Tag: indoor wayfinding software

The world biggest cruise ship “Wonder Of The Seas” has more than 2800 rooms and accommodates more than 6900 people. Wonder of the Seas measures 1,188 feet (362 m) in length and has a gross tonnage of 236,857 across all 18 decks. Since all rooms and activities are compactly together on cruise ships, it is necessary for people to have all the information on important activities and locations. Indoor positioning on cruise ships is an important comfort for the passengers. We present to you the indoor positioning solution for a cruise ship created by 3D Wayfinder.

So far 3D Wayfinder has been used with a simple 2D map for small cruise ship. The ship has a total of 17 floors and around 1000 rooms. Below you see excerpts from five different floors.

Cruise ships have many different leisure options. As you could see on the photo, there are pools, saunas, a theatre, different shops, kids playground and many more. If you are going to be spending time on a cruise ship, it is very important to know where the different rooms and areas are from the very beginning.

Using GPS on metal vessels is difficult. Indoor positioning on cruise ships can be organized using iBeacons, WIFI or QR code that can be opened through a web browser. 3D Wayfinder has used all the proposed solutions and we know exactly how to build the system in a way that would be the most suitable for the customer.

Digital maps on cruise ships

On large ships there is a high risk of getting lost. Therefore, it is important to have interactive maps in various places on the ship. 3D Wayfinder map shows the route to the desired location with a red line. In comparison to regular printed maps, digital maps significantly reduce the time it takes to search for a location. On regular maps, it is very difficult to determine your location and then understand where you want to go.

Easily updated information boards in the elevators

In addition to the possibility of finding the location, 3D Wayfinder also offers information boards that can be installed in the elevator. Information about events on the cruise ship can be added to the screens. You can also share information about meal times and the use of other important services, which is necessary for all visitors. In addition, it is very easy for employees to exchange information on the screens.

Digital maps on a cruise ships as billboards

Most people do a lot of shopping on cruise ships as cruise ships often have better prices than regular shopping centers. In order for different shops to advertise their goods, it is possible to add advertisements to the map. This can be a good way to attract people to the store. In addition to shops, services like spa could also be advertised in a kiosk. For example, additional information could be added to the location and people could view the spa services and price list without them having to go to the spa in person.

In the world of entertainment, it is important to stand out and offer customers all the comforts possible. And one of the great conveniences for visitors is certainly a practical navigation service. If you are interested in the services offered by 3D Wayfinder, please contact our sales department.

ISE 2023 Expo is probably most important technology expo in Europe. This year it was biggest yet. ISE 2023 attracted 58,107 unique attendees from 155 countries, making 133,606 visits to the show floor. Especially busy was Multi-Technology hall. There we had most fun meeting companies too. Special thanks goes to for citizens of Barcelona. Even with limited English they left to us superb expression. We were pleased that the event was in city where people are kind and helpful for the first time visitors.

ISE 2023 Expo organization

ISE 2023 Expo experience is that was really well organized Expo. There were large halls and easy to access booths. The catering was also very well organized and managed. We saw some very unique solutions. Especially interesting was 4K LED screens with IR touch. Making it suitable to use in interactive digital signage and 2D or 3D wayfinding solutions.

In two days we when we visited expo, we got a lot of positive feedback for our software. Companies were most interested in our 3D maps that we have built for indoor navigation. Some of the companies we visited needs to be highlight also in our blog.

Nice meetings at the event

With representatives of Cisco we quickly found a common topic of conversation. We talked about smart rooms and today’s business environment. We understood in that moment how right our direction has been for years. Also especially happy to see that we have yet to offer more opportunities then international corporations like Cisco can do. This motivates us to keep working hard.

Highly interested meeting we had was with BrightSign. Their digital signage players were interesting that can be potentially used for our software. We talked about to give better hardware tools for our clients. Especially interested us plug and play solution. Also it may be solution for our clients, who have little experience with digital signage and players for interactive screens. If everything goes well then we will have also hardware for our clients that is reliable with good price range.

We also visited booths of Clebex and Telelogos. Both are big IT companies and with very interesting field. They are definitely worth to explore. We started of right a way with productive talks and of course our topic was about potential of 3D Wayfinding. 3D Wayfinder software gives additional tools build powerful business solutions for end-clients!

Interactive displays manufactures at ISE

We got new and interesting knowledge in Chinese display manufacturer HCTek. Interactive displays is what future holds. HCTec is large interactive display manufacturer providing OEM, ODM and OTM solutions. Many well known display brands get their interactive displays from that factory. For us it was important to know what future brings. Talking was very productive and we had good laughs and took picture!

Then we met LED manufacturer AOTO. In our talks we covered many aspects of today digital signage market directions. Also we both agreed that future will be LED. Especially in indoor and outdoor digital signage field. We were also invited to their 30th anniversary celebrations to Happy Hour.

Our sales director Rainer Saar shared his experiences.

3D Wayfinder uses a in-house built JavaScript Keyboard for search input. A On Screen Keyboard (Keyboard later on) is used when there is no physical keyboard. For security and ease of use reasons we can’t use the Operating Systems builtin Keyboard.

