Panoskin Street View Editor / GoThru Editor4161
Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
Extremely impressed by this teaser. From the looks of it, there will be support for multiple constellations. For those who are not familiar with this, think 'floors', but not limited to just floors  Could be different areas that should each have their own start location. Sign Up Today at: https://www.lcp360.com/street-view-is-coming/ -- LCP360.com is a great company that has done great panoramic photography. Of the three mentioned vendors that have developed tools with the BETA Google Maps API (Garden Gnome, LCP360 and GoThru) -- these are the pros that I'm hedging all my bets on. They've even gone so far as to offer this new tool FREE for existing Google Trusted Photographers. How can you go wrong? -- GoThru is $24.95/mo. I was able to login to their system tonight using my Google Account and decided to give it a play... looks very incomplete (mistake to allow access?) -- only 1 link between panos can be made ... so if you're making a straight line, great.  The UI is neat, but unfinished... and here's the test I made ... I can't reorient the third pano and decided to just give up ... it took the address, but the map view seems locked to the middle of the ocean for me ... https://gothru.co/PbSWqQ68r?index=scene_1&hlookat=135&vlookat=7&fov=120 BROKEN |
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Bobby private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Looks great! Dumb question here I'm sorry.....purely because I am a newbie to the Trusted program. I stitch my photos myself (use the clause auto pano head) with great results. How on earth do Geo tag the photos? my Nikon has wifi so maybe this way? Sorry as this is not the right forum to be asking but man oh man the whole google business view is in a shambles and information is so inconsistent! | ||
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Bobby No need to tag the panos. You can place them directly on the map based on the editor you use. Since you weren't capturing GPS at the time, you'd most likely not want to tag the GPS after the fact. Also, if you are shooting with a camera that has GPS like the Ricoh Theta S, then there's no need. And I agree, the business view thing is in shambles. Having a 3rd party API is a great idea - however, it makes sense for Google to still HAVE an official system for submitting tours. By Google providing a robust and reliable API, they've done half the work. It makes no sense for them to not provide their own system. a 3rd party submission API is great to allow companies like Ricoh, Matterport, etc, to make their own uploader... But I digress .. and Google's Street View system has been rather unreliable for the past year -- so happy good things are coming! |
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jfantin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Hi @Metroplex360, just 30 minutes ago I posted in the Trusted Photographers forum a question related to these three options that we will have for publishing our tours. The thing is that starting March 31st we will have to pay for publishing (one provider charges a license and the other a monthly fee plus a certain amount for each additional tour). Panoskin says it will be free, but I will not be sure about what "free" means until the definitive product and its TOS are officialy communicated. The fact is that unless there is a free alternative, this will mean the end of the free tour offered to small local shops that deserve it because they contribute so much to the community, or non for profits that you could help donating your time for making a tour. I agree with you in that Google should set up the standard maintaining its own free system and allow others to offer superior alternatives charging for that extras. I have seen Panoskin and if what they say is true (including the free basic tool), I am in. I would gladly pay them for a pro version and extra features as long as they are true to their announcement that their product, a basic but functional app, will be free to Trusted Photographers |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @jfantin - About Panoskin being free -- I agree. It's clearly the best solution of the 3 and being free makes little sense unless they have another way to monetize. I just received a survey from them asking if I'd be interested in an affiliate program to make residual $$. I'm thinking it's free to publish to Google Maps, but in order to keep an account, the account itself with storage of panos and perhaps a stand-alone viewer will incur a fee. The free alternative is the Google Street View App.  LCP360.com (Panoskin) is a good company. I've been jealous in the past at some of the great high quality walk through panorama tours they've done for large companies... they are pros. It's great that they are one of the vendors. Garden Gnome is cool and I've used Pano2VR for years - however, I didn't care for v5.0 -- felt that it became cluttered, disorganized and too complicated/cumbersome for its own good. There are too many ways to NOT make the best choice available. Adding Street View to the app just adds more things and .... meh. GoThru bothers me as I can access their clearly unfinished product and parts look great, parts are clearly half-baked. It just seems subpar and they've spent more time on the marketing and establishing their price points before delivering on value. |
