PTViewer 2.8 reference

This page contains a detailed list of the new features of PTViewer 2.8: please note that it only explains the differences between PTViewer 2.8 and the original PTViewer 2.5.

You can find the full version 2.5 documentation at Helmut Dersch's site: http://webuser.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/ or at a mirror site like http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~dersch/.

Another site that contains a lot of information about PTViewer is http://users2.ev1.net/~wufdog/PT/.

New features (general)

• The computation of each frame is now faster, so panning is faster and smoother. It is now possible to show large images with a good speed. Click here for information about showing large panoramic images.
• Using the previous versions, when panning very slowly the borders of the image moved in a jerky way. This was easier to notice when using a big window on a fast computer. With this version the movement is smoother.
• With the Sun Java VM version 1.4 or later, ptviewer can now draw to the screen using hardware acceleration. As a result, on a Windows computer it is now as fast with the Sun VM as with the Microsoft one.
• Modified the internal parser so that a javascript (or PTViewer) command ending with ";" does not cause an exception any more. The ";" is used as a separator between multiple commands.
• Rik Littlefield (rj.littlefield at computer.org) has rewritten the image loading code: now it is much faster, especially with larger images. As a consequence the "maxarray" parameter is no longer used by the applet. Using maxarray will not cause errors, but it will be ignored.
• Added support for the .PTV custom file format. With this format it is possible to load larger images. The applet always loads first the parts of the image in the current direction of view, and it loads later the parts that are "at your back". It is possible to encrypt the .ptv file so that it will not be possible to use it from another site. Click here for more information. A program for the custom file creation is available from here. Eric Gerds has created a Photoshop CS script for the custom file creation: it also works with Macs. Three sample images are available from here.
• Now it is possible to press the "Y" key to zoom out, just like the "Z" key. This feature is useful for certain keyboard layouts.

New features (new or changed parameters)

• The "quality" parameter can now be set to a value greater than 3 to activate a Lanczos2 interpolator. This interpolator generates sharper images but is much slower, so it is used only when the user is not panning. The new values are 4, 5 and 6: 4 means nearest neighbor when panning, Lanczos 2 when steady. 5 means bilinear when panning and Lanczos2 when steady, 6 means nearest neighbor when panning quickly, bilinear when panning slowly and Lanczos2 when steady. Nearest neighbor when panning is the fastest option, but it causes a lot of artifacts (shimmering) while panning slowly. Bilinear greatly reduces artifacts but it is slower. Quality = 6 tries to achieve a balance between quality and speed: when panning slowly artifacts are more noticeable and speed is less important, while when panning quickly artifacts are less visible and speed is more important. Quality = 6 is now the default. The quality advantage of the Lanczos2 interpolator is greater as you zoom into the image.

Toolbar parameters

• Added new parameter "showToolbar" (default = false). If set to true ptviewer shows an integrated toolbar with three buttons: zoom in, zoom out, toggle hotspots. The toolbar works as a progress bar too: this progress bar also shows the progress in tile loading of .ptv files. The toggle hotspots button changes its appearance when the hotspots are activated, so users can know if hotspots are active or not. When moving the mouse over a hotspot the hotspots' description is written in the toolbar too, where it should be more easily seen by the user. The toolbar is painted before static hotspots, so it is possible to set static hotspots on the toolbar to create more buttons.
• Added new parameter "toolbarDescr_x". The value must be an integer number and it can be used to change the x coordinate where the hotspots' description is written on the toolbar. It is useful if you have added new buttons to the right of the standard ones.
• Added new parameter "toolbarDescr_color" to set the color of the hotspot's description in the toolbar. The parameter must be set to a hex value like other PTViewer parameters used to set colors. The default is black. This value is overridden by the "c" parameter in the hotspot's definition (if any).
• Added new parameter "toolbarImage". It is only meaningful if showToolbar is true and can be used to customize the toolbar's appearance. You can click here for more information.
• Added new parameter "imgLoadFeedback" (default = true). If set to false ptviewer will not show neither a progress bar nor a progress percent number. This is mainly useful when using the toolbar that already shows its own progress bar.
• Added new parameter "toolbarBoldText", default=false. If set to true the hotspots description in the toolbar will be written in bold font.

Hotspots parameters

• Added new parameter "hsEnableVisibleOnly" (default = false). If set to true hotspots will be disabled if not visible. I didn't like casually jumping to another pano while panning with the hotspots set to invisible.
• Added new parameter "hsShowDescrInStatusBar" (default = true). If set to false the applet will not show the hotspots' description in the browser's status bar when the mouse moves over a hotspot.
• Added new parameter "popup_panning" (default = false). If set to true hotspots will pop up under the mouse when the user is panning with the mouse. This parameter was originally added by David Buxo to his version of PTViewer.

Static hotspots parameters

• Added new parameter "shsEnableVisibleOnly" (default = false). If set to true static hotspots will be disabled if not visible. This parameter is similar to "hsEnableVisibleOnly" that works for hotspots.
• Robert Bisland (R.Bilsland at Dial.pipex.com) added a new Javascript command called DrawSHSPopup() and a new functionality that allows multiple static hotspots to be drawn, hidden and popped up at once. DrawSHSImage(), DrawSHSPopup() and HideSHSImage() now allow more than one static hotspot to be changed in a single call. The commands are now able to accept static hotspot ranges e.g. 1-4 or 1,3,5,6 or combinations of both 1-4,7,8.
• Robert also added a new parameter "shsStopAutoPanOnClick", by default it is set to true. When you set it to false, clicking on a static hotspot will not stop an AutoPan.
• These new features make it possible to create dynamic menus for PTViewer using nothing but static hotspots. Robert has written a tutorial about dynamic menu creation.
• Added new features in static hotspots declaration: "y" and "b" values can be negative. If negative they are computed from the bottom of the viewer window and not from the top.
  "x" and "a" values can be negative: if negative they are computed from the right of the viewer window and not from the left.
  "x" must compute to a positive number lower than "a".
  "y" must compute to a positive number lower than "b".

