cube QTVR format as a preferred format for Flash Panorama Player: it takes no superfluous memory, it takes almost no time for decoding, it loads smoother than separate cube faces (use tiles), it can contain build-in low quality preview. Moreover it is widely available format, there are a lot of free and cheap tools with QTVR output.
Flash Panorama Player supports now spherical and cylindrical panorama formats as well. I tried to find the optimal combination between the panorama quality and speed of transformation (all spheres and cylinders are transformed to cube faces just after the loading), small spherical panoramas (less than 2000) do it fast enough, but there is can be a noticeable pause for big panorama transformation (5-7 seconds for 9000×4500 panorama). Spherical image example (loads this image).
Actually, any single image can be a panorama now: set rough hfov and vfov settings for your image and load it as a sphere segment: Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning. This is well-known photo by Antti Kemppainen. I like it very much. I drew the bold red border around it to demonstrate how precisely the new Limits plugin works. It shows all possible pixels for any angle of view but it hides all pixels outside the image borders. Also notice that Autorotation plugin can understand the borders of the viewing area in this example.
All panorama images can be loaded now as a stream: cube faces example. Also there is an additional parameter loaderBandwidth to restrict the maximal loading speed. It is useful to test your panorama offline (say, if you want to check your panorama for low speed connection). But you can use it as well to make loader process more smooth or as a “eye candy” effect. I recommend to disable this options for big cylindrical and spherical panoramas (takes too many processor’s time).
Finally the panorama player can load images in swf format. Not as for vector images (they will be transformed to bitmaps just after the loading), not as for animation (you can put an swf animation to the panorama using distorted hotspots), but to have a possibility to load fast panoramas (say, as a first screen in your virtual tour, as a simple background for your panorama-based site menu, or as a part of some online game). For example, this “panorama” is less than 1 kb. Should be useful for someone. Let it be.
New effects for hotspots: glow, shadow, bevel, tint and sharpness (including various subservient parameters like shadowDistance, shadowAngle, shadowStrength, blurQuality, glowColor and so on). Check the old example with updated Editor plugin, for example, try to apply a tint effect to the pano object or play with glow settings of hotspots.
Other changes:
- I modified 4th point of Personal License. Now you can use Personal License to create projects allowing users to use their own images to play with the Flash Panorama Player engine. Something like http://viewat.org/. Good job, guys!
- I fixed rare but noisy bug with blank screen in IE.
- No more problems with hiding loaders: all plugins load now before the panorama images.
- Hotspots plugin now can reload XML parameters on new panorama loading. I.e. you can use different sets of hotspots for different panoramas in a single virtual tour easy.
- New function for Hotspots script “javascript:” to run Javascript commands (to open new popup window or to run an external function, for example).
- New parameters for panorama: frameRate, ratio, allowDomain, shrink, transparentBack, hfov, vfov.
- A lot of other small improvements.
Plans for October:
- I’m going to finish some old works (LensFlare plugin, ToolTips plugin and mp3Player plugin). They will be open source.
- Also I’m going to publish some Actionscript examples: “how to create your own coder/decoder for Flash Panorama Player” (say, for encrypted images), “how to add your own transition function (for hotspots motion)” and “how to create your own transition effect (between panoramas)”
- I’m going to describe all public functions of Panorama and Hotspots objects. I think it will help developers using my player as embedded object.
- Some experiments with new type of panoramas.
Watch for updates,
Denis.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 5:03 am and is filed under Flash, Flash Panorama Player, Panoramas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on October 1, 2007 at 8:22 am Aaron Spence wrote:
G’day Dennis,
Brilliant work on the updates. QTVR playback via FPP is a killer feature. I suspect a great many pano photographers will be making the switch now that it’s so simple to have fast tiled previews with a single pano file. Plus a lot of other great features as well
I specluated just last week to my maps developer that a new version of FPP should be coming out soon and that I hoped it would have good preview functions and hotspots with tooltips which it sounds like you’re working on now. Great Work.
Thanks, Aaron.
on October 1, 2007 at 9:28 am Werner Weber wrote:
Hey Denis,
I’m very happy about your announcement – that will be the best for my needs.
Even the actual Player is hammer to me ;o)
Your Work gives me the possibility to show mines in the best shape – Thanks allot!!!
