Digital Workshop

Not sure whether this belongs in advanced or not...however:

I am working on a countermine warfare course for the U.S. Army, and while I am not doing the actual programming, wanted to use XE to prototype. My design is to have a panoramic view controllable by the user of an area where there are visual indicators of mines and booby traps of various types and catalog them by clicking on them. I also want a 10X zoom to simulate military binoculars as well.

I can see from the demo QTVR scripts that hotspots can exist, but cannot figure out out to create them or place them since you can't see the image in XE. As one of the demos has a NodeID and HotspotID thingy, it's obvious that XE knows where they are located, but I can't figure out how to do this. Worse, I can't even figure out how to make a graphic object visible over the VR.

Dave

Unfortunatley qtvr objects in opus are always drawn in a window over the top of the publication (like on top video). So nothing can be drawn over the top of them. you would have to author another qtvr panorama with a your overlay set as part of the movie to get the rouded border your after.

Next thing to point out is that opus pro xe cannot author qtvr panoramas itself. So you can't actually create hotspots through opus, you can only read the ones that exist in the panorama already. in short if youwant to change the contents of a qtvr panorama you will need software to author quicktime panoramas

hope this helps.

Alan Dews
Senior Developer
Digital Workshop

Hey, it's always something...

Alternatives?

If hotspots are placed outside Opus, is it possible to pass a variable or something to Opus script or some other component of Opus when it is clicked on to cause an action?

Is there another way to create a panorama to achieve my needs of having a user be able to move up/down left/right and zoom on a panorama-type screen?

This is a common need in the kind of work I do, and now that Opus is SCORM compliant, it would find quite a bit of work with the U.S. gov if it could be made to work.

Thanks for your response,
Dave

When you author the qt panorama file (with something like vr works or other qt authoring program), you set up the hotspots in the panorama file.

The hotspots are given an id (which is just a number you set in the file when authoring). You can also give the hotspot a Quicktime Action in the panorama, but if it is just a click you want to detect in opus i suggest you leave the action blank.(actions include go to node, open link etc - they are not opus actions.)

In opus when you click on on of the panorama hotspots, the id number you set is passed to opus (along with the node id, which is for when you have more than one panorama in a single file) via the hotspot callback function (see the appropriate qtvr example)

this allows you to identify which hotspot you clicked on in the panorama. i.e. you get back the number you set in the panorama for that hotspot.

You can then perform the apropriate action based upon that id. (updating scorm information etc, zooming in, scrolling).

which i think is what you are asking for.

As for moving the panorama with the mouse. the qtvr scripting example should be an indication as to how you do this.


Alan Dews
Senior Developer
Digital Workshop

I cannot tell from the example where the ID's are located in the picture. On the provided example, I just clicked randomly to find them. I suppose that if you set them up yourself, you'd know where you put them.

I realize this is not really appropriate for "advanced" discussion, but: What is the ID passed to in Opus? Frankly, I've not even been able to figure out just where Opus script is located, much less what to do with it.

I'll keep pluggin,' and thanks for the help.

Dave

hint to find hotspots :- the mouse pointer changes when over a hotspot in the example.

the id that is passed to opus is a value set in the panorama file.

so if you set up a hotspot in a panorama file there will be a place in that software to give the hospot a value. most of these packages automatically number the id starting at 1 for the first 2 for the second but nearly all of them allow you to change this value.

This id number is the number passed to opus. (hence the term hotspot id)

e.g. if when you created a panorama you created a hotspot and gave the hotspot the ID of 231. when you click the hotspot in opus, the hotspost id value passed to the callback function in opus would contain the value 231.

the question is do you have software to create quicktime panoramas, as without this, you cannot set up hotspots in panoramas.

Yes, I can set up hotspots. However, that's moot as in order to do what I need to do I need to be able to highlight a spot that's been clicked on. I wanted a student to be able to survey an area freely to locate visual indicators of explosive hazards, then click on them to identify. However, since it appears there is a limitation in the format that prevents overlay of the mov file, this isn't possible. In fact, that limitation makes QTVR pretty much useless to me.

Shame. I could do a lot with it.

Dave

this may not be of use to you, but look at pixaround.com to see if it helps you-
you can make immersive panoramas with walk throughs to different scenes and hotspots which can display images...
these could be used in an Opus browser window.
The panoramas are created from stitched still images.
hth
mac