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Google Street ViewGSVGSV17

"Get Rid of Street View, only Matterport"4600

Frisco, Texas
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user
I served a wonderful customer last week and provided them with both a Google Street View Tour and a Matterport Tour along with photographs. The customer had contacted me via the Google Street View program and I had offered him a free Matterport tour in addition to his Street View Tour as per my marketing.

After publishing his tours, he was quite thrilled with the Matterport Tour and it's single point of entry and how it looked on his website. He has been calling me daily with issues related to Street View.

My client's issues are:

#1) He wants a 'See Inside' button, which I no longer advertise, but he sees on other businesses. Google terminated this feature prior to the API release.

#2) He only wants 2-3 images showing up as entry points - and he wants to pick them and how they display. Google terminated this feature prior to the API release and has been showing ALL of the 360s in a tab when submitted via the API. Previously, one could create multiple 'constellations' and set the start image and position for each constellation and would only display those as 360s. To make things worse, Google claims that they calculate which should be the first and where the tour should start.

Just to give you a picture -- that left column below goes through all 50 or so of his 360s ... many of them face a wall.




These are the first 3 images that Google shows the world:




@Alin at GoThru.com believes that he has found a way to specify the order and has received approval from Google. This is a good thing -- however, it does not solve the fact that my customer is now asking for his entire tour to be removed and replaced instead with a single pano.

--

This raises 3 points:

#1) Will Matterport provide us with a 'Remove Streetview Tour' button?
#2) Will Matterport provide us with a way to only post 1 pano to Street View?
#3) Will Google recognize that our customers want proper service and do not like hearing 'Oh, I'm sorry we can't do that anymore because Google changed things.'

The Google Street View program is exciting to be a part of, but the changes recently have been extremely challenging to work with. @Alin and @PanoSkin have been amazing to the community in providing the best solutions to combat the changes, but I believe that even they are limited in being able to serve us as they would like.

Food for thought.
Post 1 IP   flag post
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Atlanta, Georgia
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user
@Metroplex360

On behalf of a Member watching the live stream from the 2017 Google Street View Summit, I ask the Google panel about "See Inside" ... The short answer: it is NOT coming back. Period.

For Matterport to be certified as Google Street View VR Ready, they MUST include a "Remove Street View Tour" button.

Dan
Post 2 IP   flag post
Panoskin
Support
Panoskin private msg quote post Address this user
You can't control what Google displays and how they display it no matter how bad you'd like to :-) nevertheless, being listed on Google and having an optimized places page is necessary. How much you show and whether or not 360's mąke a difference is the question. That's why @Panoskin we track the actually data.
Post 3 IP   flag post
jfantin private msg quote post Address this user
Sometimes being in the "end of the world" (I mean, Argentina) helps a lot when all those changes are taking place so quickly.

During the last two years the adoption rate of GSV in my country has been very slow with shop owners not understanding the benefits of being featured with images in Google Search and Google Maps.

The good thing is that as the GSV adoption rate gets momentum, the new customers will not ask for features that no longer exist (like "see inside" and "custom entry point".

Of course, this reduces the service's value because you cannot provide any of those, but nevertheless the increasing rate of use of mobile devices for searching and chosing places to eat and shop represents a potential increase in business volume for those working with GSV.

Will Matterport represent an opportunity? It remains to be seen. Matterport is slow for capturing images and sometimes this is a constraint. The same applies for very large places.

The way I see it, Matterport will be perfect for small and mid size places and not so competitive for the larger ones.

I know that you will save a lot during the editing and publishing process, but sometimes the time constraint comes from the customer who doen´t want to have you working during 10 hours to cover 12,000 sq ft.

Time will tell...
Post 4 IP   flag post
Frisco, Texas
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user
The gold rush to post to Street view is interesting as Google's platform leaves a lot to be desired.

@Panoskin the removal of see inside is sad, but the complete jumble that is the 360s tab is a serious problem.

Folks, imagine if Matterport did not allow us to set a start point. Imagine if iGuide automatically generated a thumbnail bar with random order and positioning.

Sometimes I feel a bit insane when it comes to Street view.