Best Regards, Werner
on October 1, 2007 at 1:45 pm PauloGGPX wrote:
Great work Denis
Thanks for you work and your free updates policy hehe
Can’t wait for the release day
on October 1, 2007 at 6:17 pm zleifr wrote:
The QTVR movie example gives an error on my mac in Safari:
Error: Error #1502: A script has executed for longer than the default timeout period of 15 seconds.
at CubePanorama/redraw()
at movDecoder_fla::MainTimeline/tileComplete()
It starts loading. The glassmeter shows up, but remains at 0 Kb for ~15 seconds and then up pops the error. The first time I tried, some lo-res preview image showed up, and then the error, I hit continue and the window disappears under the others and ~15 seconds later the error returns. Then I hit dismiss and the panorama was fully loaded and worked fine. The second time, there was no lo-res preview image before the error.
on October 1, 2007 at 7:37 pm Denis V. Chumakov wrote:
OK. I see. Looks like you computer takes too many time to decode low-resolution tiles (150 tiles). I will place some artificial interraption to the code to avoid this situation. Thanks for your testing!
on October 1, 2007 at 8:06 pm Shanti wrote:
All I have to say is WOW! i am very impressed! can’t hardly wait to play with v2.2 !
on October 2, 2007 at 10:26 am Henry Stuart wrote:
Hi Dennis,
Congratulations, really looking forward to the latest version. Simply the best out there already! Being able to use QTVR’s will be such an advantage.
I notice you say you will be looking at the MP3 player plugin in Oct, I am especially keen to see when this comes out, I think sound can add so much to a panorama.
Keep up the great work!
Henry Stuart
on October 2, 2007 at 10:45 am Jaaaab wrote:
Can FPP toast my bread ?
on October 2, 2007 at 5:45 pm Aifos wrote:
FPP [IMG]http://www.egelforum.net/forum/images/smilies/bongsmi.gif[/IMG]
on October 2, 2007 at 10:33 pm Rudi wrote:
Very keen to check out the Flash scripting API as soon as you get a chance as it would help a project I am working on with a deadline in october for which we are using flash panoramas - will send you a link. Thanks for a great plugin - love your work.
Rudi
on October 3, 2007 at 5:56 am lc8b105 wrote:
Do you think this player is good?(the image’s quality )
on October 3, 2007 at 5:59 am lc8b105 wrote:
I say this player,here http://godson.blueidea.com/archives/2007/5025.shtml
on October 4, 2007 at 3:37 pm patman wrote:
Hello Denis,
Superbe job !!! ça devrait me simplifier la vie ( ya intérêt !!! ;o) )
Thanks
on October 5, 2007 at 11:22 am you are the man! wrote:
this is quite an announce!
keep up the good work man.
on October 6, 2007 at 4:10 am phberlin wrote:
Hi Denis,
your “experiments with new types of panoramas”, do they also contain objectVR? I’d really love to see this feature supported directly by FPP…
Besides, it’s no secret of course, but your player is definitly the most outstanding product in this section! I’m glad I bought this one and not Immervision’s
Regards, Ph.
on October 7, 2007 at 1:11 am Domenico Perrone wrote:
Just a question: How does the FPP works?
I did all tha cylinder qtvr here http://www.domenicoperrone.net/artefede and l’d like to export to flash in a automatic way. Have i to put the FPP on the website and do just a call?
Best Regards, Domenico.
on October 7, 2007 at 11:06 pm davx wrote:
Using Safari On PowerBook G4 - OS X 10.4.10 - there always a trouble with mouse spinning,
i explain, if i turn the pano fast, it turn for a while and there no way to abort the movement, the mouse click are unresponsive…and CPU go 100%… was true with older versions too..
maybe this issue applie only on PPC Mac ?
on October 7, 2007 at 11:12 pm Shanti wrote:
did v 2.2 ship yet? I have not received my copy
on October 8, 2007 at 12:32 am Paul Burnett wrote:
Hi Denis
Is 2.2 out? no copy her either?
on October 8, 2007 at 1:17 am Valentin Pryanishnikov wrote:
Денис, ссылка в е-мейл рассылке явно не на ту страницу
on October 8, 2007 at 3:25 am AYRTON wrote:
Thanks Dennis for such an incredible upgrade. I’m still learning your wonderfull software, but congratulations on it
Sincerely
AYRTON
on October 8, 2007 at 9:41 am Denis V. Chumakov wrote:
So, Flash Panorama Player update is shipped yesterday late night.
