Loading performance...

[apinstein]

I have been working on my flashpanoramas setup for 2 days... and I still can't get the loading to be anywhere close to as smooth as with PTViewer 2.8. I have seen other people comment that they love how smooth the loading and transitions are, but I cannot replicate this.

Below is a link to the same panorama, with either FLASH or JAVA viewer;

Flash (http://dev.virtualtour.showcasere.com:8080/public/vtour/display/3?viewerType=flash)

JAVA (http://dev.virtualtour.showcasere.com:8080/public/vtour/display/3?viewerType=java)

Here are the main performance problems I cannot figure out:
1) Java applet loads low-res quickly and then adds in high-rez while tour is already rotating.
2) Java applet allows me to click on different images while loading and will show the most recently clicked almost instantly. Flash waits until current pano is loaded before switching. I don't understand how to interrupt it.

I have even created a MOV version of the pano (still cylindrical) and cannot get the progressive loading described elsewhere to work.

I simply cannot use Flashpanos the way it works now. If you compare the two, it takes 3-4x longer for the flash to load than the java. This isn't a viable user experience.

Flashpanos seems very promising but these issues need to be addressed...

If anyone has any advice on this I'd greatly appreciate it. I can't tell if I am setting things up incorrectly or if these are just limitations of the current version.

[HansNyberg]

Can not see anything at all. None of your pages responds. Just a white page .
Tried both Safari and Firefox.

Do you not have your own page. This seems to be some Realtor site.

Hans

[HansNyberg]

After manipulating your URL to this
http://virtualtour.showcasere.com/public/vtour/display/3?viewerType=flash

I get a tour but both are Java

Hans

[zleifr]

I think there are a number of factors contributing to the poor performance:
1. .mov file -> I avoid them for now, I think Denis has a few bugs to work out, especially on a Mac.
2. your panos are cylindrical, which means there is automatically overhead in loading while they are converted to a partial cube.
3. I am not sure this is a problem, but you are also relying on javascript to load your pano. In my experience javascript is generally unreliable, and can certainly slow things down.

Try loading your plain high res cube faces, with nothing else fancy; that in my experience is the fastest. If that is still too slow, then you might want to stick with ptviewer, and if it is fast enough, then keep playing with things.

[apinstein]

Hans-

Oh sorry my development server goes to sleep at night, I forgot to turn that off! That link is correct. It is a development server with actual customer tours so that's why it looks like a real estate site - that's what it is!

It is back on now. I'll turn off auto-sleep for a few days...

[apinstein]

I think there are a number of factors contributing to the poor performance:
1. .mov file -> I avoid them for now, I think Denis has a few bugs to work out, especially on a Mac.

Oh... the thread I saw seemed to say that MOV is the BEST way to go, so I was trying that. I am on a Mac, though...

2. your panos are cylindrical, which means there is automatically overhead in loading while they are converted to a partial cube.

Yes, they are cylindrical.*I didn't realize that these were converted... however, I tried Pano2VR with the exact same image and the performance was much much better and completely acceptable performance-wise (although I cannot automate Pano2VR so it isn't a solution).

Pano2VR Test (http://dev.virtualtour.showcasere.com:8080/www/db_images/tour/3/virtual_tour_3045-large.swf)

The Pano2VR has nice progressive loading, motion performance is better, and loading performance is better... I would expect that flashpanormas would be able to achieve this same performance.... any reason why it shouldn't?

3. I am not sure this is a problem, but you are also relying on javascript to load your pano. In my experience javascript is generally unreliable, and can certainly slow things down.

I am pretty sure this isn't my problem.

Try loading your plain high res cube faces, with nothing else fancy; that in my experience is the fastest. If that is still too slow, then you might want to stick with ptviewer, and if it is fast enough, then keep playing with things.

I don't always have full 360 for cubes... most of my customers shoot only cylindrical at this time.

