Author: Kaspar Koov

We are presenting the Hospital Wayfinder solution at SantExpo 2023. SantExpo is the largest healthcare IT exhibition in France and one of the largest healthcare exhibitions in Europe. Lots of interest about wayfinding software and how to make visitor’s experience better in hospitals.

Hospital Wayfinder is our wayfinding solution for healthcare and hospitals. Hospital Wayfinder has been specially designed and developed for hospitals, clinics, retirement homes etc. There are lot of interest and really good feedback about our wayfinding software. Allmost every visitor has personally got lost in hospital buildings before and sees the potential in our wayfinding solution for hospitals.

SantExpo is the leading French event of the French Hospital Federation. It brings together all decision-makers and healthcare professionals involved in the management, digital, care pathway, patient experience, equipment, materials, construction and transformation of healthcare institutions.

Besides IT solutions, there are different innovative and less innovative companies presenting healthcare related services and products. Getting contacts and earning money is definately the main focus, but behind that is the idea of solving hospital and healthcare problems. As we know, the healthcare sector is getting larger and larger with every year and there are more patients and more hospitals around the world.

In SantExpo, big players like Microsoft, Amazon, Philips, Siemens etc. are also present. As healthcare is a large market in France, every major company has a special solution also for healthcare.

As with many other exhibitions we have been visiting, SantExpo maps were also not digital. Almost hard to find a specific company and even harder to find companies by keywords and categories. Although the maps were printed on the floors, you still have to walk around looking for company signs.

Today is the last day at SantExpo, meet us near the main caffeteria next to Start-Up village section. Or just contact our sales to ask about our wayfinding solution for healthcare and hospitals.

We have added CDN support in 3D Wayfinder. CDN makes loading 3D Wayfinder application faster especially outside Europe. Currently it is available only for custom projects, but soon it will be option for all 3D Wayfinder customers.

CDN or Content Delivery Network is a geographically distribute servers that cache content close to end users. A CDN allows for the quick transfer of files, media etc. It works best for static content. In 3D Wayfinder it is basically possible to load all wayfinding content including maps, location data, images, application files etc. CDN is widely used by sites with huge traffic like Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon.

CDN is currenlty available for 3D Wayfinder custom projects and we have to make manual changes to make it work. We would like to open it for all 3D Wayfinder users, but this will still need some development and testing.

CDN server network copies files to more than 200 locations over world and when the wayfinding application is load, the files will be served from closest server.

During the testings we got loading improvement more than 60%. Lodaing speed was around 6 seconds from CDN compare to 16 seconds from 3D Wayfinder server.

Delivering content over CDN needs static content. This means that the content from databases has to be cached first. For any live-data like positioning or statistics, CDN cannot use. As wayfinding maps don’t change that often, it is easy to make the location information and maps to be as static content. Just after every change in 3D Wayfinder administration panel, the content has to be submit to CDN network also.

If you are already 3D Wayfinder customer and like your wayfinding to be load over CDN, please contact our sales department or your contact person in 3D Wayfinder. We will keep you posted through our blog and let you know when CDN-option will be available for all users in administration panel.

WordPress Indoor Map Plugin for indoor maps is an easy way to integrate building directory to your WordPress website. Keep the tenant info in sync on all your channels – web, mobile and kiosk. It allows you to connect locations on map with WordPress pages, show logos and additional info.

We have developed WordPress indoor map plugin for 3D Wayfinder. Plugin comes with stand-alone location management, but in can be used also with directory content from 3D Wayfinder.

Plugin provides map, that can be included in any WordPress page. Besides interactive map, there are also search and browsing features. Floorplans are clickable, and it is also possible to link WordPress pages with map. This is a very useful plugin for all shopping malls, universities, airports, train stations and other similar institutions. The customer can open the 3D wayfinder map from their own device and click and move as needed.

Until the end of December we are offering WordPress Map plugin for $750 (one time fee, no monthly costs).

