StreetView Tour autoconnecting to different business!!! WTF?

[NatalieP]

Hello everyone-

I've escalated this feedback to our engineering and product team. Essentially, here are some details you can read about the situation, and our reassurances that we are taking this feedback seriously:

Our processing infrastructure consists of two forms of automated connectivity: auto-connect which is something you can opt-in and out of to have each 360 photo in a tour auto-connected or not (and some of you have referenced this in this thread); and dynamic connectivity which is intended to connect the boundaries of your tours to existing street view and the edges of other, nearby paths. Regrettably, there are some issues at present that we're working to resolve. This is a high priority for us, as we realize this is messing up some good tours shortly after they're published- and we apologize for this. Please know that we're working on a solution, but need to be careful that the logic we introduce doesn't fix one issue only to create another one! (we don't like whack-a-mole).

Again, thanks for the feedback- please continue to post here about issues or questions you may have.

Natalie

@TraciC FYI

[Rupert-]

Hi @NatalieP  I appreciate you responding, and being open about the issues that are causing the corruption of tours, as the cost of some automated enhancements of, and creations of other experimental tours, some of which may have reasonable results.

The benefits of the automated enhancements that improve the street view experience, should not be at such a cost of losing the confidence of those who are working to provide high quality tours, with the handicap of mickey-mouse tools in the app. There are already significant obstacles for TP's to provide quality content to Google, adding to this pain, the corruption of tours in this way is going to create serious 'trust' issues for google, and much opportunity for third-party providers to reap the rewards of those wishing to create high-quality virtual tours. I hope this is being addressed with the highest of priorities, as I suspect the reports are only going to increase as more tours are added, along with more discovering their clients tours are being corrupted. 

This perhaps is further compounded by there being no particular feedback or support mechanism for the 1500+ TP's in this LG Forum. There should perhaps be a private forum and a community manager to fill the gap between TP's and product, TP's could then perhaps help in a public forum to support those new to street view. The longer this inevitable decision takes, the more work will be required when it is eventually put in place. 

[Csaba]

In the guide lines > Publishing Acceptance Criteria > Photo Spheres > under "Show more", indeed this is there:

"When multiple photo spheres are published to one area, connections between them may be automatically generated. Whether your connections were created manually or automatically, we may adjust, remove, or create new connections — and adjust the position and orientation of your photo spheres — to ensure a realistic, connected viewing experience." 

And yes, I understand that this automatic connection is meant to connect a tour to existing Street View (literally "street" view) photo spheres. That is good as we can simply "walk in" from the street into an inside VT. However connecting unrelated businesses is indeed a bug and I have also experienced confusing "jumps" from one place to another. 

I hope @NatalieP that you can fix it. Certainly Google does not need my technical advice on programming but I guess preventing connections between photo spheres listed under different businesses should not be too hard (although sometimes I could imagine that this would be good but that could be left for manual connections)

[LucioV]

I'm busy in meetup in Italy, will be back later! 🙂 Thanks for calling me out!

[LucioV]

Just saw that the engineering team is aware of this issue, that used to occur, before, on multifloor tours, or with near tours.

[Rupert-]

Well, as the tour hasn't resolved the issues over the weekend, the client is not happy with the results, understandably. I'd tried 'waiting it out' to see if the connections would 'fix', but seems this is just not going to happen. So, a waste of time for both myself and the client, and some uncertainty if they are going to try and use a 'legacy' TP, though I believe they only have a couple of days left before their tools are retired, and as the 'adjoining' tour is a 'see inside' I don't see how they'd get better results anyway. 

It's far from an ideal situation in many respects, and I'm now trying to get the client back onboard with me by offering the tour hosted on a 3rd-party platform. Not yet convinced them, and they appear to have understandably lost some trust in the process, and myself, as a result of these stupid auto-connections. While there purpose for the tour was partly to 'enhance' their Google My Business listing with a photo tour. Technically, it may well be enhanced due to the tour, but anyone stumbling into the tour will find it very confusing as they are thrown back and forth between different businesses.

If a 'Trusted Photographer' must submit to such practices as google corrupting their tours in this way, there should at least be more warning that your tours can be corrupted if close to other tours. Especially regarding businesses on different floors in the same building. Ideally the 'trusted' part of it should give us the option to opt-out of such connections, or at least require us to confirm they work before they are being applied. A blind algorithm to create such travesties as this, isn't going to do anyone any favours. 

On a side note, preparing the tour on a 3rd party site, including uploading, aligning and publishing, took less than 1/4 the time it took using the street view app, so there is that going for 3rd party solutions too.... 

[PatricL]

This is a freestanding tour in the middle of nowhere.

And it is bugging out the same way.

It's taken 5 of March and problem started 6 of March.

Nothing has sorted itself out for 22 days.

First time I noticed the problem was on a tour shot, uploaded and connected on 27 of Feb, changes has been visible on that tour, but not everything has sorted itself out.

I have reconnected this tour a few times, and then connected it again after 24 hours. As I thought I didn't something wrong with it.

[LucioV]

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@PatricL wrote:

This is a freestanding tour in the middle of nowhere.

And it is bugging out the same way.

It's taken 5 of March and problem started 6 of March.

Nothing has sorted itself out for 22 days.

First time I noticed the problem was on a tour shot, uploaded and connected on 27 of Feb, changes has been visible on that tour, but not everything has sorted itself out.

I have reconnected this tour a few times, and then connected it again after 24 hours. As I thought I didn't something wrong with it.

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Patric, what do you mean for "freestanding tour"? This is attached to a placepage, correct?

Just a quick reminder; we are supposed to blur out recognizable people from panoramas, especially when kids are in the shoot, i suggest you to republish, when you can, blurring out prior to connect spheres.

Nice place!

[PatricL]

It's not connected to a street view close by or any other tour in this area, it's all by itself.

I thought the blurriness of the motion and the theta was good enough, I can't recognize them and they are with me.

[LucioV]

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@PatricL wrote:

It's not connected to a street view close by or any other tour in this area, it's all by itself.

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Ah, ok, thanks for explaination.

There is a lot of time that SV connection to street is not guaranteed, so i don't think about this anymore!