What affects how a tour loads, and what you can change

The short answer

Panoramr has no GPU, hardware-acceleration or speed setting, and the player gives no speed readout. What you control is the content: how a photo is added, how many scenes are published and what each room's hotspots hold. This page says what the player does with each.

Pictures

• Tiles. The tour upload panel cuts each photo into square tiles of 512 pixels, at sizes that double: 512, 1,024, 2,048 pixels and so on, up to about a quarter of the photo's width. An 8,192 × 4,096 photo has three tile levels. The panel also makes a 256-pixel preview of the whole scene, which is the player's smallest level.
• Which level loads. The player picks a level from the size of the picture on the visitor's screen, so a larger screen or a closer zoom loads larger tiles. A larger photo adds a level at the top. The preview stays 256 pixels.
• When the tour opens. The player asks for the 256-pixel preview of every tiled scene at once, so that any room a visitor goes to has a picture to show. A photo without tiles is one whole picture: a tour with up to 36 of them asks for all of them at once as well; a bigger one asks for none at the start, and loads the room on screen, up to 8 such rooms that room links to, and any other when a visitor goes there.
• A photo without tiles. A panorama posted from the Create Post page has one whole picture, a copy 4,096 pixels wide, and no levels. A tour with up to 36 such scenes loads each picture whole when the tour opens; a bigger tour loads the room on screen, the (at most 8) such rooms it links to, and the rest when they are visited. Select the scene on the Panoramrs tab: Geometry Core (in the Advanced view) reads Tiled Multi-Resolution or Standard Pipeline (WebP). Replace Original File with the photo, in the tour upload window, makes tiles (replace a panorama).

Photo requirements lists the formats and sizes the window takes.

Scenes and size

A published tour carries all of its scenes: there is no cut. How many a tour can hold is set by where it is published (plans and limits). When the tour opens the player asks for the preview of every tiled scene, so the number of requests at the start grows with the number of scenes. Panoramr measures no times and cannot say what that costs on a given phone or connection.

A link to a scene that is not in the tour is left out when the page is built. A link to a scene that the tour has but does not publish (a tour in a Vault publishes only as many scenes as the Vault holds) is still drawn: its label reads Link (Missing Target) and clicking it does nothing.

Hotspots and media

• A room's hotspots are built the first time a visitor enters the room, not when the tour opens.
• The player positions a room's hotspots on screen as the view moves. It skips the rooms that are not showing.
• A panorama can have at most 500 hotspots.
• Video files, audio, YouTube, Vimeo and embedded pages are created with their room's hotspots. When a visitor leaves the room, a playing video is paused and asked to play again on return. A narration from an audio hotspot stops, and starts over the next time it is played. A frame is replaced by a blank page and loads again on return. Surface Media has the details.

Stored copies and the Explore page

Visitors get a stored copy of the tour's page, kept for 30 days, so it is not built for each visit. The first visit after a change builds it and takes a moment longer, and visitors who arrive at that moment wait for it. My changes do not show for visitors says which edits refresh the copy.

The Explore page loads the player only after a visitor clicks the play button on its picture.

What does not exist

There is no GPU or hardware-acceleration setting, no frame-rate readout in the player and no quality or resolution switch for visitors.

Troubleshooting

A tour opens slowly. Panoramr measures no times, so it cannot say which of these is the cause. Check the number of published scenes, scenes that read Standard Pipeline (WebP), and videos or frames in the room that opens first.

A video starts again when I come back to a room. That is by design: it was paused when you left, and is asked to play again.

A YouTube or Vimeo frame loads again when I come back. That is by design: it was blanked when you left.

The tour is old, or shows the free Default look. See My changes do not show for visitors.