big virtual tour = big loading time?

  • Hi !
    I have made a virtual tour that is a little bit more complex. I mean there is dozens of plugins, hotspot, actions, etc.
    I have a problem now, because the time of the loading is too big. Visitors must wait some good seconds before they see something more except white screen at the begining.

    Has anyone experience how to speed up the time of show something at the begining of the tour?
    I have tried to put in the plugin an event: onloaded="set(update,view)", to show up every plugin after it loads, but it doesn't work.

    Do you have any idea? Maybe should I create plugins dynamically, only some plugins at the begininig?

    Regards
    Greg

  • Uhm well go back to the basics.

    Wait few seconds, means they have to download stuff first.

    You either
    a) cut down the number of downloads, by for example setting url of plugins when it's needed.
    b) make them progressive downloads. I for example use placeholder flash files of a few Kb (with maybe a progressing bar of its own), that download larger external files.
    c) reduce the size of your plugins. There is no default imagequality. Use photoshop save for web and test different quality / filetypes. Can you see the difference with the naked eye (imagine yourself a normal user and not a pixel perfect photographer)
    d) although files get cached, always make sure you call upon an instance of an object instead of redownloading/recreating it. (programmers know what I mean). For example I have an image 1x1px white jpg. And I stretch that image to create borders and backgrounds, and use smart alignment to create an interface, while others make a 1000x1000 png with an interface drawn upon it. Alsoo make smart use of keep="true"
    e) Do I really really really need this plugin, or do I add this because you think it's default. For example a fullscreen button, how many users does actually use the fullscreen button... still it's another 30kb to load
    f) png files are usually bigger then jpg files. Do you really need the alpha channel?
    g) Does your tour really need multiple resolution levels.
    h) the preload="true" attribute loads the plugin first before it loads the panorama. So choose wisely which ones you really need to preload, else people look at a blank screen
    i) use tiles. It loads progressive and the tiles you see first, are loaded first.

    Always think from the user side. The avg user has only a 1024x768 screen. So focus on that.

  • hey greg,

    not a pro here,..just offering a suggestion as i've received much appreciated help myself here. I don't think the plugins will effect too much of the dowload time. Do you have a link to the tour. Do you have eveything embedded in one swf file, that will surely slow things down. If kept seperated you should have no problem with speed unless your panoramas are too large to begin with.

    Rob

  • Hi!
    Thanks for the answers and look below.
    First version is intro and the rest as one tour. It should be default, but at the begining the white screen exists to much time (I wonder how long by you):
    http://spacer.um.wielun.pl/test-two.html

    Second version I use to show the tour is here:
    http://spacer.um.wielun.pl
    In this second version I have extracted the intro as standalone pano and then it loads second, big pano. There is also white screen between intro and pano, but it is better to show quickly intro at the begining than white screen, I think.

    I don't use big size's images, but there is many small images, thumbnails, and so on.
    I use many declarations like this also:
    <data name="content1">
    <include url="teksty/tresc-opisu1.html" />
    </data>
    to change the descriptions of panoramas dynamically, and I think it is next count of bytes that loads at start.
    The swf file itself is not so big 126kb.

    Maybe it could be good to have a progress bar that indicates loading of many plugins, but progressbar works only with images of pano for now.

  • wauw,

    that does take a while to load :O I see the server requesting informating over and over in the statusbar. I can't give real insight why this is. but it seems you have all the plugins with preload is true? Else it would load krpano progressively, now it just waits with a white screen

  • I am going to have a small vacation now, but after one week I will try to put the tour on another server. And then look at plugins, but as far as I remember it is not so many plugins that are set preloaded.
    So, I will answer again after week.

    Regards
    Greg

  • bazuki,

    Wish I could read the language of the tour. 35 seconds of white screen for the first link,...2 seconds for the second to see the map, then another 5 for the rest to load. I guess follow zephers pointers,..wish I could help more. Looks like you put a lot of work into it and some nice hdr panos. Your buttons get a little lost with the blur though. Like zepher said,..remember the audience.

    rob

  • Hi again!

    I have rebuild the tour and now have better time of loading.
    All I have made was divide the tour into xml files instead of scenes.
    In the first intro's xml there is only some first plugins, and another are loaded with the first pano, and the rest only on request.
    By the way the server of my client is rather poor (the ping response time is about 60ms)
    link1
    in opposite to another server (ping 20ms):
    link2

    So, I think it is all I can do. *wink*
    Thank you very much for testing the advices.

    Regards
    Greg

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