Jumping hotspots issue

[jez_p]

You know the problem - with qualityMotion low and qualityStatic medium, hotspots will jump a couple of pixels when the pano is moved.

Why is it that some move and others don't? There must be a reason that some hotspots aren't moving, and then this can be applied to the others.

I'm using some hotpots which did not move in a previous pano, but are now moving in my current one - and some newly created ones are fixed solid. I thought I had it fixed by specifying a .90 (or whatever) staticY value - this worked when the pano was displayed on one monitor, but then I tried it on another with a different resolution and they were doing a merry jig again. Oddly enough the browser seems to affect it also - using my first monitor and the .90 value they were static in Firefox and IE, but were moving in Opera.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the issue - does anyone else have any ideas?

[PauloGGPX]

Hi Jez,

from my experiments I found that using PNG's with align="LB" in my spot objects would cause no "jig" effect :) give it a try and let us know how it went ;)

[jez_p]

Thanks for the tip Paulo - I had previously tried every combination of align and salign without much luck though. But I have now found the solution - every static hotspot must have an odd staticX and staticY value - everything is now locked solid.

[Scott Witte]

For anyone experiencing this I just found the weirdest thing: When my buttons (hotspots) are 26px wide they stay put. When they are 25 px wide they jump a little as described above and in other threads. These buttons are in a navigation control bar.

25px wide buttons spaced every 25px = jump
25px wide buttons spaced every 26px = jump
26px wide buttons spaced every 26px = no jump.

So, the problem may be related to the width being even or odd number of pixels.

Hope that helps some.

[jaaaab]

yes, noticed also that happens with odd values, for size or positionning,

we have to deal with it!

cheers.

[Ken]

I had this problem a while back. Sorted it by converting hotspots to .swf

http://flashpanoramas.com/forum/showthread.php?t=223

Ken

[Nate]

Tried everything. Converted to swf, added cacheAsBitmap="0", aligned every which way. Still jumping spots. quality static = high, quality motion = low
:(

[Scott Witte]

Post an example along with a link to your XML. What pixel size are your hotspot images?

[Nate]

http://mauipropertydirectory.com/?page=detailsNate&id=134&tab=tours If you click the link on the bottom, you can find the xml easy. I've tried everything and reset the xml back to where I started. Thanks for the help!

[jez_p]

Maybe this thread in the Google group will help.

http://tinyurl.com/5yfehd

[siesfor]

Hey,
To get the hotspot buttons to sit still, change them from <spot> tags to <box> tags and all should be well.

[Hyde]

Hey,
To get the hotspot buttons to sit still, change them from <spot> tags to <box> tags and all should be well.

best workaround yet

[Nate]

changing them all to "box" worked great! They no longer jump no matter what the size or position!
Thank you all!!

[Nate]

So now, here's the problem again! This time, the spots look great until the user hovers over them, then they get pixellated and jump! Here's an example:
http://www.mauipropertydirectory.com/resources/pano.swf?xml_file=134_Ke_Alii_Ocean_Villas/tours/pano.xml&

Thanks for the help!

[Nate]

Okay, it has something to do with the autorotate setting on low. If you mouse over the buttons when the autorotate is off, they are fine. Do it when it is on, they go to crap. Click off the autorotate and the button fix themselves when you mouse over them! Arrgh!

[Nate]

so, I temporarily turned off the "glow" parameter, and that fixed the problem. So, be careful with glow!

[Trausti Hraunfjord]

What to do to avoid jumping hotspots:

1. Make the hotspots be <box rather than <spot as mentioned by seisfor. That absolutely helps.

2. Have cacheAsBitmap="0" within the parameters of the hotspot.

3. Make absolutely and completely sure that you have the following settings in pairs:

qualityMotion = low
qualityStatic = low
or
qualityMotion = medium
qualityStatic = medium
or
qualityMotion = high
qualityStatic = high

and NOT any of the following:

qualityMotion = low
qualityStatic = medium
or
qualityMotion = high
qualityStatic = medium
or
qualityMotion = high
qualityStatic = low

or other combinations of the low/medium/high settings where they are not the same in both parameters.

Making sure that both of them are the same, removes the last couple of pixels of jumping that may otherwise occur even after making the first 2 points on the agenda.

Not to worry, this will be implemented automatically in Flashificator, and thereby eliminating the jumping issue.

[RCFisher]

You know this is pretty amazing since I was just thinking about this issue now. I had read this thread a week or so ago and I was having the jumping issue with hot spots. I changed the tags to <box> from <spot> and that fixed it. What is the difference between the 2 tag types?

[siesfor]

What is the difference between the 2 tag types?

As far as I can tell, box is just an advanced version spot (ie., more options, more control, etc.) but other than that, you can probably just ignore the <spot> tag in coding altogether in favor of <box>.

3. Make absolutely and completely sure that you have the following settings in pairs...and NOT any of the following...or other combinations of the low/medium/high settings where they are not the same in both parameters.

That seems like that would be a very limiting rule when it comes to useability though. Obviously if you set it to low for functionability during rotation, it would still look jagged and not at it's best whenever a user pauses it. And vice-versa, if you set it higher for quality, it'll probably become very sluggish and in some cases bog down on slower computers. Since the first 2 rules tend to take of the problem, you probably wouldn't need to limit their options of speed.vs.quality options w/ the 3rd rule.

[Trausti Hraunfjord]

You are right, it limits the flexibility for individual settings, but it does eliminate the final very small jumping that CAN be present even after implementing the first 2 points. Personally I would not recommend the output to be high/high, due to the performance effect it has on most common machines.

I can upload examples of the difference if you like. Sometimes the first 2 steps are sufficient to take out all pixel movement, but not always.... which could be related to position of the hotspots in the pano and/or size of the hotspot image used. I'm not sure which of the two it is (or both).

But at least a complete removal of the jumping seems to be doable with this method.