Navigating Your VR Project: How it Works

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 hotspot navigation – they will enter a scene facing the same direction that they came from. It creates a more natural walkthrough experience, that improves immersion in multiple scene 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. Doing so will create an always forward gaze perspective that is always natural and forward.

This Calibration is only relevant to projects which have both a floorplan and navigational hotspots. If you use the ‘next scene’ indicator arrows to navigate instead of hotspots, your scene will always open on your chosen Default Starting View.

Floorplan navigation and Forward Gaze Navigation are available for all subscriptions.  To get started with simple, mobile and affordable VR, call us at +1 (416) 499-2227 or email us anytime at hello@yulio.com.

How to Set Up Your Project:

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.

If you do so, people exploring your scenes using hotspot navigation will always enter facing the way they will 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 then 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 – no need for total precision.

That’s it – when you return to view your project, you’ll find that as you use hotspots to navigate the scene you land in the scene facing forward. The mini map is also there to show you exactly what direction you are looking while in fishtank view.

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.

Check out our YouTube channel for more info & tutorials.