Cenario VR Wishlist

There are several things here which I think we have some good news for:

need a rule that allows scene to stop at a specific point in time.

You have the "Pause Scene" action that can be used to stop the scene at any time. You can then use "Play Scene" to start it again, perhaps after some user interaction, or even "Jump To Scene Time" to move around in the timeline.

Once you have a time rule specifying seconds, and want to add anther time rule, you have to specify seconds again to make it work

When you create a timed event, the event is created at the current time on the timeline slider, Also, you can have multiple actions happen on the same time event by selecting the "Add Action" button.

No options on Cenario to start media on a specific time. I literally have to go to Audition and/or Premiere to cut my media and import it again.

Any media can be started at any time by using timed events on the timeline, or in response to any user interaction as well. Just use the "Play Media" action to play any MP3 audio or MP4 video. You can also use the "Stop Media" action to stop a currently running media item.

We are looking at implementing animation actions for objects as well so that you will be able to animate objects at any time, not just when making them visible.

There won't be support for a JavaScript console, as CenarioVR has runtimes for various devices, including the Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Samsung Gear VR, and many more devices coming. The runtimes are not Web based for all of the supported types. That also holds true for the Animated PNG, which is not even well supported on desktop based browsers, much less on headsets. We are looking to implement native 3D support and animations in the future, which will give you a much better animation possibilities in VR.

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Hi this is kannan from india, i am using Cenario VR, after publish to moodle there was a problem, i am not able to see properly, through the cenario VR app is fine, moodle web player supporting not good, please help me out. is there any plugin to installing my moodle.

Hey Kannan,

I'm not familiar with the Moodle Web player, are you running SCORM content, or just HTML? Does it run in a separate window, or an iFrame inside of Moodle? What are the issues you saw when running the content?

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I'm a new user and also have a list of features I'd like to see:

• Asset management

  • Way to delete unused content imported images
  • Don't allow duplicate filenames
  • Ability to trim audio and videos
  • SVG import

• Scene objects

  • Drag handles that don't all do the same object resizing
  • x,y,z, rotate values so can precisely position and rotate objects
  • Tool tip ability to position top, bottom, left and right (not just top)
  • Increase no of default icon image resources with ability to change colour
  • Addition of interface on/off panels e.g. so can have a close button that is inline with image object
  • Shadow on/off option
  • Embedding of YouTube videos
  • URL object type so can link to websites
  • Info cards that allow images and text
  • Audio text to speech object with male / female voices
  • Import of 3D objects

• Scene

  • Progress indicator / play / pause for video scenes
  • Object navigator / finder (top corner circle with coloured dots for all objects in scene)
  • Translation of text, either automated after opening and choosing language or save as separate version

• Prebuilt templates / samples

If a scene has audio its not obvious for users (especially on desktops) to know its playing. Could there be an option for an audio or speaker icon to appear. Or allow users to import animated gifs.

You could certainly show a speaker icon when you are playing audio, and then hide it on the "On Done" action for the audio if you would like a visual representation of the audio playing.

Animated GIFs fall under the same issue as some of the others, its a Web thing, unsupported on VR headsets. 3D model animations, which are much more suited to the immersive environment, and much nicer than animated GIFs are coming soon, we are working on them as we speak.

I have another feature request. I want to add an introduction audio welcome message to auto play on start, in my main menu. If the user clicks off to one of the menu button scenes I don't want the audio to play again during the session. The feature would be a background audio scene property with an option to play once.

I got it working using variables and actions. I added the audio to the menu scene and made sure it didn't autoplay. I then went into each menu button scene and added 1 to a counter variable. On the main menu scene properties I added an action on show, to play the audio if the counter equaled 0.

Thats certainly one way to do it. You could also just have an "On Show" action for the scene that plays the audio with several conditions, each checking that the other scenes "Have not been visited". That way you don't have multiple actions or the need for a variable.