Wait a couple of days, then if you do not get it, check your spam folder.
If there is nothing, contact me at flashpanoramas@gmail.com, I will include you to the second wave of mailing.
You need to have 2.1 version to install free update!
Right now I can’t answer you so Google banned me for 24 hours for mass mailing.
on October 8, 2007 at 1:47 pm Claude Holdowicz wrote:
Hello Denis, today is a nice day thanks to you!
I was curious if FPP can play QT VR on Linux : i tried with http://flashpanoramas.com/player/examples/cubeqtvr.html on an old laptop, the only one i have with Open Suse 10.2 and the latest Flash plugin for Linux, and with Firefox 2.0.0.4 = It works, slowly but works. My Linux Laptop have 256 Mo Ram, AMD Duron 1 GHz CPU, and a graphic card ATI 3D Rage Mobility M1 with 8 Mb Ram.
I’ve just got today the latest Flash Player plugin from Adobe, because i thought that Adobe made an update for Linux user and now the Flash player can allow the Fullscreen (I read this on the Suse French forum). But for FPP go to fullscreen is still deseabled…
FPP on my Linux Firefox turn around 10 FPS when it works with cubeqtvr. And on an other Laptop with Windows XP: around 20 FPS (This other laptop have Intel Centrino 1.7 GHz, 1 Go Ram and ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo AGP with 128 Mb).
on October 8, 2007 at 2:53 pm Ken McMahon wrote:
Well done Denis, thanks for the update. I’m sure the ability to load QTVR .mov files will be the tipping point for a lot of panographers to adopt your player. I switched my entire site - http://www.lookaroundcornwall.com - which currently has nearly a hundred panoramas from QTVR to FPP 2.1 about threee month ago and haven’t regretted it for a moment. As I’d created the .mov files from cubic faces it was straightforward to replace them with the cubic faces and rewrite the html pages. Now I’m thinking should I go back to using the QTVRs within FPP? I have a couple of concerns (beyond the work involved replacing the cubic faces with the original QTVRs and making new QTVRs for the panos I’ve done since the change-over.
I use 1500×1500 cube faces. Starting with tiffs and with moderate compression most of my QTVRs turn out at around 2Mb-3Mb (produced using Stitcher’s panorama conversion). My FPP workflow involves producing medium quality jpegs from the tif cube faces. The total file size for all 6 faces is typically around 1.5Mb. The quality is marginally worse than the QTVRs, but I can live with that. If I go back to using the QTVRs embedded in FPP will the file sizes be as for the original QTVR, or will they be larger, in other words is there an overhead for FPP. Either way I’m going to end up with files bigger than the current .jpg cube faces by the looks of things.
The second concern involves editing and production. Currently, if I spot a problem, say a stitching error in a pano on the site, all I have to do is edit and upload a new cube face. If I use a QTVR I have to do that, then make a new QTVR and upload that. I just feel that adding one more wrapper complicates thing and I’m not sure the advantage of tiling and low quality preview are worth it.
Different story if you already have a large site with a lot of QTVRs mind you.
Can I also add my vote for a tool tips plugin!
All the best
Ken
on October 8, 2007 at 3:09 pm Tom Hawbaker wrote:
Please disregard my previous question. I am an anxious new user and just became aware of your forum…a more appropriate place for my newbie question. I will peruse the forum before bugging you. Love your product…is exactly what I was looking for (considered spi-v and immervision for some time). th.
on October 8, 2007 at 7:59 pm jaymz wrote:
does this not work on an intel mac? flash player 9 installed but no pano working on the livePanoEdit1.html I love it though, saw it but co-worker could not see it.
on October 8, 2007 at 9:37 pm James F. Bacon wrote:
Any word on the new release. How do I get the update?
on October 8, 2007 at 11:18 pm Bernd Haugrund (gato) wrote:
Sorry Dennis,
I was stupid enough to forget how to upgrade your software…its not so easy to upgrade, is there anywhere a readme for this?…but now i have get it and its great and its working on my mac offline and online and all is good. Very good job. Thanks
on October 11, 2007 at 1:40 am Jeremy wrote:
jaymz - yes, it works great on my Intel Mac.
Denis - I am looking forward to your actionscript tutorials. Tell me, will the encoder/decoder use code similar to the new “embedPano”? I better start brushing up on my ActionScript!
Keep up the awesome work…
on October 11, 2007 at 5:29 pm John Willetts wrote:
I suspect that 2.2 will be ideal for my needs, but I am still climbing up the learning curve very slowly.
1/. I can’t load the Spherical image example at the top of this page. It only gets as far as the grid! (all the other examples work perfectly).
2/. I’ve spent a very frustrating morning and half afternoon trying to get the Partial example to work - and it never gets past the Loading Failed note. I see that you have a separate JScript file, Urchin, on your site which is referenced in your HTML. Could that have anything to do with it?
Please help me - someone
on October 11, 2007 at 9:59 pm richard rose wrote:
Excellent job and will fit very nicely in a treasure hunt I am building, bit worried by the washing machine in the bathroom though
on October 26, 2007 at 7:38 pm adi wrote:
Hello Dennis, your software is really great and very flexible.
I will publish my new Panoramawebsite in a few days and would love to buy your viewer.
But I am still waiting for the lensflare Plugin - it´s so necessary for all my outdoor shoots.
Do you have any prediction when it will be out?
Thanks for the info.
ADi
:::::::::::::
on October 28, 2007 at 6:29 pm Denis V. Chumakov wrote:
Thanks for your comments and your interest!
I got thousand of e-mails after this release. I tried to answer most of them. It taked time, but I’m continue to work on new features for Flash Panorama Player. The lens flares and new mp3 player are almost ready.
If you have problems with examples in FPP package, read this short instruction: http://flashpanoramas.com/player/troubleshootings/
If you bought the player before October, 27, you need to load the fixed movDecoder plugin from the support forum: http://flashpanoramas.com/forum/showthread.php?t=458
I’m checking my blog not so often, so if you have an important question, use this way: flashpanoramas@gmail.com
But if you want to tell something good or bad for me and for all, go ahead here, I will take it easy.
on November 20, 2007 at 1:29 am Roberto wrote:
Hello,
I have a big big problem: i don’t know well how to link two or more panoramas each other!!!
An example: i have “panorama01.swf” and “panorama02.swf”.
The first time i put all hotspots code in the panorama01 xml file, and they were working, but, when i had to open for the first time panorama01, all the hotspots (also the hotspots from panorama02) were appearing and working.
Then i found that i had to put all the hotspots code in a xml file called spots.xml, but like this my hotspots are no working.
So, my issue is how can i put an hotspot in panorama01 to go in panorama02 and the other way round without to see always every hotspots everywhere?
If some of you can make also an example you’ll be very helpful to me.
Thanks a lot guys
on January 4, 2008 at 5:49 pm Костас wrote:
Хочу начать делать панорамы во флаш формате. Сегодня купил Flash Panorama Player. Начал пробовать, ничего не не получается. Не загружается. На красивом красном или зеленом фоне пишется: loading:failed. В письме мне была указана ссылка http://flashpanoramas.com/support она не работает. Что подскажешь?
on January 5, 2008 at 10:27 pm Trausti Hraunfjord wrote:
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Plans for October:
I’m going to describe all public functions of Panorama and Hotspots objects. I think it will help developers using my player as embedded object.
Denis.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
This would be highly apreciated, and would be great help for the further development of the http://www.flashificator.com gui for FPP.
Live well,
Trausti
on January 27, 2008 at 1:17 am Meengla wrote:
Hello Denis
A few pre-purchase questions:
1) Could your Player be embedded in a container Flash application in a way that different images can be loaded depending on some link the users click?
2) We create 360-degree virtual tours using a 3rd party Flash Component which allows API support to load 360-degree JPGs. Could we use your Player to load regular (not 360 images) and 360 images? Note, each panoramic image in our Tour is a single file.
3) We also produce our 360 outputs to Cubicle .MOV files. So can we load such files without expecting the users to have some kind of QuickTime Plugin installed?
4) We also put hotspots over our panoramic images; could this be possible with your software using API.