Mouse parameters

• Added new parameter "mouseSensitivity", it is a decimal number (the decimal separator must be a period, not a comma), default = 1. If mouseSensitivity < 1 panning will be slower, if mouseSensitivity > 1 panning will be faster.
• Added new parameter "mouseQ6Threshold" used only if quality=6. It is a decimal number, default = 1. mouseQ6Threshold > 1 will require a larger mouse movement to switch from bilinear to nn, mouseQ6Threshold < 1 will require a smaller mouse movement to switch from bilinear to nn.
• Added parameter "mousePanTime" used to limit the maximum speed when panning with the mouse. It works like "autoTime": it is the minimum time (in seconds) for a full 360 degrees revolution. Inexperienced users tend to drag too much the mouse so the image rotates too fast, causing confusion: this parameter limits the maximum panning speed and it works with any cpu speed. You can use decimal values, the decimal separator must be a period ("."), not a comma (",").

Other parameters

• Added new parameter "autoTime". It is used only if the parameter "auto" has been used to cause autorotation. The value of the "autoTime" parameter is the number of seconds needed to perform a full 360° rotation, so <param name="autoTime" value=120> will cause PTViewer to make a full rotation in two minutes. Of course if the computer is not fast enough PTViewer will not be able to rotate fast enough. This parameter can be used to make the viewer rotate at the same speed on every computer: on faster computers the CPU usage will be lower than 100%. The value must be an integer number, without decimals.
• Added a new function "startAutoPan( pan_inc, tilt_inc, zoom, autoTime )" that can be used to start autopanning with a given value for autoTime.
• Ercan Gigi (ercan.gigi at philips.com) added the "autoNumTurns" parameter which is used to limit the number of full 360 degree turns when auto-panning is on. You can use decimal numbers. The parameter is useful if you want to give only a short autopan preview.
• Tore Meyer (Tore.Meyer at gmx.de) added an optional parameter "autoTime" to moveTo() and moveFromTo().
  public void moveTo(double pan, double tilt, double fov, int nframes, double autoTime), 
  public void moveFromTo(double d, double d1, double d2, double d3, double d4, double d5, int i, double autoTime)
  The behaviour is identical to the original moveTo() & moveFromTo() Functions with the autoTime behaving just like the autoTime parameter introduced in version 2.7L2.
• Added new parameter "outOfMemoryURL": it is the address of a page to be opened in case of out of memory error while loading the panoramic image.
• Added new parameter "horizonPosition" (integer, no decimals) to specify the position of the horizon if it is not in the middle of the pano image. Without this parameter PTViewer would show a curved horizon. The parameter is a % value of the image height, measured from the top. The default value is 50 and the horizon is considered to be in the middle of the image. If the value is less than 50 the horizon is nearer to the top of the image, if it is greater than 50 the horizon is nearer to the bottom of the image. For example, if you have a pano 1150 pixels high and the horizon is 430 pixels from the top then the parameter value is 430/1150*100 = 37.
• Pressing "o" will interactively decrease the value of the horizonPosition parameter with feedback in the status bar, pressing "O" will increase it. This is useful to quickly find the correct value for the parameter. Hotspots position will not be updated since it would require more work and this feature is not intended for production use.
• Added parameter "authoringMode" (default = false). If set to true it will enable authoring features that could have unexpected results for end users. At the moment it will only enable the "o" key (see above).
• Added parameter "statusMessage": it can be used to specify a fixed text to be written in the status bar. The text is written every time the user drags the mouse or presses an arrow key. This parameter does not work with Firefox (for security reasons).
• Changed: now the "tiltmax" parameter accepts negative values and the "tiltmin" parameter
  accepts positive ones.
• Added two public methods: getPanoIsLoaded() and getFilename(). You can call them from Javascript like you do with newPanoFromList(), for example. getPanoIsLoaded() returns a boolean value: true if the pano has already been loaded, false otherwise. getFilename() return a string: the file name of the current pano.

Fixes

• The mouse cursor did not change to HAND when over a hotspot and using the Sun VM.
• Pressing the spacebar did not show hotspots until the pano was dragged.
• A custom mouse cursor did not show up until the mouse was moved.
• When diplaying a wait image with the Sun VM the background of the applet was not set to the color specified by the bgcolor parameter.
• If the panoramic image was not fully spherical, i.e. the tilt angle did not go from -90° to + 90°, hotspots were displayed at a wrong y position.
• Modified the gotoView() and moveTo() commands: now if the requested vertical field of view is too large for the current pano, it is automatically reduced. In previous versions the viewer did not change the direction of view.
• If the tilt parameters requests an impossible direction of view (outside the pano) now the the tilt angle is set to the maximum or minimum possible value. Previous versions set it to 0.
• Fixed: when using nn interpolator rectangular hotspots were not painted correctly while panning.
• Fixed: when loading a pano that was not tall enough to fit in the current window using the current fov ptviewer reduced too much the fov value. Now fov is reduced to the correct value that will not require vertical panning.
• Fixed: the applet did not load images (like a wait screen) if they were packed in the jar file.
• Fixed: parameters specified in a "pano0", "pano1" (and so on) tag were case-sensitive, while normal parameters were case-insensitive. Now those parameters are case-insensitive too.

PTViewer home page