I would stick with PTViewer but 1. java has lots of memory issues and eventually you can't see the panos any more, plus you cannot use a very large file due to memory constraint and 2. not everyone has java as compared to flash these days...

I have been using PTViewer for over 1 year now and it is close to perfect, but I am trying for perfect. So far I can't get there with flashpanoramas, but we are so close and I still have hope :D

Thanks for the ideas! I would think that a solution here would benefit everyone greatly...

[zleifr]

I don't mean to say that a full cube is the perfect solution for you, only that if you don't have loading performance that is acceptable to you with a plain vanilla cube, then fpp is not the right beast.

In fact, you don't even have to create your own cube. Do Denis' sample image on the front page load well enough for you?

The other thing you might try for cylinders is offline conversion of them to cube faces (CubicConverter), and using the limits or border (preferably limits) to hide the unphotographed areas on top and bottom.

Also, I prefer the loaderstreamed effect to the low res preview image every day of the week. I understand it does slow loading somewhat, but I don't know by how much, as I don't use it (or any lo-res stuff for that matter). You might try it and see how it works for you.

[apinstein]

In fact, you don't even have to create your own cube. Do Denis' sample image on the front page load well enough for you?

Do you mean the two samples at the bottom of this page (http://flashpanoramas.com/player/)? If those are the one's you're talking about, then no, those don't load fast enough. It takes about 4 seconds from when I click "load" until I see anything. That's a long time!

If that's not what you mean, please send the link!

Compare that to our current setup:

Live online PTViewer sample (http://tour.getmytour.com/public/vtour/display/1050)

It takes less than 1 second to see imagery. It makes the experience much better. Especially when the rest of our interface so greatly encourages clicking around.

With the java example above, you can click any preview at any time and it cancels the current loading and within 1s you see the image you clicked on. With FlashPanoramas it takes a few seconds to finish loading the one you're on, then you have to click and wait another 2s to see the image, and 2 more seconds for rotation to start.

[zleifr]

Those panos are the ones I meant, and if they aren't loading fast enough for you there may not be much that can be done for you....

And I don't believe there is anyway to cancel the loading process in FPP...

They only thing I can think of is to suggest is that it is possible to cache images for the later nodes in the tour, and then the transition is pretty quick, but it won't do anything for the initial loading time.

I will keep thinking about it...

[apinstein]

Those panos are the ones I meant, and if they aren't loading fast enough for you there may not be much that can be done for you....

I will keep thinking about it...

Well, I guess that means that I have a feature request :) PTViewer essentially works perfectly in this respect... they call it Dynamic Progressive Loading (http://www.fsoft.it/panorama/PTViewer/DynProgrLoad.htm).

So, PTViewer loads the complete low-res preview (and you can do a decent full-screen preview in 100k or so), and then loads in the hi-res data in as many "strips" or "tiles" as you want. This ensures that the viewer sees something in <1s and sees hi-rez within 1s usually, as you can see in the demo.

It also does all of this in the background, so you can easily switch to another view without delay.

I suppose I need to take another look at the sphericals and the mov plugin and see if that works better. Do you know of any online examples of that? I am really killing a lot of time here messing with things...

Thanks for the continued help!

[zleifr]

In my experience .mov files work great on winboxes, and horribly on macs, so depending on your audience (I deal with almost all real estate agents, and they are tied to windows to use the MLS, so they all see tours in the MLS), it might work for you as it does have a lo-res preview.

It might work for you, as long as you don't mind a horrible experience on a mac. There are some in the showcase I believe that use .movs...

[apinstein]

In my experience .mov files work great on winboxes, and horribly on macs, so depending on your audience (I deal with almost all real estate agents, and they are tied to windows to use the MLS, so they all see tours in the MLS), it might work for you as it does have a lo-res preview.

It might work for you, as long as you don't mind a horrible experience on a mac. There are some in the showcase I believe that use .movs...

Where is this showcase? I have no idea... the "Gallery" on the flashpanoramas.com home page is greyed out...

[zleifr]

http://flashpanoramas.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=10