Can someone help with the Google Street View publishing software please?

[Will Faulkner]

Hi all.
Thanks for adding me to the forum.
I’m in Australia and offering VR tours for both websites and Google business pages.
The websites workflow is clean and simple as I use Roundme and it works as advertised.

The Google street view tours are a different story and they are giving me a major headache.
I have tried using Panoskin and Gothru as the publishing software.
The problem I am having is that neither software is keeping the starting angle of view of the pano after I save it. Once I publish the tour the angle of the pano looks down the street instead of through the door as I want.
The providers of the software offer little advice if any.

Can anyone help with a proven successful workflow for publishing the VR tours to Google maps?
Thank you.

Wil Faulkner.
Ausdigitalmedia.com

[Kyle Giesbrecht]

Hi Will,

This is a huge problem, but it has nothing to do with the software.

Google has decided that the starting angle of a tour is going to be chosen by an algorithm, that tries to calculate the starting scene. Unfortunately, nothing any of us can do.

One hack that sometimes works is to set the centre of the pano when you stitch to be the main view, but that doesn’t always work.

[Will Faulkner]

OMG seriously? So we as professional photographers now will deliver Google tours that look completely unprofessional?

[Kyle Giesbrecht]

Sadly yes. The worst is when it shows an empty hallway or a shot in the bathroom as the top thumbnail.

[Dennis]

This is why I started using 3rd party software to rather offer my customers a self hosted tour. That way I have control.

I was sick and tired of Google screwing up the presentation. Now I offer to put their tour onto Google but with absolutely zero guarantee as to how it will be presented.

Remember you can have your customer embed a tour on their webpage like this example https://www.koolandchild.com/read/20/our-location.
This way you control the start panorama view.
Alas on their Google page you have no control.

-Dennis

Dennis Frost - Vancouver Island, BC
Awden.com
Real Estate, Google Street View|Trusted, Virtual tours

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