PangeaVR: VR Panorama viewer - Creating Portfolios

VIEWING YOUR OWN PANORAMAS

To learn how to make your own VR Panoramas, click here.

There are 2 ways to view your own panoramas in PangeaVR. You can simply enter the URL of the JPEG file in PangeaVR's Enter URL screen, or you can create your own "Portfolio" which is a list of all of the panoramas that you want to view.

Portfolios are nice because you can bookmark them in PangeaVR for quick reference. You can continue to edit or add to the Portfolio and it will automatically update in PangeaVR. If you want your panoramas to be made public and automatically appear in PangeaVR's Browse screen then all you have to do is let us know where your portfolio is.

A Portfolio is just a simple XML file that you put on your web site. This file contains links to each of your panoramas along with other info such as descriptions, titles, etc. So, just put your equirectangular JPEG files on your site, create an XML portfolio file and put that on your site, and then you're done!

THE PORTFOLIO XML FILE

XML files are used on the internet, in Mac OS X, and the iPhone OS for just about everything. They are easy to create in any text editor. You can download a PangeaVR template XML file here. Below is what the XML file looks like, and it is very easy to customize for your needs. This basic sample shows a portfolio's XML file with two panoramas in it: The Grand Canyon and Yosemite.

The first line of the XML file identifies it as an XML file. Do not change this line! The rest of the file is made up of "tags". A tag is a keyword that is in <brackets>. The file should be pretty self explanatory, even if you've never seen an XML file before. Just replace the text between the tags with your info. Below is additional information about each tag type:

REQUIRED TAGS

These are the basic XML tags that all of your panoramas should include:

<header>

This tag indicates the text that should be displayed at the top of the screen, above your list of panoramas. Your text should fit in one line or it will be truncated.

<panorama>

This denotes the beginning of new panorama data. You can have up to 200 panoramas in your portfolio.

<title>

This is the title of the current panorama.

<link>

This is the full URL of your equirectangular JPEG file which must be a .jpeg or .jpg file. IMPORTANT: The iPhone has limited memory, so PangeaVR will convert any image down to 2048x1024, therefore, we recommend making the source JPEG's 2048x1024. If you point the URL's to larger files they will still work, but they will take much, much longer to load, and in the end they will be converted to 2048x1024. This may seem like a low resolution for a panorama, but they look amazing on the iPhone's hi-rez screen! It is a good idea to use a high quality JPEG compression setting. Files between 400-600k are no problem.

<about>

This describes the panorama. It can be as long as you like, and say whatever you think is relevant. It is perfectly ok to use foreign languages too. Even Japanese works just fine! Only one important thing: DO NOT USE THE '&' CHARACTER! This has special meaning in XML and will cause a parsing error.

OPTIONAL TAGS

<thumb>

<camera>

<gps>

In addition to the basic, required tags above, there are also several optional advanced tags that you can use to set the camera orientation, show thumbnails, GPS coordinates, etc.

To learn about the advanced tags click here.

SUBMITTING YOUR PORTFOLIO TO THE PANGEA VR DATABASE

Once you have created your portfolio's XML file you should upload it to your web site and then test it in the Enter URL tab of PangeaVR. There you can manually enter its URL to be sure that it works. If you don't own an iPhone or iPod Touch to test it on, don't worry, we'll let you know if there's a problem with it. We have been getting many submissions, so we are limiting it to 1 portfolio per person.

After verifying that your portfolio's XML file works, all you need to do is send us an email with the following information:

1. The full URL of your XML file.

2. The name of your Portfolio as you want it to appear to the user (it should be short enough to fit in the iPhone's selector control). FOR GOD'S SAKE, NO MORE PORTFOLIOS THAT START WITH "360...". Half of the portfolios in PangeaVR start with that, and if I see another one I'm going to have an annurism. Think of a more creative title for it... pleeeease!

3. A URL to your homepage if you want the "On the Web" button in PangeaVR to take the user to your site.

4. A description of your portfolio. This can be any length and may say whatever you want. You can talk about yourself or your panoramas, or whatever is relavant to it. Some things to consider including in the description: summary of what is in the portfolio, photographer's name, copyright info, email or web address, your services, location, etc.

You can always edit and add to your Portfolio file whenever you like. Any changes will be instantly seen to anyone running PangeaVR on their iPhone or iPod Touch. If you ever want to update any of the above info, however, you'll need to drop us an email so we can change it in the master database.

To send feedback or get information: brian@pangeasoft.net


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