What do you think to this navigation?

[adriansalisbury]

I keep trying to explore new ways of presenting the navigation and am curious what people think to this...

http://opticalfx-testsite.co.uk/clients/MKTWO/bucksbizz.html

Hit, miss or maybe?

[johnwilletts]

Palpable Hit, Adrian

[WideEyes]

Hi Adrian

I love it. I think it was you who made a tour of a specialty shop (was it bathromms they sold) with a voice guide. Is it you we hear speaking?

The only small comment I have is that I believe that some people will be confused by the thumbnails because the "tooltip" shows up next to the image. I would rather have made it as a "mouse over" image - then there is no confusion.

Otherwise great job :)

Best regards
Morten

[HansNyberg]

Hi Adrian

This is very nice, and it is easy to ad more panoramas if they want.
Have you checked my version for the University.

It shows that you can do a lot of different things with one code.
A few changes and you have a completely different site

Hans

[Widdi]

Its great to have the loader "out of the way" like hans's!

It reminds me a bit of the interface on http://www.virtually-anywhere.com/

which I think looks quite pro.

The voiceover is great on Adrians - however as voices and accents differ so much - it would be hard to get right.

Adrians is good - not too posh, and very clear.

I could see this working well on "celeb" designer sites..... eg. a well known garden designer describing his own design. Or even a jorno type interview in the background.

I knew flash had the capability years ago - I just knew I didn`t!;)

[NewSpin360]

Adrian,

I like it!

I had a problem with my navigation, I see with happening with yours.

When you click Close the "Menu" is there before it Closes.

You may see a few using this. We have loaned it out. Not super great but easy to add as many as needed, like yours.

http://host.newspin360.net/bransonhills/2bedroom/

I love the voice over!

Mike

[adriansalisbury]

Mike I love your navigation, I'll have to go exploring your xml ;)
Hans I haven't seen your uni lately, can you remind me of the url please? You never did get back to me either Hans about how you managed the high tour above the hedge, I have seen more and more like this and am curious how people are doing it.

By the way, the voice overs aren't me they are Stephen Lyons www.isdnvoice.com . He's very good to work with and turns them around instantly, I thoroughly recommend him.

[Scott Witte]

Adrian,

Like all your work I'm really pleased to see this. Very instructive and inspiring. My impressions:

The voice over I mostly like -- a lot. After all, this is multi-media so lets take advantage of that! Casual viewers don't like to read much in my experience but they will hear the important information while viewing each scene. But once you've heard the description it is somewhat irritating to hear it again if you revisit a scene. I don't know if most visitors would do that but I do. My solution was to add a "tour guide" button so the visitor can control what they hear and when. "Downside" is you have to click the button to hear the tour instead of getting it automatically. Of course, some may prefer that.

It would really be nice if we could set a "visited" flag. The voice-over plays only the first time you visit a scene (unless you click a button to play it again). Not sure how you would do that considering we are dealing with XML.

Professional voice talent is a big plus. On my Eisner Museum tour (http://www.scottwitte.com/VR/eisner1200/) they wanted to use the program director. Took two hours of recording time and many more of editing to get anything usable at all. I just convinced them to have it redone professionally so we can finish this up. (If I were being paid for this project I couldn't possibly afford it!)

As to the menu, I find myself wanting to leave it open rather than hitting open and close buttons all the time. Of course that may just be me, exceedingly lazy... But that big block of thumbnails really gets in the way of the scene. So I wonder if a strip on the side or top might work better. It would also allow a tooltip captions to be placed next to each image which might be less confusing than your current style. Not that it is really that confusing in the first place.

In the before / after scenes it might be nice to leash the two together so one fades into the other with the exact same view. It looks like you shot both from the same viewpoint so that should be easy and I think it could be really effective.

Overall I would be very proud of this tour. I commend your interface exploration efforts and really appreciate your sharing with us.

[deadevolution]

it's a nice work m8.

but i have just 2 suggestions

1 ) it would be nice if navigation menu disappears after new panorama(scene) has loaded.

2) when you close navigation menu menu button appears before menu totaly closed. it would be nice to see menu button after all menu closed.

but again it's lovely :)

[ploft]

I think its cool how the text comes up as a block when you roll over an image. I agree the last post, it would be a cleaner designer if the menu disappeared after a few seconds so that one could see the full pano without closing the menu.

The voice over is a nice touch.

Good job! Looks like you put a lot of work into it.

[adriansalisbury]

Thanks guys, I appreciate your comments. I guess I've done the side and top thumbnails and wanted to try something different. For some it worked, for others it didn't, I guess that's all part of the experiment. I personally like the way the boxes show the name rather than just the usual popup. This idea came from a website that had their homepage as a block like this.

Again thanks for your comments and I'm still waiting for Hans to tell me how he gets so high with some of his tours! ;)

[carel]

Hi Adrian,

You have some very classy designs for the map & buttons layout.
Here are a few ways people shoot from up high:
You can use an Agnos pole. It is lightweight, but sways precariously. I shot this (http://www.sphericalvrtours.com/frontyard.html) pano with the Agnos pole. There is rather large error in the trees, but it was shot long ago:???:
This (http://www.sphericalpanoramas.com/pstruycken_aegon_atrium.html) one I shot from one of those tiny hydraulic service lifts.
I also use a regular house-painter's extension pole, which works well and is very inexpensive. When not fully extended it does not sway that much and can go up to about 14ft.
Here (http://la.360cities.net/fs.html?loc=locations/central_park.p36) is one I shot with the painter's pole.
In the near future I plan to get a heavy duty Manfrotto lightstand and secure it with Ian Wood's method (http://ivrpa.org/blog/1833/aotpr_part_9_evolution_of_a_pano). See stand and details near bottom of his page.

Carel Struycken