The newly restored church at Røros

[mathrafal]

Hi guttene,

This one was somewhat interesting to do, since the church at Røros, built in the late 18th century with enough seating for several thousand, has been closed for a couple of years whilst restoration has gone on. It looks quite startling in comparison with its old incarnation.

No blurb, since I don't know much about the place, although it does have the oldest organ in Norway, which is situated above the altar.

This version is for the church's website, rather than my own (althought it will find its way there ultimately). Therefore, alt er på norsk.

http://roros360.com/panos/roroskirke/index.html.

Jon

[GIOFKOS]

Great photography and great tour.
Is it possible to provide more information of how you made the frame for the tour? (dimensions,type of graphic, etc)
Thanks.

[mathrafal]

Thanks for the positive response.

The frame is quite simple to achieve. It is basically 8 png graphics...

A top and bottom bar: these are essentially 2 x coloured strips 2880 pixels wide, with noise added. In this case, I added another colour strip with a gradient overlay and a little noise as well.

The sides are white strips added at level 1. On top of these, I added corners which fade out fo transparent, This was to take care of any discrepancy between the colour of the smaller coloured bar.

On top of that was added the usual additions, such as logos, texts and buttons.

In FFC, it is best to have everything assembled on your screen and then decide what your load sequence is going to be. In this case, I wanted the top and bottom bar to load with movement, after which everything could fade in. So it just becomes a case of changing the alpha of those elements and moving the remainder out of the way, and then introducing the elements using the functions.

I hope that makes sense,

Jon

[GIOFKOS]

thank you very much!!

[kbellis]

Very nice Jon - all around!

Can you please describe more about the loading technique?

Thank you.

Kelly

[mathrafal]

Well, it's quite simple, really.

1. Build the GUI as you want it to be seen when everything is loaded and the panorama is being viewed.
2. Decide on how you want the GUI to get to that point :

For example, with the Røros church tour, I decided that the main elements, which are the controls, links, frame sides etc could fade in at the same time. However, I wanted the top and bottom bars to move into place. This takes up a little time and allows the pano to load whilst the user watches what is going on around the image.

So:

1. I made all the elements mentioned above invisible by changing their alpha to 0% and also making them invisible (hotpots 1 and 2 in FFC. This second part is important, since if you have any form of effects on buttons etc., you don't want mouse movements to bring them into play immediately.
2. I moved the top and bottom bars out of sight, noting what their positions should be once the GUI has loaded.
3. I started recording the load sequence through the functions:

a. Bottom and top bars move into place. Finish the recording and saved it as load_sequence_1.
b. Recorded the change in visibility of the other elements to visible (1 in xml) and increased the alpha from 0-100%. Saved that as load_sequence_2.
c. Made the Done Function of load_sequence_1 (by double clicking on the function name and then choosing Done Function in the window that appears) load_sequence_2

And that's it. I hope it helps. If you are still uncertain, pm me and I will post you a copy of the xml to see what is going on.

Jon

[Morten]

Nice Jon,

I think it looks very professional when you control the load sequence like that. What I now have an issue with is that I would prefer the design elements to load first, and then the panorama. Does anyone know if we can control that?

Regards,

Morten

[mathrafal]

I don't think it is possible. I would love it myself, since I have no wish for anyone to watch the panorama loading the way it does.

Jon

[mathrafal]

Just added a scrolling textbox.

I'm not sure if it is exactly what I wanted, but it serves a purpose. It was achieved by using masks at the top and bottom and using timers to give it a little time before beginning to scroll automatically.

I would be grateful if you could have a look and leave it about 10 seconds before it begins to scroll. It's in Norwegian, so probably only Trausti and Morten will understand it, but it's the function which is quite fun.

What would have been very nice, would have been to have arrows to control the scroll, but I cannot think for the life of me how to do that. It would mean having to use the press function, which I understand, but it seems that you cannot just move an object along the y axis and it stop when you release the button.

Another thing I would have preferred would have been to have the text box of a specific size, which doesn't take up so much space. It seems a little awkward to me... Your thoughts would be appreciated on that.

The only tricky things were to get the sequencing properly, well, sequenced, building a reset into the text graphic and making sure that worked on the reverse of all the other buttons.

If anyone knows how I could pull off a scroller, I would be grateful. The only way I can think of doing it would be to do the whole thing in Flash and import the swf. That will cut into my workflow a little too much, since this was not a great paying job.

Also, add to the wishlist, Mr T, >> m a s k s <<

These would be a cool addition to FFC.

Jon

[kbellis]

Thank you Jon for the kind reply and I agree 100% with Morten and the lovely success in how you've managed to load your tour so seamlessly.

So the only sequencing that you overtly and are directly controlling in the Røros church tour are the initial graphic elements mentioned through the

Code: Select all

load_sequence_1 - > done - > load_sequence_2

functions?

Or more simply put, are all loading directions handled via functions?

I confess that I do not fully understand much about how the so-called "preloader" works (and the many other aspects of FPP and FFC). The user may interact with the preloader through the FFC GUI and which appears to have been first introduced in December 2008 (as mentioned in this thread) and which preceded the development of the so called "Tourificator" very shortly thereafter.

Can / do you use the preloader feature in loading functions ?

Can / do you use the preloader feature in loading files other than pano files ?

At its debut, preloader is described thus:

Preloader:
Enable/Disable preloader
Simultaneous loads (decide how many files are loaded at the same time)
Once the Tourificator's problems have been solved, all panos in the tour would appear in the list, where you can decide which images/mov's/mp3's/videos/xml's/png's/jpg's/swf's etc. would load first and in which order.
Using this in combination with Poorificator is absolutely possible, and you can provide the URL to the images/files you want to preload.
This enables next pano to load in the background, while the user is viewing the first pano, cutting short the time people have to wait before the next pano is ready.

Can there be more than one instance of preloader; e.g.,

Code: Select all

     <preloader1>
      <links maxConnections="1">
         <link url="files/plugins/ffc_mediaplayer.swf"/>
         <link url="files/media/sound/Doug%20Bellis%20-%20Track%202.mp3"/>
      </links>
   </preloader1>

forces earliest loading of only player and music track separately before:

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     <preloader2>
      <links maxConnections="1">
         <link url="files/visualFiles/7849_u.jpg"/>
         <link url="files/visualFiles/7849_d.jpg"/>
         <link url="files/visualFiles/7849_l.jpg"/>
         <link url="files/visualFiles/7849_r.jpg"/>
         <link url="files/visualFiles/7849_f.jpg"/>
         <link url="files/visualFiles/7849_b.jpg"/>
      </links>
   </preloader2>

And then the follow up question is:
Can preloader2, preloader3, etc., be called through a function ?; for example, at the beginning of loading pano1 call for the loading of files a, b and c; then through an event / function overtly call for next batch of files to be loaded ?

Another thing related to this issue is the DEFAULT creation of grayscale panos used during transitions and that are introduced during the "Tourificator" process and specifically the creation of the loadPano functions. I'm uncertain if their use enhances the loading experience for the website visitor or if employing the grayscale panos actually compounds the problem by gobbling up bandwidth which may be better served elsewhere. They do give the visitor something to see, though I wonder about any alternatives.

And what of the order in which things are listed in the .xml file ? Surely those things must be looked at by the browser in knowing what to get and in what order beginning with the parameters and its own itemized list of files:

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      <parameters>
      panoName = files/visualFiles/8855
      panoType = cube
      segments = 30
      zoomMax = 2
      pan = 18.89
      frameRate = 60
      loaderTextColor = 0
      loaderBackColor = 0
      layer_1 = files/plugins/hotspots.swf
      layer_101 = files/plugins/ffc_contextmenu.swf
      layer_3 = files/plugins/ffc_tooltips.swf
      layer_100 = files/plugins/logoMeter.swf
      layer_98 = files/plugins/ffc_mediaplayer.swf
      layer_58 = files/plugins/ffc_preloader.swf
   </parameters>

The newly restored church and more over your tour Jon serves as an excellent example of how things can be elegantly loaded and I very much appreciate your explanations into its inner workings.

Kindest regards,

Kelly

[kbellis]

Jon, regarding the scroll - you will want to check out the fine work by Tommy Wirestam: http://wirestam.com/panos/Flash/plugins/

There you may find some ideas to adapt and perhaps others. He's a marvelous person and is always responsive and kind in his replies.

Kelly