Memory Palace
February 25, 2019 1:17 PM Subscribe
How do I archive for offline view a complicated website with 3D tour?
So, I have a website that I want to completely archive and have for offline view. I have already done "save-as" a complete web archive and it is not pulling the 3-D tour which is what I really want. Would prefer the whole site to work offline.
Before people get antsy, I have the permission of the site owner to do the archiving. There are no rights or copyrights issue. Here is the site
So, I have a website that I want to completely archive and have for offline view. I have already done "save-as" a complete web archive and it is not pulling the 3-D tour which is what I really want. Would prefer the whole site to work offline.
Before people get antsy, I have the permission of the site owner to do the archiving. There are no rights or copyrights issue. Here is the site
Response by poster: How should I word the request specifically? I will be going through the real estate agent and he will want specific wording for his request as the site owner.
posted by jadepearl at 1:45 PM on February 25, 2019
posted by jadepearl at 1:45 PM on February 25, 2019
Keep in mind that the tour may not be viewable without the web interface to enable navigation around the image. If that is the case there's not much you will be able to do about that unless there is an app or other program that you can download to use with the file. It's kind of like asking for the original RAW file for a photograph -- if you don't have a program that can open RAW files, it's not going to do you any good.
I would reach out to the company and specifically ask if the tour they created for you is available in any off-line format, as you need it for archiving purposes or to show to clients where wifi isn't available or whatever the reason is.
Once you have established that, if it is possible to have it off-line in a viewable state, simply ask them to forward you the file via dropbox or GDrive or whatever. If there is an app or program you need to work with the file, find out how to get it. This may be something you have to pay for.
posted by ananci at 1:58 PM on February 25, 2019
I would reach out to the company and specifically ask if the tour they created for you is available in any off-line format, as you need it for archiving purposes or to show to clients where wifi isn't available or whatever the reason is.
Once you have established that, if it is possible to have it off-line in a viewable state, simply ask them to forward you the file via dropbox or GDrive or whatever. If there is an app or program you need to work with the file, find out how to get it. This may be something you have to pay for.
posted by ananci at 1:58 PM on February 25, 2019
While it's possible for someone to remove a site by using a robots.txt file, the web page and tour appear to be mirrored in a usable form on the Internet Archive.
posted by scruss at 2:28 PM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by scruss at 2:28 PM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: All things online fade. The download site feature to archive.com is not working. Github Wayback Machine Downloader does not pull the complete site archive down. Any suggestions?
posted by jadepearl at 6:21 PM on February 25, 2019
posted by jadepearl at 6:21 PM on February 25, 2019
The tour is hosted on the proprietary Real.Vision platform, which streams the imagery from their servers like Google does for their Street View stuff. While it's possible to extract the 360-degree images (see below), you probably won't be able to make the entire UI for it work independent of their platform without some kind of bespoke program. If contacting Real.Vision isn't helpful -- and I imagine they'd rather everyone be forced to go through their servers instead of making it easy to download/reduplicate their expensive 3D tours for use wherever -- your easiest answer is probably to save at least the floor plan and then screenshot the various 2D photos in the gallery, or even screen record a video of you going through the tour at your leisure. You can also save any individual view from the 3D tour pretty easily (at least in Google Chrome) by right-clicking the viewport and saving the image (size of the image is based on size of the viewport, so full-screen it on a high-res display to get the best results).
If you want to go hard, you can save all of the original 2D and/or 360 images manually. This config page lists all the imagery available for the tour, with the alphanumeric string after each "code": referring to one of the (113!) 360-degree viewpoints. If you copy that string into the following URL:
https://d34jcppfyz4hlk.cloudfront.net/[string]/d.jpg
...you'll get a collage of all six images that make the 360 view -- 3/4ths of the panorama at the top, the last quarter in the bottom-left, and the ceiling and floor views in the remainder (example). If that looks too weird, you can replace the d.jpg with c0.jpg through c5.jpg to get each of these elements individually (and in a higher resolution). It's tedious, especially since they use the same naming scheme and have to be re-named while saving to preserve the room-by-room organization, but if you're technically inclined you can probably find or make a basic script for downloading these automatically. Grabbing all 113 "d.jpeg" collages (or all 678 "c[0-5].jpeg" elements) should capture everything that the tour can show you.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:37 PM on February 26, 2019
If you want to go hard, you can save all of the original 2D and/or 360 images manually. This config page lists all the imagery available for the tour, with the alphanumeric string after each "code": referring to one of the (113!) 360-degree viewpoints. If you copy that string into the following URL:
https://d34jcppfyz4hlk.cloudfront.net/[string]/d.jpg
...you'll get a collage of all six images that make the 360 view -- 3/4ths of the panorama at the top, the last quarter in the bottom-left, and the ceiling and floor views in the remainder (example). If that looks too weird, you can replace the d.jpg with c0.jpg through c5.jpg to get each of these elements individually (and in a higher resolution). It's tedious, especially since they use the same naming scheme and have to be re-named while saving to preserve the room-by-room organization, but if you're technically inclined you can probably find or make a basic script for downloading these automatically. Grabbing all 113 "d.jpeg" collages (or all 678 "c[0-5].jpeg" elements) should capture everything that the tour can show you.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:37 PM on February 26, 2019
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by ananci at 1:24 PM on February 25, 2019