Spot Range

Description

The plugin adds the ability to interact with hotspots in a new way. Create active ranges instead of hotspots to bring new user experience into the tour. Spot range plugin can be optionally activated on selected devices in Standard or/and VR mode.
Video overview

Compatibility

Plugin version 1.1.1
PANOTOUR PRO 2.5.12 - 2.5.14 (HTML5)

Install

The Spot Range plugin is made available as a zipped file. Before installation, remove any previous version of the plugin. Unzip the downloaded package to any temporary folder.

The plugin consists of one folder alpo.spotrange-x.x.x copy it to:
Windows C:\Users\MyName\Documents\Kolor\PanotourPro 2\plugins
Mac /Users/MyName/Documents/Kolor/PanotourPro 2/plugins
Linux /home/$USER/Documents/Kolor/PanotourPro 2/plugins
Restart Panotour to see the plugin!

Usage

After the installation complete, you can find the Spot Range plugin in the plugin library and double click on it.
Then in the Spot Library select any of your point spot styles (only Point styles are supported) and add at the end of the style name _inv_ to apply Invisible behavior or _act_ to apply Active behavior.
In the Spot Range plugin settings enable the appropriate behavior Use Invisible hotspots (_inv_), Use Active hotspots (_act_), this will also open the settings sections.
See also this video overview

Invisible hotspots (_inv_)

Hides hotspots by default and use custom images to indicate when the view gets in/out of the spot range. The custom image gets on-click action from the current hotspot.

Invisible hotspots settings

Enable Use Invisible hotspots ( _inv_ ) to activate and open the settings section

Image position for _inv_

Sets the position of indication image (Inactive and Active states).

Image (inactive state)

Settings for the inactive image. This image is visible when the view is not in the range of the _inv_ hotspot.
Image
Choose an image file for the inactive state.
Opacity
Opacity for the inactive image.

Image (active state)

Settings for the active image. This image is visible when the view is in the range of the _inv_ hotspot.
Image
Choose an image file for the active state.
Opacity
Opacity for the active image.

Change images (states)

Sets how to change images when the view gets in/out from the range of the _inv_ hotspot.
Effect
Sets effect to change image. Available values: Switch, Fade
Switch
Change image immediately.

Fade
Fadeout the current state and fade-in the next state at the same time. Displays additional setting Fade time.
Fade time
Sets the time in milliseconds to fade images.

Move effect for active state
Activates a move effect to appear the active state. Displays additional setting section Move settings.

Move Settings:

From
Sets from which side to move active image.
Time
Sets the time in milliseconds to move the image.
Tween type
Sets tween type of the move action.
Available tween types

Additional settings

Additional settings for _inv_
Display hotspots
Enable to keep hotspots visible.
Show hotspots onover the image
The activated invisible hotspot will be displayed when the mouse over the active image.
Display tooltip onhover the image
Enable to display tooltip on hovering the active image. Applies if the current hotspot (view in the range) has a tooltip text.
Autoload scene
Sets to automatically load the target scene when the view gets in the spot range, without clicking the active image.

TIP

Use carefully, because if a pano default view has an invisible spot it may get in the range after loading the pano, which results to load next pano immediately. And this can be repeated if the next pano also has the same setup, and so on.
However, this makes it possible to create some special tour behavior with a combination of autorotation.

Display VR settings
Opens VR settings section for _inv_ spots.

VR settings

Due to the particular qualities of the VR mode, it's not possible to keep the same behavior. In VR mode, there are no active and inactive states and positioning. There is a custom image (hotspot). When the view gets in the hotspot range, the image will be displayed on the horizontal position of the invisible spot and will follow the view until the view gets out from the range. The image (hotspot) gets onclick action from the currently invisible hotspot.

Image settings:

Image
Choose image file.
Opacity
Sets image opacity.
Display image effect
Sets effect to display image. Available values: Switch, Fade.
Switch
Displays/Hides image immediately.
Fade
Fade-in/fade-out the image. Displays additional setting Fade time.
Fade time
Set the time in milliseconds to fade in / fade out the image.
VR timeout
Set the time in milliseconds to wait for click action when vrcursor over the image.
Depth
Sets the stereoscopic 3d depth for hotspots.

