AutoHorizon

AutoHorizon is a super flexible plugin which makes your virtual tour panorama go to its horizon after a predefined period of time (and more!). Automatically finds the shortest path to the horizon (no more whirling hotspots!). Contributed by Patrick Cheatham. Easy to use and powerful!

Preview Here.

You define AutoHorizon's parameters in your FPP XML (eg, tilt and pause), and when your panorama is left unattended AutoHorizon will quietly move your Flash pano back to its horizon. As an added bonus, AutoHorizon will let you define your horizon as something other than tilt=0 -- your horizon can be any pan, tilt and zoom combination you want!

To make things really enjoyable, You can also change your horizon on-the-fly... What does this mean? Well, you can create hotspots which will take a user to a certain pan/tilt/zoom position. Sort of a built-in and on demand AutoTour! AutoHorizon becomes really powerful when you use it to call a custom function in your XML, after it's done tilting, panning, and/or zooming.

AutoHorizon is keyboard aware -- meaning when your users hit the Shift key (for example), the plugin will pause and then start again. You can also change any of the AutoHorizon settings on-the-fly from a hotspot, so your panorama presentation can have any number of "horizons" available...

The brass tacks:

<panorama>

<parameters>

    layer_20 = files/hotspots.swf

    layer_80 = files/cl_returnToHorizon_0.1.swf

</parameters><br /><br />

<cl_autohorizon>

     pan=20

     tilt=10

     zoom=2

     pause=3

     speed=2

     quality=low

     on=true

     autorotate=false

</cl_autohorizon>

<!--// "on" above is different from "off" below 

ON here means at start - while OFF below means immediate disposition

//-->

<autorotator>

        speed = -1

        interval = 30

        pause = 1000

        quality = low 

</autorotator>

<hotspots>

<global

     testFunction = "pano.tint=0;pano.tintColor=#ac7a33;pano.tint=1,400"

>

<pano></pano>

<!--// ALLOWED CALLS FROM HOTSPOTS, with examples:

external.cl_autohorizon.tilt=-10;

external.cl_autohorizon.pan=10;

external.cl_autohorizon.zoom=1.2; (in degrees)

external.cl_autohorizon.pause=3;

external.cl_autohorizon.speed=2; (in seconds)

external.cl_autohorizon.quality=low; (medium, high, best)

external.cl_autohorizon.autorotate=true; 

external.cl_autohorizon.doNow=true;

external.cl_autohorizon.off=true; (or false)

external.cl_autohorizon.next=SomeFunctionNameHere; 

(as in: global.testFunction)

//-->

<spot id="001" static="1" sAlign="lt" staticX="67" staticY="30"  

url="files/nav/001.png" blockMouse="1" 

onClick="

external.cl_autohorizon.pan=200;

external.cl_autohorizon.doNow=true;

external.cl_autohorizon.next=global.testFunction;

"

/>

<spot id="002" static="1" sAlign="lt" staticX="101" staticY="30"  

url="files/nav/002.png" blockMouse="1"

onClick="

external.cl_autohorizon.pan=-270;

external.cl_autohorizon.doNow=true;

"

/>

<spot id="003" static="1" sAlign="lt" staticX="135" staticY="30"  

url="files/nav/003.png" blockMouse="1"

onClick="external.cl_autohorizon.off=true;"

/>

<spot id="004" static="1" sAlign="lt" staticX="169" staticY="30"  

url="files/nav/004.png" blockMouse="1"

onClick="external.cl_autohorizon.off=false;"

/>

<spot id="005" static="1" sAlign="lt" staticX="203" staticY="30"  

url="files/nav/005.png" blockMouse="1"

onClick="

external.cl_autohorizon.pause=5;

external.cl_autohorizon.tilt=0;

external.cl_autohorizon.zoom=1.5;

external.cl_autohorizon.pan=40;

"

/>

<spot id="006" static="1" sAlign="lt" staticX="236" staticY="30"  

url="files/nav/006.png" blockMouse="1"

onClick="external.cl_autohorizon.doNow=true;"

/>

<!--// Auto Rotate: //-->

<spot id="autorotator_button" static="1" sAlign="lt" staticX="33" staticY="30"  url="files/nav/rotate_normal.png" blockMouse="1"

onClick="toggleAutoRotation;"

toggleAutoRotation="pano.pan_v=0; pano.tilt_v=0; pano.zoom_v=0;external.autorotator.disabled+=1;"

/>

</global>

</hotspots>

</panorama>

The above shows all the parameters available to AutoHorizon, and how to properly write the code in your FPP XML file. You can simply omit (leave out) any parameter and that parameter will use its default setting. Default settings are:

pan= the current pan value
tilt= 0
zoom= the current zoom value
pause= 5 seconds
speed= 5 seconds
quality= low
on= true
autorotate= false

What do those settings mean? More brass tacks:
pan= the pan value you want your panorama to go to; ie, the "pan horizon"

tilt= the tilt value you want your panorama to go to; ie, the "tilt horizon"

zoom= the zoom value you want your panorama to go to; ie, the "zoom horizon"

pause= a whole number, in seconds (eg, 4)

speed= a whole number, in seconds (eg, 4)

quality= any of the default FPP quality settings for pano (eg "low", "high"); setting this to the AutoHorizon default or to low will result in the smoothest movement

on= true or false; whether or not to automatically "go to horizon" after the first panorama loads -- useful if your "home" view is different from your horizon view

autorotate= true or false; if you are using the autorotate plugin which comes with FPP, then "true" will tell AutoHorizon to stop auto-rotation before going to the horizon (resulting in the smoothest movement), and then restart auto-rotation when done.

Please feel free to leave comments below!

price: $20

Once purchased, Patrick will email you the Plugin and example XML files -- usually within 24-48 hours. Please contact Patrick with any questions.