Blah

This morning I checked my thread I had started yesterday on the FPP forums, and found I had two replies.

Hans suggested I could use mov files with loaderStreamed=1 in to display the tiles as they are loaded, while Harry suggested I could use a small preview image while the full tiles are loaded.

I checked both their examples, and liked Hans' best as it allows the user to navigate the pano even when it's only part loaded. Also I thought it might be possible that users would get confused if you use a preview image, and not realise its only the preview (so they might close the pano before the full version has loaded). I don't really have any basis for this assumption - the loading text (which counts up the % loaded) is still visible when you use a preview image, so it should be obvious that the full pano hasn't loaded yet, but you never can tell what users will do.

Anyway, I tried using a mov with 3x3 cube faces (generated in Pano2QTVR since PTGUI doesn't seem to support subtiling in movs), and with streaming enabled in FPP, and it worked quite well. It did load a bit slower than the plain cube faces, but the visual feedback being able to see the pano display as it loaded and being able to navigate it while it loaded, I thought outweighed the extra load time.

So I spent the morning and first bit of the afternoon converting all my panos that were already on the site into movs, and uploading these to the site. I went out on a walk with Mauser and L, just across the fields towards East Farndon, and then back down the road. We stopped in the field nearest Welland Park Road, and me and Mauser drank shots of tea while L swigged apple juice from a hip flask. I wonder if anyone else has ever found themselves in that situation before?

When we got back I added a couple more panos to the website.

After dinner I watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L, then watched 'Key Largo' with Mauser. It was alright, but a bit boring really.

Then I did some testing on displaying panos using a .mov file compared to jpeg cube faces. Although Hans' panos and the first one I tried on my site both loaded pretty fast using a .mov file with streaming enabled in FPP, I found that my latest panos seemed to be loading extremely slowly. The panos are quite large, so I wanted to check if it was just our internet connection being slow or if there was actually a problem with using .movs compared to separate cube faces.

I did 3 tests, for each test I ran the .mov version, then cleared the browser's cache, then ran the cube faces version, and cleared the cache again. I repeated this test 3 times altogether for each variation. The cube faces were 2000px and the .mov file used 1999px cube faces subdivided 3x3, both were using the same amount of JPEG compression - 75%. The mov weighed in at 3.34MB, while the cube faces at 3.35MB.

For timing I used a downloaded SWF stopwatch, which I just clicked start on after pressing enter in the browser's url bar to start loading the pano (I loaded the pano.swf file directly in the browser, no HTML). I stopped timing when the pano said it was 100% loaded.

First I compared a .mov pano using the movDecoder plugin with loaderStreamed=1 to one just using cube faces.

Without cache

Mov	1:34	1:16	01:38
cube	0:25	0:16	0:19

Next I did the same test, except I didn't clear the browser's cache (I send long expires headers for everything, so it should all be loaded from the browsers cache)

With cache

Mov	0:03	0:04	0:03
cube	0:01	0:01	0:01

And lastly I tried removing loaderStreamed=1 from the .mov file

Without cache and without streaming for mov

Mov	0:56	1:40	1:22
cube	0:23	0:22	0:32

My guess is that using .movs only works well for smaller panos, it seemed quite often to get up to about 50% relatively quickly (though still slower than cube faces) and then really drag from there until 100%. I was surprised that removing the streaming didn't make much difference to the load time of the .mov.

So for the moment I have decided to go back to cube faces. I'm not sure how Hans gets his panos to load so well. My guess would be that he uses a smaller cube face size. The panos on his site still look great though.

The weather today was actually good in the morning, despite HFM saying that it was going to rain. It was sunny with nice cumulus clouds. In the afternoon it clouded over a bit more, then was overcast the rest of the day. It didn't rain at all though.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine Marmalade Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: ½ Ham with Mediterranean style Salad Sandwich made with Bakery Bread; ½ Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese with Mediterranean style Salad Sandwich made with Bakery Bread; Honey Sandwich made with Bakery Bread; Grapes; Piece of Chocolate Cereal Cake; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Battered Fish Portion; Potatoes; Peas; Salt; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was 2x Oven heated Apple Pies with Cream. Coffee; Creme Egg.