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| mymelbeach |
Standard Member
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United States
February-15-2005
58 Posts |
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My friends at Easypano,
I must after extreme frustration voice my concerns pertaining to your development and release of the new Tourweaver 2.0.
I am a owner and operator of a successful Virtual Tour company in the U.S. I have been using your products, both Panoweaver and Tourweaver in processing and building my VTs. I have been satisfied with the general quality and features of the products but in terms of service, maintenance and release activity I must let you know that I am very disappointed with Easypano.
I wish to be diplomatic about voicing my concerns so that you may learn from my experience and hopefully correct some of the weaknesses I see in your ongoing support.
In general your feature set in both products was attractive enough for me to buy both. Original versions I bought were Tourweaver 1.25 and Panoweaver 3.0. Since this original purchase I have upgraded to TW1.3 and PW4.0 respectively.
Since I bought these versions I have been terribly disappointed with the level of support on both products and more importantly on the delivery (or lack thereof) of subsequent versions.
During the past year I have been told from your staff through phone calls, email and forum posts that new versions were imminent. However, delay after delay persist and there are still no updates available. Why?
If you are going to pre-announce a product release, people (me and other VT providers) count on that announcement for OUR customers. We need to keep up with the competition to survive in a very competitive market. With these delays I am at a disadvantage to other competitors products that are being delivered routinely.
Features such as full-screen, MP3 sound, undo and Flash viewers have been widely discussed on this forum but yet no delivery. But your competitors have been delivering. And this should be a wake-up call to your staff. You are in catch up mode at this point.
I truly hope that the new version of Tourweaver "blows me away" with new features because I would really like to stay with Easypano. I also hope that you will provide better interim support for your releases to correct obvious weaknesses in the product. (Movie editing for example).
In my daily visit to Easypano.com to see if the new version is available I have been increasingly disappointed and as a result started looking at other products to create my tours. I must tell you honestly that there are alternatives, and good ones.
In closing, I truly wish that you and your staff have have made the right decision in delaying the release of TW2 because it is an innovative release with state-of -the-art features. Otherwise you are poised to lose at least one loyal customer.
Walt
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Regards,
mymelbeach
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| mstoss |
Gold Member
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Germany
December-26-2006
141 Posts |
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Hello Walt,
well said!
I'm not a customer of Easypano yet, but wished to become one since august last year. I think, Tourweaver is up to now one of the easiest to use - if not the best - and yet versatile products to create virtual tours. BUT: After all what I could see, even from the gallery, it seems to be hard to show sharp panoramas, even when you are producing high quality basic images. As such I regard it as useless. I don't make an effort to create sharp images only to see them blurred by the player. THIS is my strongest concern and I have been told that TW 2.0 would have an improved player. So, since then I'm waiting to spend money on it. I want to support all what you are writing, Walt. To keep on waiting on a product which release has been announced and postponed for so long does not create confidence.
I want to give Easypano an example of how it is going the wrong way: I bought LiveStagePro early 2006 to create Quicktime tours with it. Now this software seems dead, the support is nearly kept alive by some users who set up a forum at the ivrpa.org website. I don't want to experience this once more - so ...?
And I want to give Easypano another example of a good panorama product and its marketing: This is PTGUI. It is very affordable and in continuous development. 4, 5 times a year you will see new releases - and it is not just bug fixes. It is a constant flow of improvements and you have to wait long until you have to pay an upgrade fee. From when I bought the 3.x version in 2004 (former MacUser) up to now, I was asked to pay for an upgrade only once. I'm allowed to use the software with the same key on a mac and on a pc.
Things like this have made PTGUI _the_ panorama stitcher for professionals. It is affordable, easy to use (now after all the improvements), gives excellent results, there is a strong community support, quick development with an ear for the users wishes.
Today it is no longer a big thing to produce good panoramas and show them on the web. Making virtual tours is. Tourweaver could be THE choice for making VT. So, go on, give it to us! (... and keep on improving once we have it!)
Michael
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http://www.premiumpano.de
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| mustang_lex |
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Standard Member
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Canada
August-05-2006
30 Posts |
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| mymelbeach |
Standard Member
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United States
February-15-2005
58 Posts |
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Alex,
Truly remarkable...
I don't understand why somebody from Easypano does not pay attention to this board! I don't see any answers from them on this subject or in this TW section.
Maybe they are just SOOO close to release...
Is TW2 even in beta??? If so will somebody please comment?
What about the moderators? Smooth, 360texas, what can you tell us???
Walt
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Regards,
mymelbeach
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| BrahmaVision |
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Standard Member
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Slovakia
January-13-2007
21 Posts |
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Hi all,
till now I did not feel the need of active participating at the forum. Now I registered, cause I want to express my support for Walt`s contribution.
Dear Easypano team, be aware! I am, like the others who use your software, deeply dissapointed with Your dealings. I started to look around for some new product (immervision, imatronics etc.). We all appreciate your software as one of the best, however, you should not fall asleep or become proud of it.
Go on! We, Your customers, need you! And you, our sw supplier, need us!
You should respond to the needs of your customers. Try to improve Your communication. Otherwise, why is the forum on Your pages?
Igor
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Mgr. Igor Socha - BRAHMA VISION, Slovakia
My Link
Sorry 4 my English 
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| VRtour.nl |
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Gold Member
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Netherlands
February-08-2004
170 Posts |
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| smooth |
Forum Moderator
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Australia
November-23-2002
5401 Posts |
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Guys,
I don't know the situation with Easypano in China but here in Australia most business doesn't return to work after Christmas break until Monday 15th January.
The Beta has NOT been released.
I hope those who I have been useful too upgrade via my website www.smooth360.info
Regards, Smooth 
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| mstoss |
Gold Member
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Germany
December-26-2006
141 Posts |
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Are you joking? 3 weeks of interrupted service? No one of the management able to log in to the web to have a look to check what is going on?
Michael
Quote: Originally posted by VRtour.nl on January-13-2007
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">Easypano Service Disruption</SPAN></SPAN><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">Maybe this is the reason way Easypano not response.</SPAN><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB"></SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB"></SPAN> <SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB"><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">http://www.easypano.com/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=1&TopicID=2598&PagePosition=1</SPAN><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></SPAN> <SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB"><o:p><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">Dave, can you inform us?<o:p></o:p></SPAN><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">Harry<o:p></o:p></SPAN><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"></o:p></SPAN> </o:p></SPAN>
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http://www.premiumpano.de
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| USVT & IVT |
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Standard Member
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United States
January-09-2007
9 Posts |
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BrahmaVision-
"I started to look around for some new product (immervision, imatronics etc.)."
I would strongly caution you against Immatronics and I am speaking from experience here. This is how bad it is they used to have a users forum and support. Then something happend to the forum one day and poof. Probably how badly their development and product release updates were being bashed. Similar to what I'm hearing in this forum.If I can remember correctly we waited I think almost over 2yrs for an update to the tour software.Most of the customers I think found other software solutions to remain competative. Then the only support was to email the creator and he never answered my support requests. Basically Vapor Ware to me now.
To quote Walt: "If you are going to pre-announce a product release, people (me and other VT providers) count on that announcement for OUR customers. We need to keep up with the competition to survive in a very competitive market. With these delays I am at a disadvantage to other competitors products that are being delivered routinely."
All I can say is Amen! To that!
Jack
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If a picture is worth a thousand words....imagine what a virtual tour is worth!
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Tourweaver
Topic: Tourweaver 2.0