@DanSmigrod I am glad you asked about see inside. I still cannot fathom what Google intends to offer that is better.
Post 5 IP   flag post
armstrongc private msg quote post Address this user
Hi Chris.

All reasonable observations about Street View's limited support for tours today. The recent summit in Tokyo was a great opportunity for many of us on the team to hear, first-hand, how you'd prioritize these requests relative to the many others coming from the community. It's clear that these improvements will further carry Street View beyond ground-level exploration to better serve professional tour providers. Among the top requests we're either already working on or looking into supporting:

1. Ranking improvements, based on connectivity, quality, and recency.
2. Exposing new entry points from Maps listings in the absence of "See Inside".
3. Making thumbnails more useful by showing more of the environments they represent.
4. Giving you the ability to publish 360 photos but not have them appear in Maps listing galleries (have them only be accessible within Street View via links from adjacent, connected 360 photos).
5. Also potentially providing the ability to set a 360 photo's starting orientation.
6. Limiting a tour's entry point to 360 photos on the first floor when a tour spans multiple floors (once the SV Publish API supports floor selection).

We'll keep plugging away.

Charles Armstrong
Post 6 IP   flag post
Frisco, Texas
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user
@armstrongc Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with me, and by extension, the WGA Forum. We're a vocal bunch as we're an unofficial forum for everything panoramic and your presence here is quite a gift.

These are all great initiatives. Please keep in mind that at the end of the day - we have a burden of explanation to those who hire us to shoot tours for them. Customers have a certain set of expectations and when a photographer fails to meet them due to a changing platform, it places both the photographer and customer in an awkward position.

What truly defines a Google Street View Tour?

At the end of the day, what are we selling at this point? Google has defined it here:

https://www.google.com/streetview/hire/

I think that the bit of marketing here is good, but quite ambiguous in some ways.

There are 3 excellent value propositions made under the banner of 'Show Up When it Matters Most.' But does Street View still show up when it matters most?




"Google Search - Your Google Business listing is your company's most visible asset. Improve your presence with Street View content."

This is truly where customers want their tours to begin -- this is so critical. "See Inside" did this before and to an untrained eye, it looks like this is marketing the 'See Inside' view -- however, it's just circling imagery in general. There's a general consensus that this is the territory that we want to be able to sell our customers -- a reserved spot where their tour will begin, at the point that they want it to begin at. It's the most essential feature of GSV.




"Google Maps - Plant your flag. When prospective customers seek you out on Google Maps, help ensure that their first encounters are great ones."

I think we've been 'nerfed' here a bit. It's the very reason that I started this post. My customer asked that I remove his tour as the first impression was a random tour facing a random spot in his business. Again, we used to be able to define which images showed up as starting points for each of our constellation and we could set the thumbnail ourselves.

I cannot remove my tour and requested that support help me and received a "We can't do this." response due to a migration issue -- I'm thinking it may be a misunderstanding as this tour was submitted via the current system, not the old system, so we'll see how that ends.




"Give Travelers a tour of your hotel when they find your property on Google Search or Google Maps."

I don't work with hospitality at the current time. Previously, Business View offered a 'hotel mode' which truly allowed Street View to be utilized well. It has been well communicated that these features will return later (multi-floor, etc).

---

In closing - I am having a very difficult time selling Street View because what my customers expect and what I'm able to deliver is a very different thing. I cannot wait for the gap between what was and what is closes. In the meantime, please be sure to communicate these things with the photographers. Petitions are being signed, and while they might not hold any power, they are a great representation of the number of people who are having a very difficult time selling Google Street View due to the changes in the platform.
Post 7 IP   flag post
armstrongc private msg quote post Address this user
Thanks Chris.

We hear you loud and clear. Really. We'll continue to try to navigate a changing landscape to keep Google's indoor tour offering pertinent—and in line with consumers', merchants', photographers', and Google's interests. The latter is something that those outside the company may not have insight into, but Street View is just one component of the Google Maps ecosystem. Changes that collectively improve the Google Maps consumer experience—like removing the See Inside entry point—can be painful for those of us closest to the change. But we'll keep working on new and better ways to bring this content to the forefront while balancing the broader needs of everyone else who uses these products. Improvements are actively being worked on that should help close the gap.

