Incorporating narration or sound bites can dramatically enhance the viewer’s experience. My colleague, Martin (aka Hopki on our Forum), shared a component featuring point hotspots and sound elements that enable you to include virtual tour narration with more control over the visual elements.
Why Use Point Hotspots for Sound?
Hopki’s component uses point hotspots to activate sound elements added to the panoramas. This approach allows you to easily reuse skin graphics by attaching the same visuals to each sound element for consistent branding and design. We essentially have audio hotspots.
Integrating Directional Narration
The basic workflow for the tour was:
- Add the Component: Add the component to the Components Toolbox. (Download component here.)
- Selected Points of Interest (POIs): I identified key spots within the panoramas where narration would be most impactful—places with unique stories or visual highlights.
- Add Directional Sounds: Add directional sound elements to the points of interest. Change the Loop setting to -1 to prevent the sound from initially playing.
- Add Point Hotspots: Place the point hotspots over the sound elements in the Viewer. Give them the ID ht_sound. This is the ID that the component uses to identify these hotspots.
- Change the Default Color: I changed the color to match the thumbnail menu using the Color Tool.
- Add Orb Paging Thumbnail Menu: I decided to use the Orb Paging Thumbnail Menu for tour navigation.
To use the same icons for each audio clip, we use Point Hotspots. The skin uses a Point Hotspot Template, which will propagate all its icons and actions to any point hotspot with the same ID.
If you want to learn how the skin works, these components greatly help you understand how all the bits connect since they are small. For example, you can see how a variable or even regular expressions (used to address a group of elements at once) are used.
Or maybe you’re curious about how to use the seek bar in such a case. If you need help understanding something, don’t hesitate to ask on the forum or write to us in support.
Showcasing Drone Imagery of Rhodes, Greece
Finally, let’s not ignore the incredible drone footage captured by my colleague Christoph on the island of Rhodes in Greece. If you’re planning a similar project, you should know that you can use Pano2VR to patch out the drone and add a sky.
Learn More
If you’d like to learn more, check out these resources: