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JMM
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 154
Joined: 02 Aug 2021, 11:18

Problem with constantly rotating circles instead of displaying preview images

21 Dec 2022, 07:28

Hello, Karl,

I am hoping that you are able to determine, using your debug tools and/or my ?diagnostics page, what is causing the following problem.

If you go to THIS page on one of my Flamepix sites, notice that the preview images (of the panorama images in those 2 folders) is displayed correctly for the previews.  And when you go into either folder, after the panorama image starts to run, when you press Escape to exit, the preview(s) of those panorama image(s) also displays correctly.

Now, if you go to THIS page on one of my self-hosted sites, notice that the previews of those folders never display, with the circles continuing continuously.  When I click on any of those folders, the panorama images display & start to move, but when you click on Escape to exit, the preview(s) of those panorama image(s) do not display, instead only the circles continuing continuously.

When I uploaded those panorama images to my Flamepix site, upon completion of the uploads, the thumbnails displayed correctly in my panel:
Image

However, when I uploaded those same pictures to my self-hosted site, the thumbnails do not appear, as can be seen here:
Image

Are you able to tell from your end, what might be causing the problem with the thumbnails not displaying, and more-importantly, the constantly rotating circles?

Under Tools | Cache, I've tried cleaning the Image Cache, deleting the Page Cache, and deleing my browser's Cached Images and Files, but no luck.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions you may have.

Regards,
John
Location: Burlington (Toronto-ish), Ontario, Canada
Self-hosted using Abyss Web Server:   AuroraWings.me   |   GalleryWings.com   |   PanAurora-Studio.com   |
Externally-hosted using LiteSpeed/Apache Web Server:   GenealogyWings.com/galleries   |
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Problem with constantly rotating circles instead of displaying preview images

21 Dec 2022, 09:31

The issue at hand here is easy to explain.

Your panorama images are MASSIVE (13660 px). Resizing large images like this requires massive amounts of memory on server ... Definitely more than most hosts will assign by default. See your resized image here, as you can see, there is insufficient memory:
Code
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 65536 bytes) in D:\*\*\app\parsers\slir\index.php on line 418
On our Flamepix servers I have bumped up the memory to deal with resizing massive images. If you are in control of the server, you can increase memory_limit in your php.ini. For the image dimensions you have in your panoramas, you would need at least 512M, possibly more.

If you can't increase memory on server, there is an option to create preview images manually, but I would need to look into how that worked ...
 
User avatar
JMM
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 154
Joined: 02 Aug 2021, 11:18

Re: Problem with constantly rotating circles instead of displaying preview images

21 Dec 2022, 17:36

On our Flamepix servers I have bumped up the memory to deal with resizing massive images. If you are in control of the server, you can increase memory_limit in your php.ini. For the image dimensions you have in your panoramas, you would need at least 512M, possibly more.
Thank you for your suggestion, and of course you were correct.  Initially I increased mine to 512M today, and that fixed 3 of the 4 images.  I then increased it further to 1G (1024M), and now all of them are displaying correctly.
Your panorama images are MASSIVE (13660 px).
That's the way I got them; I didn't know that I could resize them.  One of them (HERE), I resized from the original about 12K down to 8K JPG and PNG, and also down to 4K JPG and PNG.  There is a very-noticeable difference in clarity between the original 12K JPG and the 4K JPG.
  • 4K .JPG... not very clear (1.5 KB)
  • 4K .PNG... slightly clearer (11.8 MB)
  • 8K .JPG... even more clearer (5.6 MB)
  • 8K .PNG... yet more clearer (41.2 MB)
  • 12K .JPG... the clearest (11.9 MB)
Using the parking sign below the #47, the 5.6 MB 8K JPG is much clearer than the larger 4K PNG, which rules out either of the 4K images.

The 41.2 MB 8K PNG is much too large, which leaves me with the 8K .JPG and the 12K .JPG (at double the size).

They're pretty-fast for me to load, but then I have 1GB Internet.  I will have some friends with slower Internet check to see how long they take to load, and then decide if I will go with the 8K or 12K JPG.

Thanks for pointing out what the problem was.

Regards,
John
Location: Burlington (Toronto-ish), Ontario, Canada
Self-hosted using Abyss Web Server:   AuroraWings.me   |   GalleryWings.com   |   PanAurora-Studio.com   |
Externally-hosted using LiteSpeed/Apache Web Server:   GenealogyWings.com/galleries   |
 
User avatar
mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Problem with constantly rotating circles instead of displaying preview images

21 Dec 2022, 21:31

JMM wrote:
Your panorama images are MASSIVE (13660 px).
That's the way I got them; I didn't know that I could resize them.
My point wasn't that they were TOO massive ... Panorama sources are supposed to be huge. My point is simply that they are massive, and thus require a large amount of memory to resize.
JMM wrote:
  • 4K .JPG... not very clear (1.5 KB)
  • 4K .PNG... slightly clearer (11.8 MB)
  • 8K .JPG... even more clearer (5.6 MB)
  • 8K .PNG... yet more clearer (41.2 MB)
  • 12K .JPG... the clearest (11.9 MB)
My personal recommendation would be to keep the largest size possible, as detail and quality are important in panoramas. You should just make sure that you use "optimal" JPG compression, since visible compression-artifacts will be minimal once the image is scaled and distorted in the browser. Lossless PNG is not worth the exponential size difference. I wrote about JPG compression here:
https://www.photo.gallery/blog/image-si ... -websites/

One thing: Although modern desktops have the capability to render panoramas up to 16384px, mobile devices are often limited 8192 and in some cases 4096. X3 will actually resize the panoramas to automatically match a device MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE limitation. This should be working for you since you have increased the memory_limit, but please check from a mobile device.
JMM wrote:They're pretty-fast for me to load, but then I have 1GB Internet.  I will have some friends with slower Internet check to see how long they take to load, and then decide if I will go with the 8K or 12K JPG.
For me, I would stick with largest dimension (source dimensions), and just make sure there is optimal JPG compression (around 75%). People need to wait for videos to play in browser, so they can wait for panoramas to load also (there is a preloader that displays progress). Panoramas can be beautiful to view, but they need to keep a level of detail to remain beautiful.