Have a good weekend,
Charles
Post 8 IP   flag post
aarongeis private msg quote post Address this user
@armstrongc I do hope that ranking improvements will be coming soon. I also think that everyone involved with GSV deserves some transparency with regard to the click-through ads(?) that appear on the Maps carousel. Using a hotel tour I published directly with the SV App as an example - my client asked to pre-approve my high quality (10K px wide, sharp, color balanced, well exposed) images, they said the images were really nice and I should go ahead with publishing to SV. Within minutes of publishing the images appeared on the Maps carousel and the Search image panel. I sent a link to my client. They couldn't see all of the tour as the click-and-go navigation was jumping all over the place. I went to Maps to confirm that all of the tour was appearing as expected. All of the tour images had disappeared. Same on the Search image panel. This hotel has the usual glut of Oyster-linked mediocre images and scraped images placed by booking dot com and others. Filing a case resulted in the tour images being replaced on Maps and the Search image panel but if the client hadn't raised a concern they would have no tour at all unless I happened to go back to have a look for some reason. The tour images on the Maps carousel are ranking behind 20+ images that have the click-through function and four really poor quality and/or inappropriate UCG images. I've transferred the tour images to my client, they have accepted the transfer, several days on there has been no ranking improvement.

So my questions are -

1. Will our tour images ever have a chance to outrank the click-through placements?

2. Can we help our clients create their own click-through placements so that users can be directed to their websites and not only the third-party booking websites that take a cut of our clients' profits?

I could go on at length about how my clients feel about those third-party booking agents being able to scrape images from their websites to use for the advertising purposes of the booking agents, and how I feel about it when the scraped images are my own, but that's a subject for another thread.

Thanks in advance for your helpful reply,

Aaron

A snapshot of my tour imagery



An Oyster image that ranks at the top of the carousel



Two UGC images that rank in front of the tour




Post 9 IP   flag post
aarongeis private msg quote post Address this user
Ok, so I'm not really surprised I didn't get an answer to my questions. I've asked these questions at least twice before on the official SVT forum and never had a reply. It seems to me that there are two possible explanations for the silence on this issue.

1. Someone in the Google Maps ecosystem is selling these ads to enterprise level companies such as Oyster, Rumbo and Booking dot com and the service isn't available to us and our customers.

2. The click-throughs are Schema markup spam and Google hasn't developed tools to remove these spammy images. If this is true the spammers effectively control the Maps image carousel as these images hold the first 20+ positions in many hotel and restaurant listings.

Google's own studies of the advantages of having an SV tour are focused on hotel's and restaurants which are increasingly affected by this issue so I do think it's worth sorting out as a matter of priority.
Post 10 IP   flag post
armstrongc private msg quote post Address this user
Aaron,

I do my best to field your various comments across the channels where they crop up, but the best channel for them, if you want a response, is thru the Local Guides Connect forum for Street View trusted photographers. That's where we have a trained ops team awaiting you. On forums like this, where I sometimes add some transparency around top issues, I have to cut off so as to focus on fixing the issues rather than reporting on them.

To address your suspicions, no, we are not selling image result spaces to Oyster, Rumbo, Booking, or anyone else. We are committed to providing a platform where money does not buy top placement. That said, I agree with you that some of these corpora are ranking higher than great quality, tailor-shot SV trusted tours—and that's a real shame. We're actively working on addressing this.

As I've said before, please do not take a lack of response on my part to mean anything nefarious nor to imply tepid interest. This is simply not an official channel for Google Maps, nor am I the designated party for our day-to-day messaging, so what you're getting is my best effort to simply let you know we're on your side and working to make things better.
Post 11 IP   flag post
aarongeis private msg quote post Address this user
Thank you for taking the time to reply Charles.

