qualityStatic with embed pano

[jpleveillee]

Hi,

Is there a way to decrease only the quality of the pano with qualityMotion and qualityStatic ?

When I set qualityMotion = low , the quality of all the menus or anything I put in my embed pano flash is decreased.

Thanks
Jean-Pierre

[Rick Workman]

I've wondered about this myself; I've got a skin with various buttons, compass, etc., enclosing the pan and whenever the pan is moved, the skin degrades.

I think this is a flash issue. The actionscript documentation indicates that quality is property of the whole stage, and not individual display objects. If this is what FPP uses for quality settings, then there isn't much you can do. Maybe, a flash feature enhancement needs to be filed with Adobe.

The only other thing that might be worth trying is to change the segments value when dragging, rather than relying on the quality settings. The hotspots tutorial seems to suggest that might work, but I haven't tried it.

Rick

[zleifr]

@Rick Workman: nicely answered! that is a great idea with the segments, I might have to try that.

Zephyr

[jpleveillee]

Thanks for the response I will try that.

Jean-Pierre

[Justus]

So did this work for anyone? I just discovered this quality glitch yesterday. Looking for a fix.

[Scott Witte]

For anyone interested the code to make this work is something like the following:
<pano onPress = "segments=22" onRelease="segments=35" />

It works in that it reduces CPU load while dragging the pano. However, straight lines get wavy and it can be quite noticeable, depending on the difference between your motion and still segments.

If you set qualityMotion=medium you should see little deterioration in quality. The hit on CPU usage will be greater than with qualityMotion=low and even on fairly powerful computers the motion will be a bit jumpy but you may prefer it.

However, I've never noticed the problem of overall stage deterioration. Does it only happen with embedded panos?

[zleifr]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for that tip about onPress and onRelease. The quality thing happens with everything on the stage, so it is NOT just a problem with embedded panos. You will notice it's effects on your hotspots if you look closely.

Also, I don't believe there is a workaround for the quality of everything else on the stage changing with the pano, because qualityMotion and qualityStatic are (unless I am very wrong) setting the Flash stage's quality property, which affects everything on the stage, except text in non-embedded fonts.

Here is the passage from the Flash Manual describing the quality property:

A value from the StageQuality class that specifies which rendering quality Flash Player uses. The following are valid values:

StageQuality.LOW—Low rendering quality. Graphics are not anti-aliased, and bitmaps are not smoothed.
StageQuality.MEDIUM—Medium rendering quality. Graphics are anti-aliased using a 2 x 2 pixel grid, but bitmaps are not smoothed. This setting is suitable for movies that do not contain text.
StageQuality.HIGH—High rendering quality. Graphics are anti-aliased using a 4 x 4 pixel grid, and bitmaps are smoothed if the movie is static. This is the default rendering quality setting that Flash Player uses.
StageQuality.BEST—Very high rendering quality. Graphics are anti-aliased using a 4 x 4 pixel grid and bitmaps are always smoothed.
Note: The operating system draws the device fonts, which are therefore unaffected by the quality property.

So one thing that might be done is to make greater use of device (non-embedded) fonts instead of graphics...

Otherwise Denis will have to figure out some other way to set the quality, and this might not even be possible.

I don't mean to rain on anybody's parade, just to suggest which avenues of investigation are most likely to be unproductive, and which might be more productive.

Zephyr

[Justus]

It does not appear to be limited to just embedded panos, but you can see it very noticeably in the embedPano.swf example. The problem only seems to affect vector graphics. png files do not distort.

So that gives us a workaround, but its not very convenient.

[Scott Witte]

The quality thing happens with everything on the stage, so it is NOT just a problem with embedded panos. You will notice it's effects on your hotspots if you look closely.


Oh, that again. For the most part I have either become blind to it or it just isn't that big a deal. Although the embed example, as Justus points out, certainly shows the effect as quite irritating.

Box object are affected most. Spot less, static spot far less. Setting qualityMotion=medium helps tremendously although with a performance hit. It is interesting, in Denis' navigation example the static hotspots (navigation bar) jump as soon as you put the pano in motion. Mine don't although I have qualityMotion=low. Have no idea why unless it has something to do with resolution. However, the graphics in a swf begin used as a spot behave strangely. The top part jumps down a bit while the bottom stays put. Another swf spot, based on Denis's controller, stay rock solid. go figure.

My "go to" hotspots are not static and they jump around and alias a bit. But it is hardly noticeable to me compared to everything else moving about. The FOV "radar" used in a map jumps and is noticeable since its background, the map, stays steady. I wonder what the difference would be if the fov graphic where generated using AS3 instead of using a graphic. Hmmmm.

Denis said he is working on a plugin that will take advantage of Flash's new hardware acceleration. That may allow us to more readily set qualityMotion=medium without as big a hit on performance. He has also mentioned having quality automatically adjust to the capability of the computer so faster machines can get better quality but slower ones, using the same code, will use lesser quality to avoid grinding to a halt.

So... effective salvation may be but days of weeks away. Only denis knows. I can't wait.

[cheathamlane]

Hey all:

No matter where (ie, in which loaded element) you set the quality, the quality setting is going to affect the entire stage of the parent SWF. This has always been the case with Flash. Denis can not change this; this is something that has to come from Adobe.

As far as FPP, manipulating the Segments parameter is nifty, but with the caveats others have already outlined.

Hardware acceleration in FPP will be very nice; hopefully this will allow us to have our segments and our image quality. :)

The idea of FPP being able to auto-adjust to the capability of the user's computer is interesting, too, but I hope Denis will make that a parameter setting (ie, on or off) rather than a default. Most times, I'm not concerned with slow machines or low bandwidth connections -- but I understand that many other folks are concerned with it, which is why I think it should be a choice.

[clumpster]

Any solution to this problem yet?