• Hi Everyone

    So been working on an idea for a while now and it's almost where I want it for those of you that want to check it out it's at

    http://www.streetvisit.com

    Basically I've built a web interface that allows users to navigate from Google Street View into KrPano Tours and back out again into Street View.

    There's probably a few bugs and fixes to be made so if you spot anything let me know.

    I'm currenty adding other panoramas for other Photographers for £9.99 but want to make this free!!! And think I need some help.

    Basically in order to link to the tours I'm using multires droplet to create tours so that they work on lots of devices platforms then tweaking some of the code inside so user interface is similar to that of streetview + adding a hotspot from initial pano back out into streetview.

    reason I'm currently charging for this is that to get it right I am asking users to upload rectilinears and then I'm manually processing them and adding cutom code.Then uploading to site.

    I don't want to have to do this would rather make it free / small fee for featured tours or other such model.

    There's tonnes of possibilities here and could really grow if everyone started adding their tours to it.

    The site is built in Drupal with custom PHP code linked into backend database for storing tour info. This in turn is linked into the StreetView V3 API via Javascript code.

    Tours are linked to through by URL so could be on any server potentially, although a few code tweaks would be needed for that.

    Please let me know any thoughts.

    Look forward to hearing from you all *smile*

  • Quote :"Basically I've built a web interface that allows users to navigate from Google Street View into KrPano Tours and back out again into Street View."

    If I understand correctly, you can move from Google Street View as presented on your site to a custom tour, but NOT directly from Google Street View as accessed from Google maps presented directly from Google.

    I think what you are trying to do is good. I recently had a discussion with Google about allowing custom 360's from street view, but it was not well received. It's challenging to see any significant benefit from your solution as so few viewers will find or use a alternative to Google maps.

    Perhaps it would be more productive to market your solution to Google itself?

    Regards,

    Robert

  • Yes it is only possible to access custom tours through the http://www.streetvisit.com interface.

    Even though I've spent time developing this it would be great if Google did finally allow custom virtual tours to be displayed in Street View.

    Who knows perhaps Bing will or Apple when their mapping product comes out.

    Yes getting users to switch from Google maps itself is and will be difficult but through added content in the form of custom tours, if we can get enough of them to make things interesting, I hope it will work.

    Also want to add lots more functionality perhaps making it switchable between Bing maps, where applicable, and Apple's when their product is released.

    There's loads of things I want to eventually add in functionality wise like social elements plugging into Facebooks API perhaps EBAY most definitely Twitter.

    With geolocation information systems GIS and augmented reality being the new buzz words it really does have potential.

    Recently I applied to be a Google approved Photographer for Google Business Photos. Had a really interesting conversation with my contact there. For those not yet aware Google is providing a facility to businesses to have their own tours available in Google Places. I asked my contact if these listings were eventually going to be included in StreetView. But they are not now and he said he didn't know when they would be.

    Not only does Streetvisit provide this functionality now it also does it in a way that is scalable and available to existing tours of many different types whether from krpano users or others. KRpano though I think has the most flexibility and also compatibility as well as functionality.

    With the latest release including video player plugin supported on multi platforms as well as the huge range of additional functionality that Krpano provides having an interface that supports this as opposed to just the custom tour tiles option that Google provide as the main way to add custom content has to be the way forward.

    My goal now is to open this up to the KRpano community as a free service. So anyone out there that wants to start adding tours let me know.

  • Just thought I'd update eveyone I have now made it free to upload single panorama images.

    The best way of doing this at the moment is to upload high quality stiched pano to our site we will then process it using the Krpano multi res droplet tool for inclusion as well as create relevant code for linking back into StreetView.

    Multi Pano Tours can be added also either through direct linking to tour on your server or via the new uplaod facility that will be added to the site shortly.

    This is the area we mainly need to work on streamlining/ organising as additional code is required to be added and code needs to conform to certain factors.

    Please feel free to respond if you want to add a tour and have any further questions. either here on the forum or you can contact me direct

    *smile*

  • Hi Zephyr

    Thanks :) glad you liked it.

    I saw the weblab example after I had started development. Theres has a number of drawbacks however.

    1) as far as I'm aware, (they may have changed it), it totally utilises Google v3 API for tiled panoramas thereby not allowing for heaps of customisation available through KRPANO
    2) It's not scalable the code for the entire site is one Javascript file it's not Database driven. StreetVisit is database driven with one Javascript file that doesn't need to be rewritten every time a new tour is added.

    If you've got any tours you want to add in let me know *thumbsup*

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