I have full respect and admiration for the team that helps photographers with matters of policy and process on the official forum. Over the course of the past five years, I have relied on their support in an attempt to consolidate knowledge about the SV system; both to better serve my clients and also in a consultancy role to provide tuition for other photographers. I have asked them about the click-through images a number of times. They haven't replied to those questions in any way.

It sounds like you're saying those click-throughs are a type of spam, or at least artificially ranking higher than they should. If the process is not officially 'spam' it would be great to learn how we can provide that service to our clients. Again I've asked this more than once on the official forum.

I hear you saying that you're on my/our side and that things are going to get better but what I am saying is that in real world terms of the presenting the current system to clients and the pace of improvements versus setbacks it doesn't feel like Google values high-quality SV tours over potential gross numbers of 360 images and many of the recent changes could hardly be described as improvements from the perspective of a professional content producer.

I also understand that the manager of the program can't be expected to offer front line support. I don't think anyone is asking for that. It would be great if perhaps once a month, even once a quarter, you could provide a short statement addressing the issues that the support team don't have answers for and communicating your vision of how professional content providers, and even active Guides, fit into your plans.

Kind regards,

Aaron
Post 12 IP   flag post
armstrongc private msg quote post Address this user
Hi Aaron.

Good point. I know there's a limit to what our team is primed to answer questions on, but I'm sorry that in those cases you're not getting a response. I like the idea of a quarterly update. I'll take that back to the Operations team and see about making this happen.

Regarding the imagery that's outranking yours but often shouldn't, I'm not suggesting that anyone has gamed the system, it's just that the system constantly needs to be re-calibrated as more and more sources bring imagery to the table. We'll have this refactored soon, and you should see a much better standing for your imagery at that time.

Cheers,
Charles
Post 13 IP   flag post
aarongeis private msg quote post Address this user
That's great. I think a quarterly communication from management level SV staff would go a long way to making professional contributors feel valued and heard.

Thank you for stating clearly that the click-throughs are considered 'fair-play', I'm very glad to move one step forward in my understanding of how they fit into the Maps ecosystem.

My thinking is that if I can find a tutorial explaining how to create those click-through frames I could sell that as an add-on service that would allow my clients to gain equal footing with the booking agents that are keen to funnel my client's customers through their services. It seems like it would be fair to give hotel searchers a chance to proceed directly to my client's websites to make their booking rather than only presenting them with click-throughs to the booking agents on the Maps carousel.

'Why does it matter?' some may ask. Sites like booking dot com take a percentage of the profits and they also don't require a deposit on the bookings. Not taking a deposit can create real headaches for hoteliers as some customers will make bookings and then not show up, leaving the hoteliers unable to sell those rooms, sometimes during peak season.

Understanding and addressing my client's concerns helps me provide a top level professional service to independent hoteliers and also multi-national branded hotels so it would be great to finally find a solution for this issue.

Best wishes,

Aaron
Post 14 IP   flag post
armstrongc private msg quote post Address this user
Hi Aaron.

Good news: we're planning to begin a quarterly update, thanks to your suggestion.

I'm not the product manager for the Booking.com-style image feeds which populate Maps listings, so I can't speak to how those links are generated nor how third-parties can/cannot generate similar links, but to the best of my knowledge there's no way for explicitly-contributing parties to add such a link. Obviously, this means that explicitly-contributed imagery needs to be on at least equal footing with imagery from these feeds. We'll get it worked out very soon.

Thanks for the color explaining why hoteliers are unhappy. It's added ammunition that I've relayed to the right team.

At this point, I'll need to sign off for a while, but thanks for the useful exchange.

Charles
Post 15 IP   flag post
aarongeis private msg quote post Address this user
Hi Charles,

I look forward to reading the quarterly updates with great interest, and some pride.

Have a great weekend!

Aaron
Post 16 IP   flag post
aarongeis private msg quote post Address this user
Hi Charles,

How are you? Well I hope.

I'm hoping that you will still be receiving notifications on this thread as I don't have a direct contact route for you.

I participated in the SV Loan program so I could try out a Theta and the auto connect system.

I followed the instructions given very carefully and also tried some workarounds but what I discovered was that using the auto-capture function resulted in the GPS data for all of the images being recorded as the same as the first image. So it didn't really work at all.

