Pannellum 1.2 Released

[Matthew Petroff]

With a few new features, a few improvements, and a bug fix, Pannellum 1.2, an HTML5 panorama viewer, has been released.

New Features:
 - Added keyboard panning controls
 - Added support for a fallback URL if WebGL is not supported

Improvements:
 - Clarified load button text
 - Switched from raster to vector icons

Bug Fixes:
 - Added workaround for a, now resolved, WebKit fullscreen regression

The new release can be downloaded here:
https://bitbucket.org/mpetroff/pannellum/get/1.2.zip

For a live example of the new release (although the example does not use a fallback viewer), see:
http://www.mpetroff.net/archives/2012/08/28/pannellum-1-2/



-Matthew

[Thomas Pryds]

2012/8/28 Matthew Petroff <mat...@mpetroff.net>:

> With a few new features, a few improvements, and a bug fix, Pannellum 1.2,
> an HTML5 panorama viewer, has been released.

This is great! Plugin-free viewers is definitely the way to go. Now we
only need those last few browsers to support HTML5 and WebGL :-)

I played around with your demonstration panorama a bit, and it seems
to work very well. I'm on Ubuntu 11.10 with Chrome 18.0 and Firefox
14.0.1.

On Chrome, however, I experience a slight glitch. Nothing serious,
though. When I drag the mouse to move the pano; if I drag out off the
pano area in the bottom, the whole pano and controls slide 5 or 10
pixels up in the pano area, leaving a stripe of "nothing" below the
pano. If I then drag the mouse cursor out off the pano in the top, the
pano and controls slide back into place. This doesn't happen for me on
Firefox, so I don't know if it's actually a Pannellum issue.

I made a small screen capture, demonstrating the issue (app. 4 mb
MP4/h.264 video file):
http://goo.gl/szst1

Thomas

[Brian Sullivan]

Seems like the direction is right -- it works for me but is slow,
jerky (Chrome/Vista/old laptop) to the point that I would judge it
unusable in the real world.

Flash and Quicktime players are much more usable.

Does this work on Apple iXxx devices?

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[Matthew Petroff]

On Tuesday, August 28, 2012 4:01:25 PM UTC-4, Thomas Pryds wrote:

On Chrome, however, I experience a slight glitch. Nothing serious,
though. When I drag the mouse to move the pano; if I drag out off the
pano area in the bottom, the whole pano and controls slide 5 or 10
pixels up in the pano area, leaving a stripe of "nothing" below the
pano. If I then drag the mouse cursor out off the pano in the top, the
pano and controls slide back into place. This doesn't happen for me on
Firefox, so I don't know if it's actually a Pannellum issue.

It was a bug. I removed what I originally had in place to prevent that issue in order to get the keyboard controls to work properly, forgetting why it was there. I fixed the bug and released a minor update.

Pannellum 1.2.1:
https://bitbucket.org/mpetroff/pannellum/get/1.2.1.zip


-Matthew

[Yuv]

On 28 Aug, 12:51, Matthew Petroff <matt...@mpetroff.net> wrote:
> For a live example of the new release (although the example does not use a
> fallback viewer), see:http://www.mpetroff.net/archives/2012/08/28/pannellum-1-2/

I'm on Precise Pangolin, using Firefox 15, on a two years old Intel
Core ULV. It works, but panning is very jerky (and I did not even try
full screen). Can you measure / display FPS?

Also: can you detect if the interaction is with a mouse or with a
touch device? as it is now I find the interaction with a mouse counter-
intuitively inverse, but it is great with a touch pad.

On a very recent version of Firefox for Android it seems to load the
image but does not display it. On the browser built into Android
4.0.4 it shows a message saying that A browser supporting WebGL is
required.

Yuv

[Matthew Petroff]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 6:41:20 PM UTC-4, Yuv wrote:

I'm on Precise Pangolin, using Firefox 15, on a two years old Intel
Core ULV.  It works, but panning is very jerky (and I did not even try
full screen).  Can you measure / display FPS?

It wouldn't be difficult to measure FPS. I'm currently working on rewriting the rendering functions to improve performance and will probably add a FPS display so I can compare the performance.

 

Also: can you detect if the interaction is with a mouse or with a
touch device? as it is now I find the interaction with a mouse counter-
intuitively inverse, but it is great with a touch pad.

As far as I know, there is no way to determine if a mouse or touch pad is being used. I went with the current control method since most web users should be familiar with it from web-based maps. I'm still undecided as to whether I want to keep it or switch to a "joystick" like control scheme.

 

On a very recent version of Firefox for Android it seems to load the
image but does not display it.  On the browser built into Android
4.0.4 it shows a message saying that A browser supporting WebGL is
required.

Most mobile devices have smaller maximum texture sizes for WebGL, so Pannellum won't work if the image is too big (I have the same problem on my Android tablet). I plan on eventually adding image pyramid support to progressively load higher resolutions, which will address the inability to show loading progress as well as allow higher resolution panoramas to be displayed on devices that do not support large textures. In addition, I'm still working on touch screen controls, so at the moment, even if the image was displayed, one would not have been able to pan.

-Matthew

[Thomas Pryds]

> On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 6:41:20 PM UTC-4, Yuv wrote:
>> I'm on Precise Pangolin, using Firefox 15, on a two years old Intel
>> Core ULV. It works, but panning is very jerky (and I did not even try
>> full screen).

I'm on an ageing Intel Core 2 at 2.4 GHz with 2GB RAM and a rather old
NVidia graphics card on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot with proprietary
NVidia graphics drivers. I experience no jerkiness worth mentioning;
everything works quite smoothly, even in full-screen, in Firefox 14
and Chrome 18.

2012/9/6 Matthew Petroff <mat...@mpetroff.net>:

> As far as I know, there is no way to determine if a mouse or touch pad is
> being used. I went with the current control method since most web users
> should be familiar with it from web-based maps. I'm still undecided as to
> whether I want to keep it or switch to a "joystick" like control scheme.

If you're going to implement the joystick control, why not keep both
and the the website/pano administrator decide on a per pano basis
through a toggle when he/she sets up the panorama in pannellum? Or a
toggle in the GUI, letting the end user decide? Or even a combination
where setting up the pano leaves you three options: "map-like",
"joystick-like", or end-user decision? Just some suggestions :-)

Thomas

[Ian Tindale]

I tried it on my Xperia phone, and although (unlike my iPad) I can see the panorama image, I can’t get it to realise that I’m pushing or prodding or stroking the panorama, so it doesn’t move. 

I’ve been looking around a bit, and found this:

http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/17/beercamp-an-experiment-with-css-3d/

which, through all the incomprehensible technical nerdy mumbo-jumbo for those computer programmer types, suggests using the gyroscope on ipads (although the pannellum doesn’t seem to work on my ipad). I’m not sure if my android Xperia Arc S phone has a gyroscope, but it has an accelerometer, and this might be a good input method for “panning” a pano, where there’s no trackpad or mouse.

--
Ian Tindale

[Matthew Petroff]

Currently, Pannellum doesn't support touch events, so it isn't usable on touch screen devices, although I plan to add support in the next release. As for the iPad, iOS does not support WebGL, so Pannellum is not supported.

-Matthew

[JohnPW]

Apple is a pretty big supporter of WebGL on the Mac, so I imagine that it will be supported on iOS pretty soon. There are even some hacks that enable it on iOS now.