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jfantin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I believe the most difficult part of establishing a freemium business model is to find the exact point that separates what is going to be free and what is going to have a price. The free part has to be good enough for basic needs, but short enough as to leave you wanting more. We come from a free platform that was created as such just because Google makes a profit with the content uploaded and hence it made total sense to provide us a free tool to work with. The quid pro quo was fair: you don´t charge me at all and I will provide you material that you can profit on by selling ads. The new paradigm is that Google keeps selling ads but now we have to pay for uploading, which I don´t see totally right. I know that Google has the market power to impose these and other conditions and we are just TOS takers. No right to complain and no alternatives (it is kind of a monopoly at this stage). My only concern is that the App is really bad, not enough for a free platform, and paying for uploading when the market is so competitive and there is no real possibility of transfering the higher cost to the customers, puts us in a worst situation. If you think about it, Google planned this from the begining. First they opened the door, encouraged us to buy equipment and build a business based on a free and decent enough platform, and then they started downgrading the service up to a point where you ask for a better solution to keep doing the very same thing. Now the new thing takes out a few hundred dollars from your pockets (if you multiply that for the large number of Trusted Pros you realize that we are talking tens of millions here). I find this an unfair way of Google conducting this business. Of course I don´t want anybody to work for free, but I believe that Google should be the one paying the third parties for developing a solution to a service that they deliberately abandoned causing an economic harm that wasn´t supposed to exist when we entered into the business. It is an unfair change of rules. At least this is how I see it. |
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Bobby private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Well said and agree@jfantin. However google is google and we are fighting a giant. Excuse me again for my ignorance here but Matterport to Google street view? IS that what you were saying @Metroplex360 ? I had thought this was a failed conversion and not allowed by the T&C's? | ||
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @jfantin - I just got their e-mail about their manual stitching service for $1/pano. At that rate though, I really think they must be covering their bases on providing a full service solution at an incredible pricepoint in order to secure dominance in the new world of Google Street View... https://www.panostitcher.com I agree with your points about Google's business model. I totally believe that Google should be responsible for offering a web based creation system for Street View in addition to this API. And yes, I completely agree with you that the App is bad. For some reason, on the Google Trusted Forums, they must be moderating people's opinions as no one seems to be complaining. I gave it a try and not only is using an app for creation silly, but the app was cumbersome and basic as one would expect. I do not think that this was planned though I'll disagree with you there. I think that Google decided that they don't want to provide support for Street View Their solution is bizarre and I cannot think of any examples of a company continuing to run a program but selectively dumping the responsibility of software development on select companies with a beta test of an API .... and to think that none of these solutions are available yet on March 24 -- just one week from the close date on the Street View Editor.Silly. At least I am optimistically hoping that the lcp360.com solution is going to be better than what was offered before. |
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jfantin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Metropex360 You are probably right. I may have given Google too much credit for a Machiavellian move that happened only by chance $1/pano for stitching seems like a lot. You better buy a 360 camera with autostitching and you save hundreds of dollars per year if you have a decent flow of projects. It looks like there is evolving an echosystem around StreetView that has the hope of reaping the pockets of the Trusted Photographers, but I believe that they will be surprised by the number of photographers that in the end will throw any money on it. I know a lot of SV photographers that were contributing just as a hobby and I believe they will keep using the app or stop doing it. From my perspective, I will wait and see. The StreetView market is not as big in Argentina and stopping doing it will not do any harm to my budget. Anyway, having a good solution at hand where you can pay as you go, charging the cost to your customer, makes more sense than purchasing a license or a monthly fee. But let´s see what happens in the next week! |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @jfantin - Agreed. However -- they are stitching and doing a bit of correction too... for people with 10-20 panos who lack the skills to do this, there's value there. Street View is in shambles right now ... the trusted forums have a record number of people complaining that nothing they upload is going through... I am waiting for a tour to go through -- second day now and it's on step 1 -- 'processing the initialization stage'... I cannot wait for PanoSkin to launch! |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Update to GoThru.co - they seem to have fixed the map bug... I'm having trouble aligning and linking tours though ... it's -not- easy to use and seems just as bad as the app. | ||