There does need to be some sort of device detection. I downloaded a public scenario on an iPad and it wouldn't play, it came up with a video error. I then realised that it was the 4k version and I needed the HD version. Same goes for some of the on screen elements, it would be good to have separate fields for xyz positions and dimensions for objects. That way they would work on all devices.

PS the app on an iPad attempts to autorotate alot even though its in fixed landscape mode. And the launch text and arrow are lost down the screen in landscape mode, the size of the thumbnail needs to be reduced to stop this from happening. Running on the iPad app also judders a lot even when no video or audio is even being used in a scene.

I am warned by CenarioVR that iDevices can't play high-resolution 360 video.

In my opinion, this should not prevent me from using good quality videos entirely! The app knows perfectly well it's on an iDevice, by definition--it's an iOS/iPadOS app! Why can't we upload two versions of the video, the Apple mobile version and the good one, and let only the Apple devices use the lower-res edition? Obviously the two would have to be frame-for-frame identical, but that's the developer's problem, not yours.

As it currently is, I will have to create two entire scenarios that are identical except that one uses lower-resolution video. Then what, we assign both to everyone, since we don't know what device they will use?

And if I do a Lectora course that includes HTML5 content from CenarioVR, how will that work? I believe these would be playing in a browser on the Apple device, meaning what--can the iDevices play high-res video through a browser? If not, then we have to have two separate courses, one for Apple users? Or have the Lectora course detect the device and branch, which requires the course to contain both 360 videos?

One could, of course, use low-quality video for everything, but then it will look absolutely terrible to users who have Oculus Go headsets or the equivalent. In the exactly one test I have done so far, it even looks terrible on a big, high resolution monitor.

While I'm at it: can we maybe get finer control over navigating the timeline in the developer environment? My video editing experience makes me want to use the arrow keys to move one frame at a time, or maybe one second. Five seconds is very gross movement and makes precise timing tricky.

Continuing to think about it, I'd love to be able to zoom the timeline control (again, like 100% of modern video editors) to make fine scrubbing/event placement possible. And how about markers, that standby of Premiere and its competitors?

More wishlisting:

• Can objects be given numeric coordinates (in radians?) and thus located precisely? You'd have to change the Properties and Actions to allow numeric entry.
• Can Trivantis/eLearning Brothers maybe license a library of 360 stock? That's a true "wish" item.
• I have only had the trial version for a few weeks. May I suggest that all the CVR apps periodically check for scenarios that haven't been used for (say) 60 days, and offer to delete them to free up space, reminding the user that they can be downloaded again if desired?
• Very minor thing: it struck me funny that your icons (in the Media Library) include an iPhone, many computers and tablets ... and no VR goggles or headsets.
• Please allow me to swap the 360 content of each scene. At this point, if I decide to downsample a video, or fix up an existing one to hide confidential content, my only option is to start over from scratch--there's no way to keep all the events, objects, media items, etc. I could copy them to a new scene but the targets of all actions would be lost (and events can't be copied). It would be great to go to the settings for the scene and click "Replace 360 content" and just select the new version. Even if I had to fiddle timing and/or placement a little, it would be a huge timesaver.

Thanks.

At the beginning of YouTube 360 videos there is a white icon animation on a black background of a hand with a mobile moving around to show users the video is 360 video with text 'Move device to explore video'. It would be nice if CenarioVR had this option, perhaps with a toggle to turn on/off on main loading scene and ability to alter the text.

It would be really useful if you could copy a single actions. You can copy all actions but most of the time I only need to duplicate single actions.

When using the CenarioVR app, I'm not sure you need the little square icon in the bottom right corner. On the desktop version it makes the browser go full screen but on the app the button doesn't seem to do anything so I think it needs to be hidden / removed.

Another useful feature would be the ability to get notified by email when new 'Public Scenarios' get added. I'm always interested to see what others are doing but would like an email to tell me new content was published rather than opening CenarioVR and going to the public area and filtering by publish date.