Active hotspots (_act_)

Enables a hotspot to perform some action when the view gets in/out the range of the hotspot.

Active hotspots settings

Enable Use Active hotspots ( _act_ ) to activate and open the settings section

Start opacity

Sets default opacity for all _act_ hotspots, which will be applied at the start.

Change hotspot

Settings to change hotspots, when the view gets-in the range.
Available changes: Width, Height, Opacity, Image, Rotate.
Every changes section (except Change image) has an Effect setting, to switch or tween the changes.
Available tween types
Every changes section has a Delay setting to set time in milliseconds to wait before making the change, to display it enable Display delay settings.
It has two settings to delay the changes. The first used when the view gets in the spot range and the second is used when the view gets out from the spot range.

Additional settings for _act_:

Keep active state

If enabled changed hotspot won't get back to its original state when the view gets out from the hotspot range.
Only after click
If enabled changed hotspot won't get back to its original state only if it was clicked. Keep
Sets how to keep the changed state. Available values: Always, Until the next pano
Always
Keep hotspot changed always e.g. when you load another pano and get back to the first one the changed hotspot will be changed.
Until the next pano
Keep hotspot changed only in the currently loaded pano. Once the hotspot is changed it will keep the state, but if leave and then return to the pano the hotspot will have the original state.

Display tooltip when active

Enable to display a tooltip when the view gets in the range.
The tooltip is displaying in the same style as a Panotour permanent tooltip option, but visible only in the active state.
It is possible to set style individually for any tooltip displayed when the hotspot is active.
For this just add simple css styling after the tooltip text separated by three colons.
Example - my tooltip text:::background-color:#ffffff; color:#0b0b0b; font-size:25px;
Tooltip offset
Sets offset for tooltip text from the hotspot, in pixels.
Tooltip position
Positioning of the tooltip text, on top or bottom the hotspot.

Show image

Settings to display different images when a hotspot is activated or clicked.
To display an image, in Panotour on the TOUR tab select _act_ spot and expand the Description section for this spot.

Two variants to set image filename in the description for this hotspot:

• Enter the filename of the image (e.g. info1.png). Do not add extra whitespace or words, and do not use any styling. Fits if you don't have any description for this hotspot.
• Set image filename like this: --imgfilename.png--, in the description text.
  You can set --imgfilename.png-- text color the same as the background to hide it.
  Or more advanced way to hide it, is to open the tour_messages.xml and edit this --imgfilename.png-- to html comment <!----imgfilename.png---->

Then, open exported tour data directory, navigate the spotrange plugin directory tourdata\graphics\alpo.spotrange and create a new folder "images" and put your images there.

Show image settings:

Show image when hotspot is
Select to display an image when the hotspot is Clicked or Activated by range. This will show up some additional settings.
Image area
The area that will be filled with the image, dependently on the aspect ratio of the image.
Alignment
Alignment of an image according to the Screen or Hotspot if option Keep images position enabled. Max size / Min size
Limit the image resizing. Set 0 to disable.
Offset
Sets offset for the image from the original position, in pixels. Bottom, Right offset - positive values. Top, Left offset - negative values.
Keep images position
Disable to show images the usual way, when the image appears over the panorama and stays on the screen until we close it. If enabled - images appear as hotspots, they stay on its position and move with panorama rotation. This opens additional settings Keep image if new appear and Distort images Keep image if a new appear
Only for enabled option: Keep images position. Sets to keep or hide the opened image when a new image appears.
Distort images
Only for enabled option: Keep images position. Enable to distort image in the 3D space.
Close image when spot deactivated
Only for option: Show image when hotspot is ACTIVATED.
Enable to close the image whenever the appropriate spot is deactivated (out from range).
This option has priority over the Keep image if new appear and will close the image anyway.
Click on image to execute hotspot actions
Only for option: Show image when hotspot is ACTIVATED.
Enable to execute all the actions assigned to the appropriate hotspot by clicking on the image.
Close image on click
A click on the image will close it.
Use target pano thumbnail as image
Enable to display the thumbnail of the target panorama instead of your custom image.
Option Disable load pano action should be disabled.
Delay actions after show image
Only for option: Show image when hotspot is CLICKED.
There is an issue if you want to show an image on click a hotspot, that has additional actions, all actions of the hotspot will be executed. And then go to panorama action will start loading the next pano immediately, which do not allow your custom image to be displayed.
Delay setting fixes this and display image first and then execute hotspot actions after a certain delay.
Disable load pano action
Removes go to panorama action from hotspots, but keeps other actions.
This option may be useful if you added go to panorama action only to keep hotspots in VR mode, which is required by Panotour.