Previously we used our own User Interface library to manage the state of our applications. But times have moved on and we are now using other more popular and powerful open source libraries like AngularJS and VueJS. We managed to use the old Keyboard also with these libraries. But it wasn’t very handy and meant that we had to import libraries that were not necessary for whole project (eg jQuery).

So we decided to get free of 3rd party libraries and make it easy to install via npm (nodejs package manager).

Our On Screen Keyboard is usable with any UI library that supports importing ES6 module formats. You can define Your own keyboard layouts and actions with a JSON layout file. So we can have any language that we ever need and also make also fully custom keyboards that only a number pad or have special buttons for custom actions. Also the Keyboard itself allows to switch the layout.

Check out the GitHub page.

Wayfinding applications are not just maps with “You Are Here” dot anymore. There are many possible functionalities and widgets that our customers prefer to see on their wayfinding applications. 3D Wayfinders HTML-based user interface makes it really easy to add and use such widgets in wayfinding application.

As wayfinding kiosks are usually in visible places. Visitors would also like to find other kind of information than the building map and directory listing. Large shopping malls are usually accessible via intercity bus or metro stations. It is important to find the commuting schedules. Also in larger modern shopping malls. There are integrated cinemas, which would also like to show their programme.

Nowadays people have smartphones, that can show weather forecast and date beside the clock. But still one of the things our customers are asking for quite often. This is a clock integrated to the wayfinding application.

We have created a NPM package ‘ng.clock’ for the widget. It can be found at https://www.npmjs.com/package/ng.clock. Demo of the clocks can be found here https://codepen.io/tonister/pen/qpyBgQ. This clock widget is made as an AngularJS 1.x Directive. The choice to use AngularJS is due to the fact that almost all our latest templates have been created using AngularJS.

3D Wayfinder user interface is created with HTML. It is easy to implement any widget or integrate bus or cinema schedules inside wayfinding application user interface. Although it might be good to mention that for some of these features the API licenses are not free. If they are free then they are very limited.

Thanks to HTML5 based layouts it is easy to integrate different kind of widgets in wayfinding application. For example exchange rates, events, news, weather forecasts, social media feeds, CAP alerts, time remaining till closing.

Harbour placed shopping mall Nautica has got a new name and a new look. After rebuilding the shopping mall, two wayfinding kiosks were also placed. Although the mall is not large, the wayfinding feature is really important for them.

Nautica mall in Tallinn, Estonia reopened in the end of 2017. It has only about 60 shops but wayfinding kiosks are more important than ever after the renovations. Old shops are in new places, new shops have been advertised but neither the old or new clients know where to find them.

In Nautica things are made even more difficult. Because a new floor was added and most of the restaurants, ATM-s and bathrooms are placed there.

Kiosks in Nautica are simple and practical. They don’t take a lots of room and their slanted design indicates immediately that the screen. Even though it might have an advertisement as a screensaver – is meant for customers to use.

Kiosks are conveniently placed by the doors of the two main entrances. These are the first things that every customer sees when they enter. Placement like this makes it easy for visitors to notice. They don’t need to start looking for maps or signs when they are not sure where they should go.

It is also practical because it’s more likely for the visitor to take notice of the kiosk right after entering than in the middle of the busy mall. So when they need to use it later, it’s easier for them to remember where to find it.

The design for the new template was provided by the mall. We only needed to bring it into reality. They wanted a stylish and simple look with clear and easy to use interface. They also wanted to have all the shop names displayed on default screensaver, slowly rolling by on the screen. This animation with shop logos also works on map view. If the customer hasn’t touched the screen for a little while.

Sometimes it’s the small things that make all the difference. New “Toggle top view” feature in 3D Wayfinders administration panels editor is a useful tool that will give needed help to our users.

Toggle top view shows all the maps straight from the top and it works with both 2D and 3D maps. While this feature is selected, the rotation is disabled. This is most useful when marking paths on the map. It could also be used if you want to set kiosk view straight from the top on 3D maps.

“Toggle top view” can be found on the top of the editor under “Settings“.

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.

Many things in our new administration panel work a little bit differently than they used to. If you need help to figure things out, check 3D Wayfinder user manual.

We have updated all the topics and we add information when new features are added. You can find 3D Wayfinder user manual from our web page under “Docs” from main menu or you can use the direct link https://3dwayfinder.com/documentation/user-manual/

User manual for our previous administration panel is also still available, you can find it here: https://3dwayfinder.com/documentation/user-manual/#5

It has taken some time and lots of effort but we have finally made it. New 3D Wayfinder administration panel is finally online and usable for all clients.

We have made many smaller and bigger improvements to make 3D Wayfinder administration panel  easier to use. Especially for new clients. For example the editor has been changed to make it more logical. All the materials have previews for better overview and managing of 2D maps is more convenient.

It should also be more comfortable for those who prefer to use our app on smartphones or tablets.

There are still some kinks to straighten out so if you notice something that isn’t working the way it is supposed to, let us know.

“Sign in” leads straight to new administration panel but if you prefer to use the old one, go to old.3dwayfinder.com or use the link at the bottom of the sign in page. 

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.