Named offer stands for all webpages on WordPress platform (we have done integrations with other CMS-software also, contact us about other options). 

The plugin is not yet listed in WordPress plugin directory, but it will be soon. we are working on adding simple 2D floor plan editor, so maps can be designed directly inside WordPress.

We have made a mobile-friendly web application for large corn maze. Application helps to navigate in the maze, but at same time it will not disappear the fun of finding the right path in maze. Continue reading to see, how that’s possible.

Our customer Port Farms is operating large corn maze in Pennsylvania, not far from Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The maze labyrinth will be updated every year and it is more than 500 feet in length and 300 feet wide.

We have created a web-based mobile application for Port Farms, with a map of the maze. When starting, the map tiles are not visible. At the entry point of each section, there is QR-code and by scanning the code a part of the maze map will open.

It is similar to strategic computer games, where you cannot see the whole map, but just the part you have discovered. By using 3D Wayfinder geolocation API, the actual location is shown by a red dot.

You may ask, why do you need to provide the map in maze or labyrinth at all? One thing is to wonder around the maze and finally get your way out. Another thing is to explore (and in some way we may even say to “conquer”) the maze and discover it. Without needing paper and pen, you just scan the QR codes and open up the map. But it doesn’t mean that you will see the right way through. You still have to try and guess.

3D Wayfinder with similar tiled maps can be used in any other maze, labyrinth or theme park. By scanning the code or following the link, you can add information layers to the map and get the needed info at the right location.

3D Wayfinder has currently a server issue and our service is not working. The issue is with our Frankfurt data volume is down.

3D Wayfinder has currently a server issue and our service is not working at the moment. The issue is with our Frankfurt data volume which is currently down. Team at our service provider is working on the issue. You can read more info from:
https://status.digitalocean.com/incidents/8sk3mbgp6jgl

We are apologizing!

3D Wayfinder Team

In recent days, we were having problems with 3D model converter. These problems are partially fixed now, so converting non-corrupted 3D files shouldn’t cause any interruption anymore.

3D Wayfinder’s model file converter has stopped quite often lately, when converting corrupted 3D floor-plan files. Every time converter stopped, we had to start the process manually and clean the converting queue.
All 3D files are converted to JSON format, so they can be load in 3D Wayfinder. Our converter supports many 3D file formats, most common are FBX and DAE.
The problems were with couple of models, that caused invalid JSON when converting.
We have added error catching for this, so the rest of the converting process can resume and these corrupted models don’t interrupt other 3D models to be converted.
If converting of 3D floorplan model fails, you’ll get “ERROR” response in 3D Wayfinder Administration:

Other reasons, that 3D files couldn’t be converted are mainly caused by using non-UTF characters in mesh names.

There might be problems with 3D Wayfinder application today, as we are moving application server to another data center.

Thanks to growing number of users, we need more storage place. So we are moving 3D Wayfinder application to another data center, which offers more flexible solutions for storage space. This causes some down-time for 3D Wayfinder application (Administration panel and application itself).

With our suggested kiosk setup, it shouldn’t be a problem for kiosk applications.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

The new 3D Wayfinder Administration Panel is centered more around the floor plan editor. To provide better usability we keep the 3D editor idle when moving away to other pages. So switching between editor and other views is much faster now.

The new Administration Panel has been publicly available for testing since the beginning of this year. At the end of the summer we will only support the new administration panel. Although the current administration environment will be available for some time.

Loading the 3D floor plan editor takes a couple of seconds because we need to load 3D floor-plans models and also additional editor tools. Now when the editor is always in the background. We do not need to load the 3D editor again. This makes the usage more faster and user friendly.

Our new administrator panel is being built on Angularjs. To achieve loading of editor once we have created the service that holds the canvas element. It is also attached our editor API to it. Controller then adds canvas to the editor view and provides connection to API actions.