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Alin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Metroplex360 please take a look at this tutorial and give it 5min to learn how to align the panoramas. If you have such big trouble with aligning the panoramas, let's do a Google HangOut one on one and teach you. Right now, what you have access to, is version .2, we will be updating soon to version .3, which will add: 1) link locking 2) panoramas numbers added on the map 3) auto position of linked panoramas (this feature is AWESOME) and you have to try it (when will be release next week). 4) GoThru supports levels 5) Auto nadir patching 6) Preview Just some facts: Up till now we had over 300 tours published by GoThru clients. GoThru Editor has loaded 900 panoramas in 20s on a machine that has 16GB or RAM Also on Monday the 27th we will open the publishing to everyone, and the whole month of April GoThru Street View Editor will allow everyone to publish up to 10 tours at not cost.  |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
@Alin - Thanks for posting. I read your analysis of my post on Facebook. Now, before I start talking "the same BS", I did use the moderation tool extensively during that session. The map was broken. It was showing a blue ocean and no combination of actions could resolve this issue. In addition, I was unable to create a scenario where two divergent paths exist and reconnect. This is why I strongly affirm that GoThru.co's editor is available, but unfinished and perhaps was prematurely made accessible to a user who needs more than just creating a linear tour. Your example video shows only a linear tour with only one pano in place that has two different options. -- The addition of automatic linking will be a game changer, and I look forward to seeing that in action. I'm curious about the '20s' reference and whether or not that's a hard limit to how many panos can be in a constellation (or whatever you will be calling it). While it may not be optimal for ingestion - I upload rather large sets of panos and Google has handled them quite well. - I'm trying to think of a diplomatic response to some of the silly generalizations that your Facebook followers stated about me and about Matterport Owners... I think that it would be wonderful for you to have a chat with Dan Smigrod on the forums here. We were all brought together here by initially because we purchased Matterport Cameras. Our users are very diverse and offer services beyond Matterport including Google Street View, Photography, Drone Photography, Video Production, etc. I've been a Google Trusted Photographer for several years and for a short period of time was extracting panos from Matterport Tours and publishing to Street View as a service (mp2sv.com) -- Example. I am currently providing this service as a 3rd party for the iGuide system. I see incredible value in providing clients with a 'See Inside' tour and expanding their marketing and visibility of Google. I do personally believe that the Matterport experience is superior to Google Street View's player. The Showcase player provides a much more immersive experience with smoother navigation, transitions and additional features that cannot be found in Street View. Navigating a 3D space allows for multiple floors to be experienced and for transitions to truly simulate distance in a compelling manner. As both products are valuable to clients, I proudly provide both. -- We have GREAT pool of enthusiastic people who read these forums who would be interested in your services. It would be a great idea to establish your presence here and post videos and updates. We're excited about new things. We are harsh critics too -- and Matterport has received more backlash here than any other company or service by a longshot. Hope to hear from you soon! |
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aarongeis private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Hi Metroplex360, Are you familiar with the term 'advertorial'? It refers to a piece of writing that is presented as an unbiased editorial but for which the writer has in fact been compensated, either in cash or benefits. I don't have any affiliation with any of the API developers working on new editors and I'm looking forward to being able to write an unbiased review of all of the options when I have access to them. When LCP offered the possibility of becoming an 'Ambassador' for their product in exchange for early access I thought, 'you want me to endorse a product I haven't had a chance to try?' At the bottom of your screen grab of posts on GoThru's FB thread, Alin speculates that you are an Ambassador for LCP. If you are then I think you should declare that whenever you post something endorsing their product. In my opinion not being clear about that would seem unethical. Perhaps I, and others, have been unduly harsh about Matterport. When they were first introduced to the UK they sent me an invitation to buy their camera for several thousand pounds and then pay them several hundred more for annual hosting my thoughts were - 1. what technology is in the camera that makes it so expensive? It seems to me that it is much like a Theta but rearranged for binocular capture, which allows the software to do the 3D modeling. Not, as far as I can tell, the camera 2. what happens to my investment if Matterport goes under? Can't use or resell the camera? Hosting evaporates? Looking at your website it's clear that you've recouped your investment so great, it can work as a business model and Matterport seems to be going strong. In your OP you ask re: LCP 'How can you go wrong?' Well LCP is an agency doing SV shoots. They're asking their potential competitors to hand over their logins and provide a wealth of information about what shoots their doing, for whom. So if someone landed a contract with a major hotel chain and LCP could see that then LCP could target that client's marketing department with offers of low priced tours. They could possibly do some other things as well. I don't know LCP and probably they wouldn't do any of that, but it seems to me that they could and it would be a good incentive for offering a free tool to other shooters. I'm sure you're probably a good guy with a good business mind but I also think if you're an LCP ambassador you should say so. And if it were me I'd wait to promote their product until I'd seen actual published results rather than just a slick video. Kind regards, Aaron |