Thank you,
Meengla
http://www.AlphaObjects.com
on February 2, 2008 at 11:13 am Denis V. Chumakov wrote:
Hello Meengla.
1. Yes, you will find an example in the FPP package.
2. Yes, it supports spherical panoramas (360 images). But the max image width is restricted to 8192 px (Adobe Flash restriction).
3. Yes, it plays QTVR (mov files) without any additional converter.
4. Yes, there are Hotspots plugin with a lot of possibilities.
on March 4, 2008 at 4:25 am Denny wrote:
Hi all..great product that it…mai issue i have with mozila. Is this work out in Firefox mozila….??? please let me know if anyone have any idea abt it..plsssssssssssssss…..
on March 13, 2008 at 2:37 pm charlie wrote:
Hi Dennis,
I don’t see the software license terms anywhere on your site. Do you provide the software in mxp format so that it can be included within flash projects?
Thanks
on March 16, 2008 at 8:28 pm Denis V. Chumakov wrote:
Hi Charlie. Yes, I should update my pages…
I place the license here for now: http://flashpanoramas.com/player/License.txt
MXP Component for Flash CS3 is in development. Will be released till the summer, I think.
If someone has a question about FPP, the quickest way is my e-mail: flashpanoramas@gmail.com
on December 8, 2008 at 4:55 am Flash Free wrote:
This is a great blog!
on December 22, 2008 at 9:58 pm Vladimir wrote:
I`ve just bought the FPP, and I could not fix this trouble: russian letters in tooltips are not shown. What could go wrong?
on February 25, 2009 at 11:44 am Hubert wrote:
Hi,
I have the Panorama Player 2.2, but it does not make panoraamoja as the guide mentions. Takes only a black box, what do I do?
on March 17, 2009 at 11:33 am William B. Francis wrote:
Hello,
I am looking into creating panoramas. I am familiar with dreamweaver but know very little about flash. I can create 360 panorama images (using arksoft Panorama Maker 4). Will your solution help me create webpages or scripts I can use in web pages without the need for knowing Flash?
What kind of experience do I need to be able to use your solution?
Thank you for your time.
Best regards
on May 23, 2009 at 5:58 am sham wrote:
How easy is it to convert QTVR.mov panos to flashpanos. Also a video tutorial on youtube or this website would be extremely useful
cheers
sham
on June 29, 2009 at 9:42 pm Great radeon agp Secret | ASUS RADEON wrote:
[...] Flash Panorama Player 2.2 announcement | flashpanoramas.com blog [...]
on August 29, 2009 at 12:42 pm Shrink wrappers wrote:
Shrink wrappers…
Great Tip…
on August 31, 2009 at 1:15 am joe-arrow wrote:
Is it possible to animate hotspots to move over the screen separately (for example: you move pan to the left and hotspot moves to the right; or view stands still and hotspot “fly” around on given path)?
on October 15, 2009 at 3:26 am rourseshelp wrote:
“отличный пример стоящего материала”
on October 18, 2009 at 2:55 pm Vincent Chang wrote:
This is very good.
May I download for a trial ?
on October 27, 2009 at 1:12 pm Netbook wrote:
Nice product…
Really awesome!
on October 28, 2009 at 7:37 pm Altina wrote:
I’m getting ready to put a new site online and I’m so happy that I came across this great source - thanks so much for sharing!
on October 29, 2009 at 5:57 pm Самогон wrote:
Самогонный аппарат купить и автора напоить!
on October 29, 2009 at 11:08 pm Дешевый хостинг wrote:
Хостинг дешево и сердито.
on November 4, 2009 at 2:14 pm Themes wrote:
Нормально так, спасибо автору.
on November 6, 2009 at 1:08 am Дешевый хостинг wrote:
Огромное вам человеческое спасибо, очень актуальная заметка
on November 12, 2009 at 1:08 pm Хостинг wrote:
Дешевый и надежный хостинг сайтов
с неограниченными возможностями
поддержка (php, MySQL, Cron)
on November 12, 2009 at 9:29 pm David wrote:
How do I get the latest version of Flash Panorama? I have purchased it but there is no access for updates.
on November 15, 2009 at 9:38 pm SpaceGeo wrote:
Thank you site good nice post much.