WebObjects and QuickTime VR Hotspots
WebObjects and QuickTime VR Hotspots
- Subject: WebObjects and QuickTime VR Hotspots
- From: "Pascal Schrafl" <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 08:54:25 +0100
Hello
As I got so much encouragous emails from a few of you, I will dare to post my question concerning
WebObjects and QuickTime VR (Hotspots) here in the list.
I would like to build a web application, where one can take QuickTime VR tours as example trough a
house. I would also like to display a map, so the user knows, where he is in the house. The
QuickTime VR movie should contain hotpsots, so that the user can switch to the next room, by
clicking on the door of the room. In the same moment I would like to map to update itself, to
reflect, where the user is (now, in a other room). As I was told on the QuickTime VR mailinglist,
there are 3 different kinds of hotspots: nodes, URLs, and blobs. A node hotspot jumps to another
node in the same VR scene. A URL hotspot opens a URL. A blob hotspot sends a message to the
application displaying the panorama--in this case, the QuickTime browser plug-in.
I would like to use a URL hotspot, that get's the new site in the WebObjects application. I don't
want to hardcode the URL into the movie, so that a movie can be switched easily, without to change
all the nodes. So I come to my question: How can I assign a QuickTime VR movie a dynamically
generated URL (in my case in WebObjects)?
An other thing that I would like to implement, is an info window. Is it possible, to check, if the
user has pressed down a special key (e.g. Shift) and then display an other window, with the infos
about the room, when the user clicks on the map, when he clicks on the map, without pressing down
the Shift key, he can change to that room, he clicked on the map. Is that possible? And one more
thing: Can I tell the map, it shall check it it has a movie associated with its room, and display
itself in an other color (e.g. light grey if there is a movie, dark grey if there is no movie
available, the same for the information window, just with an other color set, and when the user
clicks a special key (as example Shift).
I know, my question is pretty general, and I could code it all with static links in the QuickTime
VR movie, to achieve the same effect. Anyway, all help would be gladly appreciated.
I also post one message here from the QuickTime VR list, that hits the nail on the head, but it's
more for PHP, I don't understand, how I could implement that procedure mentioned in the mail with
WebObjects.
Here's the mail:
--------
The easy way to dynamically reassign hotspot URLs is to use "blob" hotspots in your VR and assign
the URLs in your HTML.
Note: There are 3 kinds of QTVR hotspots: nodes, URLs, and blobs. A node hotspot jumps to another
node in the same VR scene. A URL hotspot opens a URL. A blob hotspot sends a message to the
application displaying the panorama--in this case, the QuickTime browser plug-in.
Each hotspot has a unique number from 1-255, which corresponds to the 8-bit color of the hotspot
region in the image map. You assign hotspot URLs in your HTML by passing parameters in the EMBED
and OBJECT tags:
HOTSPOT22="myVRpage1.html" (EMBED tag)
<param name="HOTSPOT22" value="myVRpage1.html"> (OBJECT tag)
By default, the URL replaces the frame or window containing the VR panorama, but you can pass more
complicated URLs to quicktime, such as:
HOTSPOT240="<myVRframeset3.html> T<_top>"
or
HOTSPOT240="myDefinedJavaScriptFunction('vr5.mov')"
JavaScript is a useful way to, for example, load a new scene into one frame and a new map JPEG into
another frame.
Then you can use WebObjects to generate the HTML dynamically, either by having WebObjects create
the .html files dynamically, or using an external JavaScript file (the JavaScript file creates the
OBJECT and EMBED tags) and having WebObjects create the external JavaScript file dynamically.
>I also would like to syncronize a map with the QuickTime VR
>movie (e.g. you click on the map to get into another room, and then the
>page loads the QuickTime VR movie that shows the room, and also
>highlights the room on the map, and the same for the QuickTime VR
>movie, you change the room, by clicking on a hotspot, so the map also
>reflects the state and shows the room you are in at the moment in a
>different color.
You can implement this kind of map using sprites. Tools that let you build sprite-based VR maps
include LiveStage Pro, VR HotWires, and MapSaVR. Or you can just have multiple dumb JPEGs, each one
duplicating the map, but with a different highlight, corresponding to each node of your VR, and
load a new map when you load a new pano.
------------
Thanks a lot and kindest regards,
Pascal
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