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Alin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Metroplex360, yes you are right we did had a bug when you ingested your panoramas. What happen there, we added support for GPS metadata and that broke for a brief period of time the positioning of the panoramas on the map. We did notice that issue very fast and went back and fixed the panoramas position for every tour that was affected. It just happen you to test in that time window. Regarding the fact that you can not use the overly again, when moderating, after you connected a panorama. I do not see it as an issue. In Google Editor you did not had that option and you could moderate very well on the map, which GoThru supports. Also we will add this option later on, we just need to fix the math behind. We do not want to offer a solution that it's buggy. Actually we've fixed the math, we just need to enable the function. I did moderate constellations that has a close circle and it worked very well for me. What I think upset me was that you qualified us as a bad product. We are still building and improving as we speak. Google Editor had a lot of issues and bugs since they open it to the trusted community, have you qualified that product as being bad? Also you rooted for a LCP moderator based on a screenshot, yes they have a nice video, that's what they do, marketing. But that doesn't mean the Editor will be stellar, we need hands on before comparing two products. I do not have anything against any of GoThru competition, the matter of fact competition is good for the end user. It lowers the price and makes the product better. The $1 per panoramas was borrowed by everyone form GoThru, we said that since 31st and now all our competitors offer it. That is good for the clients, previously stitching was up north $3-$5 On GoThru forum people took my side because they know how hard I work. We are replying to every support case, in a matter of minutes. GoThru with the help of GoThru Chrome Plugin was the only company that did something to help people with the issues they had with the Google Editor. While everyone focused on overlay systems ... (selling not helping), also we run that Plugin for free for almost one year. So yes people will take my side. GoThru will allow starting on Monday 27th free publishing to everyone, and the whole month of April we will allow up to 10 free publishing. We want people to test before they buy. I've meet @DanSmigrod at IVRPA last year, he was right in front of me. He most probably did not notice me On my side I do not know much about Matterport, just that it has nice projections, and I do love them. But I have no interest in exploring the system more.I'm looking forward to see your opinion when we will launch .3 version. Alin |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @aarongeis I'm not an ambassador for LCP360.com. @alin I was critical of GoThru.co due to it being incomplete and unusable at the time of my assessment. I stated, quite truthfully that the solution appeared 'unfinished' and due to the map bug, that it was 'broken'. The map bug is fixed, and I look forward to seeing v0.3. In v0.3, will you allow refining existing links without having to remove and recreate them?  GoThru may have beat Panoskin out of the gate, but at this moment in time, I am more comfortable using Google's Desktop Editor. Due to the instability of Google's system over the past few months, I am very excited to use 3rd party options and will continue to play with GoThru's system. -- Quote: Originally Posted by alin I'm a developer myself, and I will humbly apologize for stressing you out and distracting you from your work. I can see that you do work very hard. We likely have similarities as I have done extensive work with reverse engineering Matterport's system in search of solutions to problems. I do VERY much wish I had known about your Chrome Plugin. This is the first I've heard of it. I have been using Street View Editor like a old car -- working around the panorama preview bugs and saving constantly to avoid losing data due to crashes that happened frequently. -- I do have one suggestion -- On GoThru's site, it states that you have the only 3rd party solution for Street View publishing. This is simply not true as Pano2VR supports this and PanoSkin should is apparently available to a group of ambassadors --  I think that you might go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back and change the word 'ONLY' to 'most trusted' -- or 'best' and carry on building trust with your passionate users. If there's backlash when a forum post like mine is made from your passionate users -- even if some of it is misguided -- that means that you have created a loyal userbase that is passionate about what you are doing. That's awesome and a great reason for people to pay attention to GoThru. |
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Alin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Most probably we will enable that in version .4, when we will add blurring too. At the time we wrote that text we were the only one that had a product, we will revise the text, thank your for pointing out that to us. Alin |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by Alin I wasn't aware that you beat Garden Gnome to the market. Again, I'd go with changing 'only' to the 'best' or 'most trusted'. From your passion, I can tell that you will accept nothing short of being the best and most trusted platform. |
