Template talk:Cubemap viewer

Early discussion

See commons:User_talk:Bawolff#Photosphere_derivatives. Sdkb ^talk 14:18, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Known issues/ideas

• Ultimately there are limits as to what we can do in a template. The best solution would be a MediaWiki extension. See TheDj's efforts towards this however it appears progress has stalled out.
• Ideally it would work with equirectangular format, since that is what everyone uses and converting everything is a pain, not to mention creates a lot of additional files to maintain. This is unfortunately probably not in the cards, as its simply not viable using pure CSS + {{calculator}}. It might be possible with a dedicated JS gadget.
  • Alternatively MW could do the conversion: phab:T363885. That would be ideal but convincing people to deploy that feels like it would be an uphill battle.
• Ideally the template would be able to extract image metadata to chose default viewing angle (phab:T43498)
• Ideally the template would support images that aren't a full photosphere better - e.g. where the image doesn't go all the way up or all the way around. An example being File:MK04463-72_Athabasca_Glacier_Icefields_Parkway_(Jasper_NP)_spherical.jpg
• Ideally instead of click to move, the template would support dragging which gives a more natural UI. This isn't currently possible with {{calculator}} but maybe in a future version. Dragging now works. More complex motions like pinch to zoom do not.
• Supporting annotations or hotspots would be kind of cool, but perhaps of limited usefulness in practice.
• We need to use external panoviewer for full screen or phone orientation api (e.g. immersive VR). I think it would be difficult to justify supporting these things in {{calculator}}. It might be possible with a dedicated gadget.

Bawolff (talk) 21:12, 5 September 2025 (UTC)