Anyway, when I tried to return the camera via FedEx using the included return label the staff at FedEx was unable to scan the barcode on that label so they had me fill out another shipping label as well.

I've now received an invoice from FedEx billing me for the return shipping.

I forwarded that to the SV Loan team, who looked into it and told me that as I hadn't used the included return label I would be responsible for the charges.

I did use the included return label and, as I expected some Google generated cock-up as that is par for the course, I took a moment to photograph the prepared box before I left the FedEx office showing the included return label attached to the top of the box.

Could you please get in touch with the SV Loan team in Amsterdam and tell them to take care of the charges.

Many thanks for your help with this matter.

Kind regards,

Aaron
Post 17 IP   flag post
armstrongc private msg quote post Address this user
Hi Aaron.

I'm sorry to hear that your experience wasn't good with the Theta. It doesn't actually have GPS on board, so that signal is captured from your phone. If you give it another try in the future, I would recommend trying another phone.

As for the FedEx label, I'll see if I can get this escalated for you. Please private message me your email address and I'll help route you to the right people.

Best regards,
Charles
Post 18 IP   flag post
Frisco, Texas
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user
@armstrongc / @aaron - The Ricoh Theta S is a pretty poor camera for Street View. It's best as a selfie cam as the depth of field is just not there and resulting imagery is extremely flat. I purchased one for GSV and quit using it after 3 tours and rescanned them with a Matterport Pro-1 and published the panos from the 2k tiles. This was what led to me developing MP2SV as I managed to create a pretty good workflow.

Unfortunately, it didn't sit well with Matterport for me to be extracting the panos. After the sunsetting of the GSV Business View system, the workflow has become increasingly difficult.

When injesting to Street View via API -- or even when using GoThru - if the panos (photospheres) contain correct GPS out of the gate, then everything will link up quite nice. Matterport can simulate GPS and adjust relatively when publishing. Previously, the Business View system used photogrammy to automatically align most panos --
and those that it did successfully were ridiculously accurate to each other in position and distance.

Concerning the Ricoh Theta, though. If the phone's GPS is accurate and you are hiding under the camera (and not hiding around a corner), it should be able to record accurate GPS. If you are hiding around a corner with your phone, then the GPS is going to be your hiding spot. Not the best strategy.

Concerning
Post 19 IP   flag post
aarongeis private msg quote post Address this user
Hi Chris,rnrnThanks for your input. As it goes I was quite aware of the Theta's spec and operational limitations before I borrowed it as part of the Street View Loan program.rnrnI would never have considered using a Theta for tours that I charge a fee for as the resolution and sharpness is too low for professional purposes in my view, I actually feel the same way about the first version of the Matterport camera as well.

The second version looks to be a bit better but I still think that the Matterport business model is deeply suspect and since I've been a part of this forum I've seen that many Matterport users share my concerns.rnrnMy proposed use for the Theta as to do 360 mapping of local walking paths that haven't been covered by Sv in other ways. The SV team suggested that it would be possible to do that using the SV App on 'auto-capture' mode and have the take be auto-connected.

Trying to map walking paths by pressing a button on my phone for every capture and then manually connecting the results would be far too labor intensive for an unpaid hobbyist endeavour (in my view).rnrnWhen using the Theta with the SV App in 'auto-capture' the app does not record the GPS data for each image, only for the very first image in the series.rnrnCharles suggests that my phone might be the issue.

As I was using my iPhone 6S Plus I would say that my phone's hardware was entirely up to the task, if there was an issue with what phone I was using that could only be that the iOS version of the SV App was possibly lacking a feature that might be found in the Andriod version of the app.

I couldn't say for sure whether or not that might be the case.rnrnWhen I explained the issue to the SV Loan Team they said I should 'follow the instructions', an absolutely expected response from them as in five plus years of working with Google support staff I have encountered only one team member who was able to give useful technical advice and he departed in 2013.rnrnLest anyone suspect that I was somehow unable to understand and follow the instructions, it might be useful to know that I taught myself to build websites with Dreamweaver using only textbooks and then turned around and taught an accredited college course in Dreamweaver, successfully, and I received only positive feedback from my students.

