My first project is completed!

  • At last! I have finished my first project. It has been two years in the making!

    It is a virtual tour of Blickling Hall, here in north Norfolk, in the east of England. The house, now owned by the National Trust, dates from 1619 and stands on the foundations of an earlier hall in which it is believed Anne Boleyn was born.

    Here's the link-

    http://www.norwich360.com/blickling/

    Comments and criticisms would be much appreciated, please - I am sure there are things I could have done better!

    You will find that I have disabled all zooming, apart from a very limited amount for mobile devices. This is intentional, the idea being that the tour is intended as a taster only - if people would like a closer view they will be made most welcome when they visit the house in person.

    I would like to write a few words here, if I may, about why I chose krpano as the vehicle for this tour. When I started putting it together I was using alternative panorama software with a graphic user interface. However, I was aware of krpano, and would often visit the krpano demos and this forum, and I found three things which particularly attracted me -

    Quality. The rendering of the krpano demos on my computer screen seemed superior, and panning around seemed much smoother with less 'jitter'.

    Architectural view. Most of the scenes in the tour were shot from normal eye level, i.e. from the viewpoint of someone visiting the house in person. This meant that most scenes were best displayed looking upwards by something between 5 and 10 degrees. In the software I was using this resulted in verticals converging towards the top of the screen. In krpano, however, I could see that by using architectural view I could look upwards by these amounts yet still keep the verticals parallel. For me this was a huge advantage in krpano's favour.

    Support. Although the software I was using also had a user forum, it seemed to me that the level of advice and support in the krpano forum was much superior. In this forum, the author of the software, Klaus, was always present, ready to chip in with the definitive answer when necessary, and other forum members were so willing to offer advice and help.

    The big disadvantage, as I perceived it then, was that krpano had no graphic user interface. I am a photographer, not a coder, and I found the prospect of having to do everything in code quite daunting. However, I decided to take the plunge and bought a krpano license and set to work converting my fledgling tour to the new software.

    What I found was that the code examples included in the krpano download and the documentation here on the krpano website are so comprehensive, and the support in this forum is so good, that I was up and running much faster than I expected.

    Many, many thanks to all who contribute to this forum and, of course, to Klaus for his superb software.

    Regards to all

    Andrew

  • Nice job Andrew!

    This is right up my street as I've been working on a monster project at Burghley house that's just moving into Phase2. It's a real pleasure working in such magnificent homes isn't it!

    http://www.burghley.co.uk/staterooms-tour/


    I'll also have a handful of National Trust projects coming on line any time now. Have they sorted linking them to their page, that's the last hurdle for me and I'd be keen to know how you got on.

    Keep up the good work *smile*

  • Thank you Sacha, thank you Klaus, thank you Adrian for your kind comments.

    Adrian, your Burghley work is stunning, very very nice indeed. It must have taken a great deal of time to photograph all the paintings and other artefacts.

    You are right about how nice it is working in these lovely old houses. My tour of Blickling came about through me being a volunteer room guide there - I just love the place! I'm told that the marketing team will be adding a link to the tour in the next few days - I will let you know how that goes.

    Regards

    Andrew

  • Fantastic, so you know the history and details too!

    Yes, i ask because that seems to be a bit of a challenge on the properties I've done. Initially the idea was to use the tours internally on iPads for accessibility reasons but now they are wanting it on the web too so I'd be interested to hear how that goes. Presumably we won't be the first?

  • Nice job Andrew and great post ...you took the words right out of my mouse re: other GUI's vs krpano. When I looked into this about 7 years ago, I just didn't have the time to ascend the learning curve. Sure feels rewarding though to be finally here and climbing (though the higher I climb the higher I realize I have to go).
    Thanks for this and I as well applaud Klaus and the krpano community.

    John

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!