Any chance of adding a duration setting to the 'Pan To' action? Currently its quite quick, I want a smoother movement. What I'm trying to do is a screen recording of me panning around a scene so the ability to also pan up and down not just across would be useful as well.

I'd like to make a CenarioVR available to a select number of people who I provide a url to but I don't want it to show up in the Public Scenarios area. Is there a way to make a CenarioVR unlisted like you can in Tour Creator?

Thanks, yes publishing as a SCORM or HTML5 could work, although its a bit more time consuming to publish, download and upload into a LMS than just providing a url.

The LearnUpon LMS doesn't seem to take HTML5 packages but the SCORM works.

It looks like publishing as SCORM also removes the need to login (so is sort of public / free access). Is there a way to force the login, that way the CenarioVR user analytics are retained.

In Google Tour Creator you can create info hotpots which all appear in a box and the ones which you have clicked/visited have ticks next to them, this would be useful as its a bit more automated, currently you could do the same but it would take a while to create.

Also by default when you visit a scene, it does a smooth pan of the entire scene. I like this feature to introduce the environment to users.

Hugh, you'd presumably have to use your LRS/LMS system's analytics instead of eLearning Brothers', if you don't run it from their server. They have no way to know who is using the scenario once it's exported.

Hugh, I would personally like the ability to make text hotspots. Currently, you can only make images or 3D models into hotspots. Also shapes--why can't an arbitrary polgyon be a hotspot?

You can work around the sharing scenario thing by exporting to HTML5, then putting that code on your own server, if that capability is available to you. Or, if an LMS is easier, you can export as SCORM and add that to the server. In my limited testing both have the disadvantage that, unlike actual CenarioVR scenarios, they don't download every component before playing, meaning long pauses if you use 3D video. With stills they work OK.

One more small thing: I'm working on a narrated scene in my scenario. If I want to check timings later in the sequence of events, I can start playback at, say, 25 second. Problem: this never triggers the audio that starts playing at 1 second, so I can't actually check the timing.

So, working with the scene timeline is unnecessarily finicky. To click on the timeline, or the "stem" of an event flag, you have to literally hit a single pixel. I can't see any UX reason the clickable area couldn't be beefed up. You wouldn't even have to change the graphics. Make the circle indicating the playhead bigger as well. Again, I don't see a downside to this.

No, I don't plan to stop doing this. :-)

Have you considered adding an "overlay" that appears on all screens? In my work so far, I almost always want a standard navigation interface (which might be as simple as a single hotspot that appears in every scene, which takes you to a navigation-specific top-down view), and maybe an exit button. Thoughts?

Just a thought: currently, if add an image with the same filename as the previous one, there's no warning and it apparently just overwrites the previous version. That's fine for me, but do you maybe want to have a confirmation dialog?

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EDIT: it's worse. If you add an identical-name file, it gets added without deleting the other file. Now the dropdown list of available images includes all the variants of that name, in no detectable order. To add the correct one from the dropdown you have to try all of them until you find the version you want. Multiple files with the same name in the same list violates some pretty standard rules of interface design.

A scene, make 'Home scene' (the 1st / landing page a user sees) or send to top would be useful. For whatever reason, today CenarioVR won't let me move scenes around in either Chrome or Edge. I ended up copying a scene and deleting a scene to get the scenes repositioned.

I'd like some default global settings to be added e.g. show/hide all info cards, show/hide all hotspots, turn on/off sound... Each CenarioVR could then have a settings button which when clicked displayed a set of toggle buttons to turn on/off these features which worked (saved) across all scenes.

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For example, currently I can add a settings button to show/hide all the info cards on the screen but its a slow process per scene and won't work across all scenes. I can add a boolean variable and test on that on scene startup, if it is 0, use conditions on all my info cards to turn off but when I open a new scene (with another set of hide actions) there is a second gap before they switch off, the user sees the labels for a split second before they disappear.