So I am 100% confident that I was following the instructions correctly, the problem is that the SV app didn't work as advertised.rnrnI also greatly miss the previous auto-alignment system that was part of the SV Editor publishing system.

Why we had to lose that functionality in the changeover to the App/API system is a mystery to me. And is on the long list of disappointments with the way the SV publishing system has been managed over the course of the past several years.
Post 20 IP   flag post
Frisco, Texas
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user
@aarongeis Totally agree - Theta S and Pro-1 are both below ideal for GSV. Pro-1 does beat it with 2K cubefaces generating 8192x4096 panos (in theory, of course, because there's no way to download them). Pro-1 also offers better sharpness and depth of field.

One thing that's going to be a bit of a bummer about Matterport's post to GSV is that you won't be able to edit your panos first to enhance them. However, what you should be able to do is post to GSV, setup an account with GoThru.co, download your panos, edit them, and then upload and replace them and the tour will then be enhanced!

The loss of the auto-align system in exchange for the API has been devastating for me and has cost me at least 40 hours of time (no joke) so far - and I'm not a high volume GSV photographer. Luckily, 3rd parties like GoThru.co are -really- doing their best to find solutions.

P.S. Using Dreamweaver to make websites is harder than coding them by hand in HTML with CSS and PHP/JS code that fully validates to W3C standards I've done web development since 1998, and I found Dreamweaver to be more overly complicated and cumbersome. So as a backhanded compliment - I'm impressed that ANYONE is able to be proficient with it.
Post 21 IP   flag post
Frisco, Texas
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user
BTW - as an update to this, the client still has not paid me for the tour I started this thread with. I'm waiting on him to remove the tour - we're having difficulties - as I transferred the rights to him (shouldn't've) and the deletion options are not available to him. One that's done, I'm using an experimental exploit to upload his tour and strip the PlaceID off of all but 4 of the panos so that only 4 panos will display in the photo reel.

In addition, I now understand how to determine the orientation of the thumbnails -- a feature that Matterport will need to implement.

Once Matterport's GSV launches, I'll be analyzing it and posting a list of things it gets right and things it needs to improve. I'm hoping that the list of things that need improving will be short. I'll also likely explain how the missing features can be made up for by using GoThru.co to remoderate the tour.
Post 22 IP   flag post
aarongeis private msg quote post Address this user
Hi Chris,

I can see the attraction of getting a second use out of your Matterport scans but, without having first-hand experience of doing the post, download, edit, upload process I kind of think it might be easier to just shoot with a DSLR rig after doing the Matterport shoot to get the SV tour imagery. Shooting spins with a DSLR rig goes fast and with a decent machine the processing also goes pretty quickly.

I don't think I would have chosen Dreamweaver myself but my Head of Department asked if I could teach it. I wanted the teaching hours so I said I could probably figure it out. I found it easy enough to use but I was setting my own briefs so to speak so I taught my students to build the type of websites Dreamweaver is good at building rather than trying to use it to do whatever a client might dream up.

When Google came a calling and asked me to do SV tours I was in the habit of giving all clients 30-day terms but in the first year of doing SV stuff I learned the hard way that small business owners are a mixed bunch and after a couple of write-offs I started taking payment before delivery for all but large corporations. I thought I would get more resistance to that but back in the day of working with the Google contract and zero ability to take down tours I said it was Google policy (which, reading between the lines, was true as they didn't recognize the creator's intellectual property rights as their contract passed the rights to the business so publishing a tour before taking payment basically amounted to giving the tour away for free, which was against Google policy). I've found that taking payment before delivery reduces the amount of time I spend chasing payments to such a degree that I could actually lower my prices when working that way. Which is to say that large corporations get credit terms of 30-days, they regularly take more like 90 days to actually pay, so I charge them more in the first place to cover the line of credit that they expect me to extend to them.

Stripping the PlaceID; ok but how do you get them to show up so you can connect them? Is this something that can be done in GoThru? Good workaround if it works.

