Autoviewer 3.2
What IS Autoviewer?
Autoviwer is an elegant, easy to use presentation system for 360 degree VR Panoramic tours. Autoviewer is a set of JAVASCRIPT code snippets which can be embedded and customized into any pre-exiting webpage. Drop in the snippets, upload your VR's, set your variables and your tour is ready to go!
What ISN'T Autoviewer?
Autoviewer in and of itself cannot display panoramic tours. It relies upon two pre-exisiting technologies to work: The Plugin-based Quicktime or the Applet-based PTViewer. One of the many features of Autoviewer is to determine the type of environment the VR will be displayed in, and choose automatically which technology will give the viewer the best experience. For an entirely JAVASCRIPT based display system with distortion emulation go to http://www.designwizardry.com/avrplayerv2 to see another product under development.
Why use Autoviewer?
Displaying a VR tour is not as simple as dropping a graphic into a website. The Windows Media Player can hijack the file and attempt to play it rather than using Quicktime (QT), sometimes QT is not available or wanted, sometimes there are ActiveX considerations to take into account, sometimes the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is not available or wanted, and finally, people don't like to see lots of alert messages when these things are not present. Autoviewer takes into consideration all of these problems plus alot more. All the coding is done for you.
What are the features of Autoviewer?
Here is the complete feature list with Autoviewer Features with an "*" are only present only if the environment allows it. Not all browsers/platforms are capable of these features. If the feature is unavailable it is automatically removed from the viewer:
- Uses four different methods to properly detect the existence of QT and the JVM. Once the environment is detected, the system will use QT if present. Otherwise, it will use PTViewer which any system with the JVM can see. If the JVM is not detected (Windows XP does not ship with the JVM), the tour will inform the user that they must download one or the other to view the tour.
- Optional Customizable alert dialog boxes to ask the user if they would like to download QT if they do not have it, or just view the tour using PTViewer.
- Provides Hijack prevention from other applications trying to opening your mov files
- QT ActiveX Component requirement for IE 5.5 SP2 or greater is addressed
- "Click to Run ActiveX Control" Warning Message is defeated
- QT 4.0 or greater requirement is addressed
- Textual Menu system with titles of each VR in the tour
- Change-in-place VR tours. The entire page does NOT refresh everytime you change nodes. Just the VR in the page will change when you click on a title of the VR in the menu. This is done using the quickest and most dynamic method available depending on the browser, platform and plugins used. Switching betweens sets of tours is however a page refresh action.
- Seamless browser/platform considerations. The code sets will change programmatically how information is displayed to provide a consistent viewing experience. Feature set downgrading is automatic for browser/platforms that are not capable of using them. Autoviewer has been tested on IE 5.0+, Netscape 4.03+, Firefox 1.0+ and Mozilla 1.0+ all for both PC & Mac platforms. In addition, Safara 1.0+ for Mac has been tested. Unix platforms and Opera and iCab have been sporatically tested with mixed results and are not generally supported.
- Simple, folder-based architecture for multiple sets of tours with a common code folder
- Customizable. It can be extensively customized simply by changing where the snippets appear in the page, or by more advanced programmatic changes by those with javascript scripting knowledge.
- Instructions for navigation in either QT or PTViewer automatically chosen
- *Customizable Wait/Progess screen while panorama is loading
- *Autorotation with Start/Stop and Speed control without the need to code it into your .mov file
How much is Autoviewer?
It's currently FREE to the VR Community to use. These programming techniques have been around for years, but no one has put them all together in an easy to use format.
How do I get it and install it?
Click on one of the following links to download it (they both contain the same files, just are compressed differently for each platform.) Follow the instructions in the README.TXT file and they will aid your through setting up your first tour.
DOWNLOAD IT NOW: autoviewer.zip
Can I see a Demo?
Two simple tours are includeed in the file to illustrate how the folder structure works between a multiple tour system. These can be seen online right now by going to http://www.designwizardry.com/autoviewer/sceneset1
Bug Fixes
Autoviewer 3.0 : Began Bug Fix Log
Autoviewer 3.1 : Fixed glitch with .pntg files and Safari 1.0 browser. This change effects just four files in the code folder: autoviewer.js, display.js, testpcie.html and a creation of new file, uneedqt4.qtif
Autoviewer 3.2 : Now supports Safari 1.2 + browsers! This change effects autoviewer.js and display.js
Questions or comments? Email mcaramb@designwizardry.com