To see and test new Administration panel and floor plan editor, please log in here. If you don’t have an account with 3D Wayfinder, you can create it here for free.

We have developed an interactive kiosk for 3D applications. The kiosk is equipped with a landscape LCD screen, a touch panel and a dedicated graphics card which makes it suitable for applications that require greater graphical computing capabilities.

Most of the modern kiosk hardware is made as thin as possible and in most cases kiosk hardware use small PC-s like Intel NUC’s or even USB stick like Intel Compute Sticks. This is enough for showing advertisements or 2D wayfinding plans, but for larger 3D applications these PCs tend to be too weak. For one of our latest projects we had a challenge to create a special kiosk, where we could put a regular size motherboard and graphics card. The outcome is quite impressive and we are definitely taking this 3D kiosk further so we can provide it to other customers also. It can be counted as first Gamers’ kiosk PC in the world.

The kiosk is built on a metal frame, that supports the 8 mm tempered glass and holds the touch screen and computer hardware. The metal frame has enough weight and the screen is leaning back in a light angle. So it stays firmly on the ground and so there is no need to mount it to the floor.

For the computer we used regular PC components. The idea was to make the inside visible through the glass, so we put the emphasis on the looks of the components. We used components that had LED-lights so it would make a impressive light show. To place graphics cards separately, PCI Express riser cable was used. Common riser cables are white/grey color, but we needed the black one, so it would also look nice.

In current kiosk we used ASUS B150 Pro Gaming motherboard with Intel Core i5-7400 CPU cooling with Antec Kühler H2O H1200 watercooling. Power supply is 700W Zalman 700TX. Graphics card is ASUS GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, but it was planned to upgrade GPU when needed.
After aligning all the components and making the cabling in proper way, we painted the plate black. It is important to fix and align all the cables, otherwise it wouldn’t look nice. Especially as the PC plate will be partly visible through the covering glass of the kiosk.

Kiosk has 3 vents for blowing the air out from the bottom of the frame. On top of the kiosk we have also 3 vent openings, that are being used for air intake. It is possible to use there alsovents, but in current installation we just put there dust filter.

Glass has been mounted to metal frame by special glass mountings. It is possible to paint the glass from both sides to make kind of 3D effect. In current case we used customer’s corporate design elements, which were lines. The background is dark gray, but not in full color, so it is possible to see through it. Also it has a special “window” for looking at kiosk heart – the PC built on wooden plate.

On the inner side of the glass we have installed LED bar, so the edge of the glass is shining. The light also reflects the printed pattern on the back. In our case we used gray, so the effects are not that visible.

The kiosk was created for special building information (BIM) application in Estonian National Museum. There are over 10 thousand elements in this 3D model. This has been so far the largest 3D model used in 3D Wayfinder. When on high end laptop the application is running on around 5 FPS, then in this kiosk it is more than 15 FPS. More detailed overview of the BIM application is coming soon.

Glass was created by Glasstech and kiosk frame was designed and manufactured by Hecada.

We have changed the logic of initializing POI data in 3D Wayfinder. This gives up to 80% faster project initialization for medium and large projects. In very large projects, the increase is even larger – more than 90%.

After data is loaded from the API 3D Wayfinder system had to setup the 3D scene. That also included generating polygons and textures for each POI. These included a POI icon or the name of the POI on a billboard (facing the user all the time). POIs without icons needed to have the name displayed but the only way to display a text in 3D space is to generate or load a image. So we used a canvas element to draw these names. But this is a costly procedure. 

Now we create only these images that are flagged as “Always visible” at the start. So the startup time is a lot faster. Check the following comparison table. That gives faster loading of 3D projects. 

* Project doesn’t have any “Always visible” POIs

Initialization time before and after change compared with medium and Large projects:

Initializing is only a part of the whole loading. Loading the data and 3D models from server is another component of the whole loading process, so the afterall loading process is better about 5-55% (with connection 20Mb/s).