Best workflow to update a large tour over a long timeframe?

[keith@fachwen.org]

Hi,

I am curious what would be the best way to update a large indoor tour over time.

I am in the process of creating an indoor tour with almost 200 nodes split over 2 floors and many rooms. It’s an indoor climbing wall here in Eryri. What will happen in the future is individual rooms will evolve and be rebuilt and the tour will need updating in sections. Also new rooms may be added to the tour as the building expands its services.

I think there are 2 issues. What is the best way to manage the files locally here on my computer. And secondly, what happens with the upload to Google Maps?

Locally I’m guessing I’d keep the original (completed) tour ‘as is’. a kind of archive or point in time. I currently organise the folders like this:

• Project Root folder contains: more than one Pano2VR project file labeled with dates, etc, folders for pano collections, labeled by date

• Pano Collection Folders contain: room folders labeled by room number and name. This handily creates nice and sensible tags automatically when loaded into the Pano2VR project file. (The number keeps them in order too, helps with my brain imaging!) This helps with managing the project in Pano2VR as I can filter by room and/or floor in the floor plans and map views.

• Room folders contain: actual 360 equirectangular images, labeled as the come from the Insta360 Studio stitcher. Thankfully properly timestamped and readable by Pano2VR and hence Google Maps too (this didn’t used to be the case). I don’t edit the filenames as Pano2VR overwrites these once I set the Google Location towards the end of my workflow.

So when I need to update a room or add a new one at some later point in time, I could do this:
Create a new Pano Collection folder in the Project Root folder, labeled by date. In this folder create separate room folders for the new and updated rooms. Add the 360 images to these folders.

I could then create a copy of the old/archived Pano2VR project file. Edit the filename to include the new date. In this new copy I could somehow replace the old pano images with the new. They should be in exactly the same place. I’m not sure this is possible, but it would create the least amount of work? The N heading would have to be edited, but not the coordinates.

If this isn’t possible I guess I’d have to delete the old nodes completely and add the new ones, relink them, etc.

Would the Google upload process see these nodes as new and upload them?

Another option might be to just replicate everything, a new fully working copy of the whole project. Then add or edit the new nodes AND the creation dates of the unchanged nodes the Pano2VR project file. Leaving the timestamps on the actual equirectangular photos unchanged. Would this ‘fool’ Google Maps to upload everything. Though, morally, this might be a bit dubious to label old node from 2024 as 2026 or whatever!

OK, the second issue!

What happens to the tour on Google Maps?

The tour now has a mixture of images / nodes taken at different times, but linked in the new Pano2VR project file. What will Google maps do with the tour. Will it be presented or work as I intend. Or will something else happen?

Some thoughts: Will all the new links work directly in Google Maps even though the timestamps are different? What happens to the old links on Google Maps? Will the old tour still work? So many issues!!

This is almost a real issue for me now as I did a similar tour in this building in 2011. It is till there on Google Maps. I haven’t linked them at all here locally. But when I started uploading this 2024 tour to Google Maps it started grouping it with some of the 2011 nodes/data in the Google Browser button in Pano2VR !!

This is new territory for me, so any thoughts and advice greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.