TourBuzz Virtual Tour Community

Limit the panorama duration?

As we add more media types into the tours, stills, panoramas, tactical video and shortly full length video, trying to show them all gets more complex.

One option we are looking at for panoramas is only showing a few seconds of the entire spin by default and adding some icon to indicate the user can grab and move the panorama at anytime. Currently you can change the duration on the Edit panel but there is not a global duration for panoramas nor any affordance to let the viewer know they can interact like on the mobile tour.

Here is a tour, thanks to Burt Fisher, that I adjusted the panorama times and starting points to show the main feature but kept the time down to about 6-8 seconds. You can grab it or pause the player and spin it all the way but you do not sit through the entire image pan by default.

http://www.tourbuzz.net/public/vtour/display/47186?a=1

Please let us know your thoughts.

Tactical video will be similar in duration (5-15 seconds) so we believe tactical video will fit into the tour nicely.

We are desperately trying NOT to create a cluttered interface of icons to navigate the tour. Icons are confusing to users.

We want to give you the ability to create the most simple, engaging, and emotional tour possible.

Let us know your thoughts....

Thanks,

Paul

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Nathan Strauch on January 19, 2012 at 4:53pm

I like the way that you're thinking with making a global default for panos, however it will still pose a problem with where the image pan will begin. No matter what, it seems that there will still be a need to adjust something. In order to minimize the time of rotation, we've begun shooting partial pano's to retain the viewers attention span, which seems to work well and requires very little adjustment in the TB platform. (if any)

I do think that better indication for the the viewer that they can interact with the tour is a good idea. Even a simple transparent "Tool-tip" of sorts that flashes discreetly on the bottom of the player window would work well.

Keeping the interface simple is a good thing. In my opinion, Bells and Whistles can sell tours, but simplicity for the user sells homes. We have to always maintain a good balance.

Nathan

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Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on January 19, 2012 at 5:04pm

Great points.

We do plan on doing some kind of interactive affordance when the panos appear to let users know they can interact. We have a great new design guy we work with so I am sure we can come up with something compelling.

Partial panos work great, too. However even partial pans might take 20-30s to get through compared to 3-5s for a photo. So the idea is to make it feel like a smooth flow (almost like a short video clip) while in autoplay, but retain the added advantages of panos for those who want to explore further.

Alan

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Permalink Reply by Carol Grape on January 19, 2012 at 6:02pm

Paul,

As I only do partial panos, I hope that those would stay the same....and they are not usually any longer than 10 seconds as far as I can tell.

Here is one of my recent tours: http://tours.grapeimaging.com/46708?a=1

Carol

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Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on January 19, 2012 at 6:05pm

That looks great! Basically the idea is to use the panos in a way that the autoplay is meaningful, and that it doesn't drag out.

While this can definitely be accomplished with partials, the partials have to be very small fov for it to work, otherwise they still end up taking a long time to spin thru.

Beyond that, we looked in our database and only about 25% of all panos in the system are partials, so the vast majority of people are still doing 360 panos. This idea is a way to improve the experience for those 75% of panos.

Alan

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Permalink Reply by TourBuzz Fellow on January 28, 2012 at 8:03pm

Love the C-130 in the window reflection on the Master Bedroom Pano! :)

I like the idea of having the ability to do a partial pano to speed things up a bit. One idea would be for a transparent popup to appear over one or both edges of the panoramic about half-way through the display time with arrows and text that says "Click and drag to continue viewing this room..." or something like that. In other words, if the total pan time for the partial pano was 8 seconds, then at about 4 seconds the pop-ups would appear to give the user a chance to read and react before advancing to the next photo or pano.