I thought I had solved the thumbnail orientation by creating a PS droplet to offset each stitch to center on the first frame I shot. When shooting I center the first frame on the perspective I'd like to see in the thumbnail. That works immediately upon uploading but then Google comes along a week or two later and screws them all up, not facing North but just randomly twisted in unhelpful directions and sometimes looking at a 45º angle into the corner of the wall/ceiling.

I'm still shooting SV tours for businesses that come to me, including branded hotel chains, but I live in fear that the fact that the images now take 10 seconds to load, that hotels are singled out for not getting a thumbnail on the KGs and that everyone is baffled by the current UX will eventually sour the relationships I've worked so hard to develop. Honestly, that's unlikely to happen as I tell my clients what the state of play is but I still worry about it because I believe I should be able to stand behind all of the work that I provide. If Google didn't have the dominance in search that it does I would tell people that SV tours aren't good value for money but simply because my clients customers are so likely to see whatever is on Google products I feel like my clients should go ahead and 'make do' with what Google is offering as the hosting is free and we could use the imagery in other ways if they would like a tour that actually works.
Post 23 IP   flag post
Frisco, Texas
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user
Quote:
Originally Posted by aarongeis

I can see the attraction of getting a second use out of your Matterport scans but, without having first-hand experience of doing the post, download, edit, upload process I kind of think it might be easier to just shoot with a DSLR rig after doing the Matterport shoot to get the SV tour imagery. Shooting spins with a DSLR rig goes fast and with a decent machine the processing also goes pretty quickly.


The beauty of Matterport is to shoot a Matterport Tour and GSV tour at the same time and offer both the 3D Tour for their website and the GSV Tour for their Maps Listing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by aarongeis

Stripping the PlaceID; ok but how do you get them to show up so you can connect them? Is this something that can be done in GoThru? Good workaround if it works.


Yes, GoThru supports this. You build the tour, connect everything, and then select which panos will contain the PlaceID, and which won't. The tour navigates perfectly, except that tours w/o the PlaceID will not show the business name while you're on them. It's a small price to pay to be able to tame the photo reel and GoThru makes it easy -- while warning that this workaround is experimental and is not guaranteed as a permanent solution.

Quote:
Originally Posted by aarongeis

I thought I had solved the thumbnail orientation by creating a PS droplet to offset each stitch to center on the first frame I shot. When shooting I center the first frame on the perspective I'd like to see in the thumbnail. That works immediately upon uploading but then Google comes along a week or two later and screws them all up, not facing North but just randomly twisted in unhelpful directions and sometimes looking at a 45º angle into the corner of the wall/ceiling.


I've found the same thing. Alin @GoThru posted a video on YouTube about this, but the solution seems a bit more complicated than what I'm willing to work with. I believe it was a bit screwy, but worked.

Quote:
Originally Posted by aarongeis
I'm still shooting SV tours for businesses that come to me, including branded hotel chains, but I live in fear that the fact that the images now take 10 seconds to load, that hotels are singled out for not getting a thumbnail on the KGs and that everyone is baffled by the current UX will eventually sour the relationships I've worked so hard to develop.


I -understand- 100%.

Quote:
Originally Posted by aarongeis
Honestly, that's unlikely to happen as I tell my clients what the state of play is but I still worry about it because I believe I should be able to stand behind all of the work that I provide. If Google didn't have the dominance in search that it does I would tell people that SV tours aren't good value for money but simply because my clients customers are so likely to see whatever is on Google products I feel like my clients should go ahead and 'make do' with what Google is offering as the hosting is free and we could use the imagery in other ways if they would like a tour that actually works.


... that's a Matterport tour!

So that's the beauty of Matterport, isn't it? Create a Matterport 3D tour and get a GSV tour too! The problem is that Matterport's solution is not available right now, therefore, the only conventional solution is to mass export 360 Snapshots and upscale the images and upload -- which is a bit yucky and cumbersome. Any methods involving extracting the panos from the tour violates TOS, so that's out of the question for all but the most desperate.
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At this time I have to say that I am a little bit tired of the Matterport's Terms of Service.
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