Display VR settings

Enable to display additional VR settings for _act_.

Display tooltip in VR mode.

Currently, Spot Range cannot display text in VR mode, but it's possible to use images with text as a workaround.
For this prepare images with text for tooltips, this should be .png files and have its filename exactly as tooltip text.
Be sure that there are no unsupported characters in the filename:
<, >, :, ", /, \, |, ?, *
Open exported tour data directory, navigate the spotrange plugin directory tourdata\graphics\alpo.spotrange and create a new folder "vrtooltips" and put your tooltips images there.
Tooltip offset
Sets offset for tooltip text from the hotspot, in pixels.
Bottom, Right offset - positive values. Top, Left offset - negative values.
Tween time to show/hide tooltip
Tween time to show or hide the tooltip image in milliseconds.

Show image in VR mode

To display an image in VR mode, in Panotour on the TOUR tab select _act_ spot and expand the Description section for this spot.
More info about how to add image filename for hotspot see here.
Then open the exported tour data directory, navigate the spotrange plugin directory tourdata\graphics\alpo.spotrange and create a new folder "vrimages" and put your images there.
Show image in VR mode when hotspot is
Select to display an image when the hotspot is Clicked or Activated by range. This will show up some additional settings.
Image area
The area that will be filled with the image, dependently on the aspect ratio of the image.
Max size / Min size
Limit the image resizing. Set 0 to disable.
Offset
Sets offset for the image from the hotspot, in pixels. Bottom, Right offset - positive values. Top, Left offset - negative values.
Close image when
Select how to close the image in VR mode. When the hotspot is deactivated (out of range) or when vr cursor moves out of the image. Add clickable icon over the image
Only for option: Show image in VR mode when the hotspot is ACTIVATED. This option adds an ability to display clickable icon over the image and load panorama (of the appropriate hotspot) onclick. Enable to select an icon file.
Use target pano thumbnail as image
Enable to display the thumbnail of the target panorama instead of your custom image.
Option Disable load pano action in VR mode should be disabled.
Delay load pano action after show image
Only for option: Show image in VR mode when the hotspot is CLICKED. There is an issue if you want to show an image on click a hotspot, that has additional actions, all actions of the hotspot will be executed. And then go to panorama action will start loading the next pano immediately, which does not allow your custom image to be displayed.
Delay setting fixes this and display image first and then execute hotspot actions after a certain delay.

Disable load pano action

If _act_ hotspots have no go to panorama or group action, Panotour hides them in VR mode. If you would like to display hotspots with images as tooltips in VR mode without any click action or to use option Show image onclick in VR mode, enable this setting and add go to panorama or group action to the _act_ style. Go to pano won't be executed, but this helps to keep hotspots in VR mode.

Advanced settings

Additional settings that are applied to the plugin.

Ranges

Sets ranges for hotspots. When the view gets in/out from this range some actions will be called.

Horizontal and Vertical ranges
Sets degrees of the pano view before and after hotspot.
For instance, for horizontal range, if set 10°, the range starts at 10° before the hotspot and ends 10° after the hotspot.
If the hotspot horizontal position is 50° its range is from 40° to 60° and equals to 20°.
The same for vertical range, but in a different direction.
If horizontal ranges of two hotspots of the same behavior overlap, then the space between hotspots will be halved for ranges.
Ranges of Invisible and Active hotspots are disjointed and work separately. Use different ranges for VR
Activates different range settings in VR mode.

Devices

Select devices that use the plugin.

Activate plugin in VR mode

Enable to use the plugin in VR mode.

Mouse over behavior when active

Enable to use mouseover behavior set in Panotour (e.g. stop/start autorotation, other if exist) when the view is in the spot range.

Display Spot Range info in the context menu

If enabled, displays a tiny note "Spot Range plugin" in the context menu, and links to the Spot Range web page. It is enabled by default.
I'd be very thankful if you'd leave this option enabled!