How to Customize the Navigation Experience in your VR Projects

Navigation Controls allow you to customize the navigation experience for your viewers on a per-project basis. Keep reading to learn more about the navigation controls that are available and how you can use them.

Opening Navigation Controls

To start, open the Hotspot Editor in the project that you want to customize Navigation Controls for. From there, open the Settings tab by clicking on the gear icon.

Show Minimap

The minimap feature helps you see exactly what direction you are facing while viewing a project in browser mode. To turn on the minimap, toggle Show Minimap to on.

Forward Gaze Navigation

For projects where you have uploaded a floorplan layer, we’ve introduced Forward Gaze Navigation. Forward Gaze Navigation means that when viewers navigate through your VR project using Navigation Hotspots, they will enter each scene facing the same direction that they came from. This creates a more natural walkthrough experience that improves immersion in multi-scene projects.

Forward Gaze Navigation is turned on by default for all new projects. For projects that were created before this feature was in place, or where you set your camera position to an ideal starting scene instead of due north, you can use floorplan calibration to create a relationship between your floorplan and scenes.

Forward Gaze Navigation is only relevant to projects that have both a floorplan and navigational hotspots. If you choose to navigate using the floorplan or ‘next scene’ indicator arrows instead of hotspots, your scene will always open to your chosen Default Starting View.

How to Set Up Your Project for Forward Gaze Navigation:

Due North Camera Position

When you author cube maps, you likely render them with a camera position that is a ‘beauty shot’ or a compelling opening scene.

Since VR is a moving medium where your audience will explore in all directions, we recommend that instead, you set your camera positions facing due north. In doing this, when Forward Gaze Navigation is enabled, people exploring your scenes using hotspot navigation will always enter the scene facing the way they would naturally expect, and you won’t need to calibrate your thumbnails and floorplan after the fact in Yulio.

Don’t worry, you can always set your beauty shot using Default Starting View in Yulio. That way when viewers use floorplan or arrow navigation, they will always open to the beauty shot.

What about my other projects that aren’t due north?

In projects where camera views were not set up to be due north during render time, you can create a relationship between your floorplan and the scene by simply dragging the cone shaped field of view to match the starting view.

Log into your Yulio account and the select the VR project you would like to edit – remember you must have a floorplan and scenes to calibrate.

To calibrate your floorplan make sure you have already added your floorplan hotspots. If you have not added your floorplan hotspots, do that first before calibrating. Check out this article on how to add Floorplan Navigation.

Click on the Hotspot Editor button, then select the Floorplan icon.

If your cones do not show up by default on your floorplan (like in the image above) click on the Settings icon and toggle the Show Floorplan Hotspot Direction to on.

Now, go back to the floorplan editor by clicking on the Floorplan icon again. You’ll see that the cone shaped field of view indicators all face due north by default.

Using the thumbnail images on the left panel as your guide, click on the cone and drag so that the middle of the cone aligns with the middle of the thumbnail. The cone should be facing the same starting direction as the thumbnail image – try to get as close as possible, but no need for total precision.

That’s it – when you return to view your project, you’ll find that as you use Navigation Hotspots to move scene-to-scene, you will land in the scene facing forward. 

Remember – you only need to calibrate scenes you added to your floorplan, so if you have a link to something like “outside” or “upstairs” that aren’t on your floorplan, you won’t need to calibrate them.

To turn off Forward Gaze Navigation, go to the Navigation Controls within the Settings tab and toggle Maintain direction when navigating by hotspots to off.

Check out our YouTube channel for more info & tutorials.