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Alin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| We've been working on our moderator since 2015, and we had the product ready on 31st of January [2017]. It will be very hard for anyone to catch up with us. We are expecting 70% of all photographers and agencies to start using our service on 1st of April [2017], that's why we had to move to a new data center over the weekend. April will be a very interesting month Yes, you are right about being the best, but we put people in front. Our prices are very very low, for what you get, in a world where an overlay costs $30 per year ... to offer a better product than Google and at $2 per tour ... that is cheap. |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Alin I must admit that I had absolutely no idea that your solution was ready on Jan 31st [2017]. I have another kooky bug. In Moderator, I decided to start over, so I removed all 4 of my tours with the X buttons under the connected column. It left all 4 points on the map, and one of the panos (#1) became #23. This pano was not in play previously.  |
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Alin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I'm not sure I understand, you've clicked on the X on the left side and the panorama changed the number? from #1 to #23? | ||
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @alin - I removed all 4 of the panos on the left side by clicking the (X) boxes. It left the 4 markers visible on the map. When I clicked on the red markers it substituted #1 as #23. I did save and exit and reopen and just ignored the remaining markers and started linking from scratch and it resolved itself. Just a weird quirk. |
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Alin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I just looked at your moderation, all your panoramas are some how put one on top of each-other. What I would recommend you is spread them around a bit. Also, I will update the code, so when we add them randomly on the map to not overlap them. Also we plan building auto-moderation and we hope to have it by May  [2017]. |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Alin Ah, so the bug wasn't that they had swapped -- somehow they all jumped on top of each other. Weird. I've managed to complete the first constellation... I've made numerous attempts at refining the alignment so that it's 'good enough'... and I did manage to make a tour with divergent paths that met up again -- this is good. I would very much like to be able to rotate the pano from the pano view and not have to use the map -- having both options is nice. I did like how Google's editor would show where panos lined up at the top of the pano with little flags -- this was very very helpful for precise aligning... Also, I do not like how the selected pano will disappear from the 'Connected' column when it's selected. That's a bit confusing. I would much prefer that it simply be highlighted while in use. On my second constellation, I've noticed that your overlay tool is working much better as the panos are spaced much closer -- thus the overlay fits and matches much better. |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Alin You'll be quite pleased to see a tour of 117 panos fully linked. It took 2 hours to do. The lack of auto alignment was a bummer as that service, when done with Google Editor, provides rather accurate spacing between panos and speeds things up a lot. And ... I'm going to wait until 3/27/17 (today) to publish as you appear to have a window of free publishing. |
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Alin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| wow 117 panos in two hours ... that's very good I have open the publishing to everyone, so you can go ahead an publish Alin |
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Frisco, Texas |
Metroplex360 private msg quote post Address this user | |
@Alin it's not updated on my end. |
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Alin private msg quote post Address this user | |
| please try now, I've enabled initially on our development environment Alin |
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 WGAN ForumFounder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Hi All, A related discussion ... ✓ GoThru Replaces Google Street View Editor Best, Dan |
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WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote: Originally Posted by @Alin Ah! It would have been nice to visit at IVRPA 2016 in Quebec City. Thank you for joining the We Get Around Network Forum and for posting to this discussion (and creating your solution to support Google Trusted Photographers in the Forum Community. While I would say, let's visit at IVRPA 2017 in Vienna, a family wedding will keep me from attending this year. The video (above) seems appropriate to share here. I originally posted to the Forum here: Video>Google Street View Meets 1-click 360ºs @Alin Chris Hickman is the Developer of MP2SV Multi-Pano 2 Street View conversion and publishing service. It was originally create to enable Matterport Pros to publish their Matterport Spaces 3D Tours to Google Maps. Then, Matterport killed it for that purpose. Thankfully, iGuide fully embraces it as a solution for Pros to shoot once, publish twice. BTW, Chis was named We Get Around Network #1 Rock Star of 2016 (along with @rpetersn). Dan |
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