Troubleshooting Heuristics

[Ed Halley]

On Sat, 2003-10-25 at 19:25, Pablo d'Angelo wrote: 
> Please tell us your ideas. I'll change the optimize process a little bit to
> add an "auto optimize" function some time. using the optimizer seems to be
> the biggest problem for new users right now.

To start with "new" features for new users, I was thinking that the
preview window could give a little more feedback about likely results.

A simple icon and descriptive text (one to three lines should be enough)
should appear below the preview window with an explanation or tip to
correct the most likely shortcoming of the current panorama, depending
on a ranked (and expandable) list of heuristics.

Here are a couple situations he code could recognize automatically and
explain, but can't just automatically fix by itself:


  * Try adding horizontal or vertical guide controls.  [None found.]
    The current panorama has a wide field of view, which may be
    distorted over the length of the panorama.  A possible improvement
    is to add one vertical control in a couple far-removed images.

  * The current pixel size may be too large for this computer to run
    efficiently.  Check the requested final image dimensions.  Press
    the "Calc" button for the best image quality, or reduce the
    dimensions so the computer can allocate enough memory for it.

  * The field of view is extremely small, and may be inaccurate.
    Check that the HFOV estimates for each image are appropriate,
    then use the "estimate the total field of view" button again.



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