Forum Discussion
360 image: trigger or JavaScript to change view angle
This is an amazingly basic scripting task. I can set the initial view (but then the setting is ignored in version v3.113.36519.0), but I can't programmatically move the viewing angle to point where I want.
This could be handled either by rotating the virtual camera to an actual 3D angle or by having an action to "point the camera" at a marker. Neither appears to exist. The program does this exact thing in guided tour mode, why not expose this functionality to the developer?
Maybe it's available from JavaScript, but I can't locate an API for the 360 image functionality. If it exists, please point me toward it.
Thank you.
3 Replies
You can look at the discussion at
Interaction with 360 degree images | E-Learning Heroes for some info and potential starting points.
I have not found an active reference to the 360 Image viewer object in SL. However, with a small story.html file hack you can expose all of it, and more. It is a hassle to maintain through project edits though. Of course, you can also make your own from scratch but then you're largely reinventing the wheel, even if it is a better wheel in the end.
Thanks, Nathan. I can't use the "hack the story.html file" trick because I work in a team, and the next developer would have to do it, too, and it becomes a nightmare to maintain, especially if I've left the company by the time this needs revision. Also, since it's a hack there's no guarantee Articulate won't break it as part of one of their upgrades.
I'll just whine about it here, I guess.
It's weird, because the relatively primitive CenarioVR had that feature from the beginning. As you imply in the linked thread, it's available in the JavaScript viewer SL leans on, the dev team at Articulate have just chosen not to expose it.
For the time being, I'm stuck with Guided Tour, which is markedly inferior but has the virtue of working.
While there are many things that could be exposed, making designers' lives easier, they are prone to miss- or ill-considered use by the userbase at-large. These could very readily break projects and paint SL in a bad light to clients. I suspect that is one of the main hurdles.
Older software of all types had more access to low-level features that have largely been eliminated, or at least actively hidden away from the reach of the modern user. I miss the old ways. 😔