I'd also like a few more features that normal virtual tour software has, like clickable thumbnails linking to other scenes and an autogenerated list of scene names. Skins / templates would be good as well, come up with set colours / styles which can be applied rather than customising each time.

Could a back and previous function be added, just like a web browser has. On some of my scenes I'd like to add fixed position undefined buttons to the middle of the screen. I can add manual scene links but it would be much easier if there was a default 'Go to previous scene' and 'Go to next scene' feature.

When a standard 2D video is added to a scene it would be useful to have the play/pause/seekbar controls as on option to turn on and off, with the ability to customise the interface colours.

Hugh, warning: SVG files can absolutely fail in the Oculus CVR client. John Blackmon tells me that this is a flaw in the Oculus graphics handler and can't be fixed by ELB.

Clips are a great addition but they need further work. If you create a clip and add to a new scene all its actually doing is creating a copy of the elements. What I'd like to see is a read only copy of the clip copied into the scene and the ability to edit the master clip in the library which then gets repopulated to all scenes where it was shared.

For example, if I create a clip of with some text labels inside. I add the clip to 3 scenes. I then discover I have made a typo. I want to edit the master clip and all 3 scenes to update. Currently I have to go into each scene, delete all the clip elements, recreate a new clip with corrected text and then add back into all scenes.

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Another virtual tour feature which would be good is the addition of floor plans. Ability to add a 2D floor plan graphic which can also have dynamic hotspots which highlight per scene (either room or larger circle hotspots) and link to the other scenes.

I have a button in a scene which opens an info panel up with an image, some text, a close button and a big black semi transparent cover all svg to block out everything and focus the attention on the info panel information.

When I open the info panel, the scene (the main 360 degree background image) can still be moved around. Is there any way it can be locked while the panel is open? I tried adding a pause scene action but that doesn't work.

Ability to add flat 2D shapes would be good. E.g. rectangles, rounded rectangles, squares, circles. With option to change their opacity and colour. I can easily create .svg for each but much better to have it inside CVR.

It would be good to have CVR to do a performance test, per scene and per project. When ready to publish, CVR would check all images and number of objects in each scene and then tell you if it was going to have any performance issues and recommend reducing objects or changing their dimensions.

Also it could tell you if it was going to fail in any way e.g. in VR headsets fixed objects are not really recommended. Maybe use a traffic light system or overall percentage score.

I've got lots of variables in my projects. While testing I had to create an info card with them all in. It would be good if there was CenarioVR panel / pane which could list all the variables and then update when they were changed while previewing. It could be switched on/off while testing.

Also it would be useful to have list of project variables you could insert from a list when adding to an info card, it would save typing them out.

When setting and testing so many variables in the actions area, the list quickly becomes very hard to navigate. The user needs to be able to expand it out and copy/paste individual actions. Or group similar actions in expandable/collapsible areas.

When dealing with lots of scenes in the same project it can difficult to get an overall picture of how scenes are linked and what elements are inside. It would be useful to have a top level flow diagram showing linkages, sub rooms and objects inside, rather than relying on a really long column list of thumbnails. E.g.

• Room 1 - 5 scenes (360 images), 3 hotspots, 5 info cards. Links to room 1 and room 2.
• Room 2 - 1 scene (360 video), 2 hotspots. Links to room 1 and 2 and 3.
• Room 3 - 2 scenes (360 image), 1 hotspot/ Links to room 1

With flowchart style, with arrows between linked scenes.

I have a Cenario coming soon with at least 70 mages! its going to be difficult to manage. I could split into separate projects and add web link option (CenarioVR Live and Mobile published urls) but I want to package as a SCORM for LMS use.

The addition of text formatting would be useful in information cards. I have chemical text e.g. CO2 / H2O and need to use subscript and superscript so they display properly (unlike in this comment).

It would be good to have a bulk upload option. I have approx forty 360 scenes I need to create. I have to upload each image one by one. If I could upload a zip of all of them it would be a massive time saver.