For those who have transitioned over (or are still thinking about it) to Pano2VR Pro from Panotour Pro, we have put this together to help you find Pano2VR’s equivalent features of Panotour Pro and to help you get around the interface.
While Panotour Pro has a system of tabs which create different workspaces, Pano2VR has a single workspace with panels. This allows for customization of the workspace. Pano2VR’s Viewer will display your currently selected panorama and you can add hotspots, sounds, videos, lens flares, etc. directly in the Viewer, on your panorama.
Video: Panotour Pro and Pano2VR comparison (EN) / (DE)
Importing Panotour Pro Projects into Pano2VR
Home Tab
Panotour’s Home tab can be likened to Pano2VR’s Welcome Screen. In that, from it you’ll find your latest projects, links to documentation, and our latest blog posts.
Tour Tab
Panotour’s Tour Tab holds the main workspace for building a tour, while Pano2VR’s main tour building workspace is its interactive Viewer, Tour Browser, and Tour Map.
There are many ways to connect nodes to build a tour. The simplest is to drag a node from the Tour Browser to the Viewer to create a connection. If the node has GPS, then the hotspot will be correctly placed automatically. But, if you have a large tour, you would probably find the Automatic Linking feature to be a huge time saver.
Floor plans are added in the Tour Map for placement of map pins. If you want the floor plan to be visible and interactive on output, you would add a Map element in the Skin Editor. The Skin Editor is Pano2VR’s overlay creator. This is where you build controllers, hotspot images, and add floor plan images.
| Panotour Pro | Pano2VR pro |
|---|---|
| Main Workspace | Tour Browser and Viewer |
| Floor Plan Hotspot Editor | Tour Map, Skin Element |
| Web Map Hotspot Editor | Tour Map |
| Hotspot Editor | Viewer |
Organizing in Pano2VR is quite powerful. Panotour Pro uses categories, and Pano2VR uses Tags that can be filtered in the Tour Browser. Some tags are added automatically (has GPS, has Title, etc.), but you can also add them manually in User Data or in the Tour Browser. You can also create groups of panoramas using tags and then use the tags to target specific skin elements.
| Panotour Pro | Pano2VR pro |
|---|---|
| Quick Search | Filter in Tour Browser |
| Groups | Tags |
Style Tab
Panotour’s Style Tab holds a lot features found in Pano2VR’s Viewer Modes. The Viewer Modes are accessible from within the Viewer. There is a drawer that slides out from the left side and in that drawer, you’ll find Point Hotspots, Polygon Hotspots, Images, Videos, Sounds, Lens Flares and Patches. All of these are “pinned” to the panorama. Meaning, that they will move with the panorama (except for the sound type, Static). All kinds of images are supported, along with support for YouTube and Vimeo videos. Directional Sound can also be added to your project.
| Panotour Pro | Pano2VR pro |
|---|---|
| Lens Flare | Lens Flare Mode |
| Point Hotspot | Point Hotspot Mode |
| Polygon Style | Polygon Hotspot Mode |
| Picture Spots | Pinned Image |
| Video Spots | Pinned Video |
| Sound Spot | Sounds |
One useful and popular feature of Pano2VR is how you can extract a portion of the panorama in its undistorted form and then edit that extracted patch. This is used most often for nadir caps. Add a patch to the Nadir (it will snap automatically there if you’re looking down) and then, in its settings, extract the patch using the format PSD. Whatever editor you use to edit PSD files will open. Edit that patch and save it. Pano2VR’s Viewer will immediately update itself revealing your edited nadir.
Panotour’s popular feature, Livepano, can also be done in Pano2VR. We call it Embedded Video. You can see an example here. You create it using Patch mode and Pinned Video. Here is a tutorial for how to do it.
Panotour also has a feature called, Parallax. This is something that can be done in the Skin Editor. Add your elements to the skin editor and then apply modifier actions to create the parallax effect.
| Panotour Pro | Pano2VR pro |
|---|---|
| Parallax | Hotspot Templates and Modifiers |
| Livepano | Embedded Video |
Plugins Library
Panotour’s plugin library can be equated to Pano2VR’s Skin Editor and Components Toolbox. The Component Toolbox is found within the Skin Editor and holds pre-made skin elements. It ships with some already created and you can add your own to it. You can also share them with other Pano2VR users.
Every skin element can be given a set of directions, for example, to react (or not to react) to a mouse or touch event. In Pano2VR , these are called Actions. You can create more advanced actions by adding logic blocks to certain settings (like, to the Visible setting, you can set an element to hide when using a mobile device is detected). The skin editor is extremely powerful and does have a learning curve but don’t shy away from it. Check out our tutorials in the documentation, on the forum and in Facebook for ideas and help.
What Panotour calls Deep Linking is what Pano2VR calls, Direct Node Access. This allows you not only to address each tour node individually using its internal ID (node1, node2, etc.), but you can also create custom node IDs (kitchen, bedroom1, etc.) and define the node’s opening view and projection.
| Panotour Pro | Pano2VR pro |
|---|---|
| Lens Flare | Built-in Skins |
| Gallery | Skin Component |
| Image Zone | Image Element |
| Colored Area | Rectangle Element |
| Loaders | Built-in Skins or as Component |
| Maps | Map Element |
| Menus | Skin Component |
| Text Zone | Text |
| Thumbnails | Skin Component |
| User Input | Sources and Actions |
| Social Share | Skin Component |
| Deep linking | Direct Node Access |
| Web Video Box | Pinned Video, Video Element |
| Website Box | Skin Component |
Build Tab
The Build tab in Panotour is similar to Pano2VR’s Output panel. Here, you can export the project as an HTML5 interactive project, export a reprojected version of an image for print using Transformation, and export a video of the tour from the animations created in the Animation Editor.
When you export the project using HTML5, Pano2VR will automatically open your default browser and will display your project using the Integrated Web Server. This is just like Panotour’s Viewer, except it is not a separate application. Pano2VR simply has a built-in web server so you can immediately see your outputted projects.
| Panotour Pro | Pano2VR pro |
|---|---|
| HTML Template | HTML Template |
| Multiresolution | Multiresolution |
| Panotour Viewer | Integrated Web Server |
| Languages | Skin Component |
| Scale | Logic Blocks in Skin Editor |
| Project Summary | Overview |
Notions
Panotour Pro has a notion called VR Mode. You can create an output for VR in Pano2VR for using in Cardboard and GearVR. But if you need more we recommend using the app and/services provided by VR Tourviewer.
| Panotour Pro | Pano2VR pro |
|---|---|
| VR Mode | For HMD, VR Tourviewer |
Features Not Supported by Panotour but Supported by Pano2VR
There are some features that Pano2VR has that were not supported by Panotour Pro. Here is a short list of features we could find: