Few feature Requests

[Hrvoje]

Hello

Recently I've spent some more time with P2VR. And I must say that it improves greatly with every new release.
Thanks for listening your customers and adding suggested into new releases.
I also have few ideas/suggestions which could improve/ease workflow:

1. Ability to turn "Always on the top" for Skin Editor. Atm it's always placed over main program, so I must move it around very often.
2. Ability to generate output from Skin Editor, not just empty preview. Dedicated button in Skin Editor is not needed, F5 shortcut (from main program) would do it as well. Also F5 for is common shortcut for exact thing in many other programs.
3. Add 150% and 300% zoom in skin editor. I often find 200 or 400 too much and need some smaller percentages.
4. Ability to move selected elements (by pixel) with keyboard arrows. Shift + Arrow would move it by 10 pixels. It would help to fine tune our templates.
5. Ability to Copy/Paste Hotspots. It would improve editing speed a lot when adding many hotspots by saving few clicks.
Copy/Paste creates new hotspot with same Skin ID and same Type with few pixels offset.
Copy Click Paste does the same except that it places new hotspot in cursor position when clicked.

What do you think about these?
Thanks,
Regards

[Hopki]

Hi Hrvoje,
1) and 2) Pano2VR lets you place the main window and skin editor so you can off set them.
If you look at the attached screen shot you will see them staggered.

1.jpg (27.23 KiB) Viewed 2720 times

Just clicking on the top of each window will switch between the main project window and the skin editor.
A very simple solution that works well.
With the skin editor selected you can use the keyboard shortcut to save the skin then switch to the main window to generate the output, this is also very quick.
3) For the extra skin editor zoom levels Ill add a feature request: Issue #1654
4) By default the keyboard arrow keys move a selected element by 1px, hold Shit+Arrow and it moves by 10px increments.
You can also use Snap to Grid and Snap to Guides. This is found under View in the menu bar when the skin editor is active.
The snap to grid will snap to a determined amount of pixels depending to what you have set the skin editors grid, example set it to 20 and you will snap every 20px when dragging it with your mouse.
5) Im not overly sure this will be any benefit as you have to position a hotspot and change the data, the only thing I see that may be of use is for Pano2VR Pro to have Type as Node as first selection rather than URL as I would guess you would be setting more hotspot to go to other nodes. But then if your dragging from the tour browser then the hotspot is automatically set up for Node.
Same if you add an image, you will automatically add an image popup hotspots and if you drag an MP4 video you add a popup video file hotspot.
Can you give more information on why copying and pasting hotspots would be faster and how it world work, also are you thinking about the standard or Pro version, point or polygons.
Regards,
Hopki

[Hrvoje]

Hi Hopki
1. How to place skin window below main window? I cannot do it in windows 8.1 pro 64bit.
Skin editor is always above main program.
Pano2VR 5.1 beta pro 64-bit rev 15555/5.62

2. Your solution is simple (and I'm using it atm) but it adds extra steps which takes time:
1. CTRL + S for saving skin
2. Move mouse to corner and clicking to switch windows
3. Move mouse again to Generate button and click it to generate panorama
All three takes time and focus.
If skin editor could "talk" with main program, all three steps could be done with one keyboard button - one of F keys.
Average Joe doesn't need this, but when dealing with complex skins with frequent previews every saved second and click counts.

3. Thanks

4. When editing area in skin editor is zoomed - scroll bars appears. When scroll bars are shown, clicking arrows pans working window not selected element. Only when working area cannot pan anymore, selected element starts to move. Try it. I was referring to that.
IMHO arrows should always move selected element and working area could be panned by space + click/drag. Isn't this more natural approach?

5. When adding multiple images to panorama I need to:
1. Double click to add hotspot icon
2. Select type to image
3. Select Skin ID
4. Add title
5. Link Target URL
- Ability to Copy/Paste would eliminate steps 1, 2 and 3.

Same goes with regular hotspots.
Question: How come that Tour Node isn't default option in drop down menu?
When adding hotspots by double clicking 1st type is URL, but aren't Tour Nodes used more often?

Call me a nitpicker, but I like to contribute to UI workflow optimization whenever I can.
I used to program many educational programs and games for school children in Flash and wrapping it as Exe files,
so I developed a habit to nitpick with UI


Regards

[Hopki]

Hi,
Question: How come that Tour Node isn't default option in drop down menu?
A question I raised in my last post to you and have added as a feature request already.

To recap, when in point hotspot viewer mode to:

1) Add node just drag from tour browser and everything will be set, title is dependent on you setting up the user data or having in the image meta data
2) Add node with location data drag from tour browser to drop area and everything + location of hotspot will be set
3) Add popup image, just drag an image into the viewer and you only need to set the title text, all other settings will be set
4) Add MP4 popup video, just drag and drop the MP4 in the viewer to set everything apart from the title

For Web link you must manually add the hotspot, select type then URL and target.
For Video Youtube and Vimeo you must manually add the hotspot, select type then URL.

This does make me think that with the above, it sort of makes sense the default being URL as when adding a hotspot manually the chances are it will be a URL. And of course with the standard version of Pano2VR 5 there is no node so URL will be default.
Regards,
Hopki

[wiso]

hello,
If I may interrupt for a moment, i thinkt thats a matter of the working style.

i would need sometimes also the possibility to clone one or more hotspots or a complet node with its hotspots

the workaround for me is now in 5.1beta, that is save the complete project and attach it as "ad projekt" in the tour browser.
than i delete the nodes i don´t need and change the things i need..

(but off course it would be nice if i could copy the nodes, or if i would have in the tour browser right mouse menue a funktion duplikate picture and/or duplicate node...)

thank you,
wiso