In this blog, I'll be giving you a brief overview of the variety of actions you can add to your CenarioVR scenarios.
A little about me: I'm an elearning developer for Transition Associates and Video Interact, and I have been working with CenarioVR since its beta launch in 2018. I have created courses for the fashion, health and safety, construction, automotive and healthcare industries with many more on the way.
Introduction
Actions can be triggered in a number of ways:
On Show
On Done
On Select
On Hover In
On Hover Out
Timed
These actions are grouped into sections:
1. Scenes
2. Object Actions
3. Audio, Video and Timers
4. Variables and Completion
5. Web
The following is a brief explanation of each action you can add into your scenario.
1.1 Link to scene
To allow your user the freedom to jump between different scenes, you can add the ‘Link to Scene’ action.
This action can be triggered in a variety of circumstances, for example:
When the user clicks a hotspot
Once a scene finishes
When the user answers a question
I often use the action on a “finish scene” hotspot which is shown at the end of the scene. I also have a “Main menu” button which is always available to the user so that they can leave the scene anytime they wish.
1.2 Play Scene
If you have paused your scene, for example, to play a pop-up video, or to allow your user to answer a question, this action allows you to resume your scene from where it was paused.
1.3 Pause Scene
This action allows you to pause your current scene, for example, to allow your user to watch a pop-up video, answer a question or spend a few moments reading.
Pausing a scene will pause the events timeline, meaning no events will be triggered whilst a scene is paused.
This action only applies to a scene; any pop-up videos or timers have their own “Pause” action.
At the moment, there is no feature that allows you to ‘pause everything’. For a recent project, I added a ‘Pause/Play’ button to my scene to allow the user to pause if they need a break. Getting everything to pause was easy - the tricky bit was to get everything correctly playing again. As you may have different pop-up videos playing, you will need to know which one was playing when you pause everything so you know which one to start playing when you resume everything. This can be solved with variables, but if you’d rather not do all that work, vote for my ‘pause everything’ feature request here!
1.4 Jump to Scene Time
This action allows the user to jump to a certain time in the scene. This can be useful if the user only needs to see a certain part of the scene, or if they have already completed most of the scene, leave, come back, and just need to watch the last couple of minutes.
John Blackmon, creator of CenarioVR, has also created a custom workaround to allow you to jump forward and back 10 seconds (as you see on YouTube, Netflix etc.). This is a great feature that allows your user to scrub forwards and backwards through the scene. Link to this solution here. For more info on how it works, visit this blog post.
2.1 Show
If your object is initially hidden, or has been hidden via another action, you can use this action to show the object. Examples of this might include:
Show the correct tick if the user answers the question correctly
Show a video when the user clicks a hotspot
Show the name of the scene when the user starts a scene
2.2 Hide
This action can be used to hide any object seen on screen - hotspots, videos, timers, 3D Models etc. Examples of this might include:
Hide the question after the user answers it correctly
Hide a video once it finishes
2.3 Animate
This action gives you the ability to animate an object in the following ways:
Spin the object on it’s X, Y and/or Z axis
Grow the object
Display a tooltip
Circle the object
When spinning an object on its axis, you can set how many times the object will rotate as well as the duration of each spin.
The grow action allows you to set the percentage of growth, for example, to grow to 20% of its original size.
The tooltip displays the name of the object in a small box above the object. To change the text of the tooltip, you will have to edit the object’s name.
The circle action outlines an object with a circle. You are able to change the colour of this circle, but not the colour of size. If you want more options for customising your circle, I would suggest adding an image and Showing/Hiding that. The circle used above is a custom image, which is set up to spin on its Z axis.
2.4 Stop animation
This action pauses the ‘Spin on Axis’ animation effects on an object. It does not hide the tooltip, hide the circle, or reset the growth size.
2.5 Pan To
I love this feature. As there is no way to be watching every angle of your 360 scene at the same time, it can mean the user misses some of the action if it occurs outside their field of vision. To prevent this, the Pan To action will automatically rotate the scene to focus on a select object.
I often trigger this action via a Timed Event, for example, at 26 seconds, Show and Pan To a hotspot. Doing this makes it clear to the user that their focus should be on this hotspot.
2.6 Disable
This action allows you to disable a hotspot. Doing so means the user is unable to select the hotspot or interact with it in any way. An example of using this would be on a Menu page, where you want to disable the go to scene 2 hotspot until the user has completed scene 1.
2.7 Enable
This action allows you to enable any hotspots that have been disabled.
2.8 Reset (object)
This action resets an object to its initial state and position. Very handy for drag and drop activities, as well as resetting any other activities.
An easy way to fully reset a scene would be to add a ‘Link to Scene’ action to the scene you are already on; this basically acts as a refresh.
3.1 Play
This action is used to play a media object. This includes any videos, audio, or timers within a scene.
If a video has the ‘autoplay’ option selected, you will not need to add a play action. Simply showing the video will trigger it to start playing.
3.2 Pause
This action is used to pause a media object. This includes any videos, audio, or timers within a scene.
Using this action, along with the ‘Pause Scene’ action, gives your user the ability to pause the scenario. This is very useful when a user is interrupted (e.g. a phone call) and they wish to continue later on.
3.3 Stop
The stop action will stop and reset a media object to its initial state. This applies to videos, audio and timer objects. For example, stopping a timer object will reset the timer to its initial number of seconds (i.e. if the timer counts down from 30 seconds, it will reset to 30).
3.4 Set Time
The set time action allows you to jump to specific timestamps in your media objects (video, audio, timer).
This allows the user to jump to key moments in a pop-up video, or perhaps skip ahead in an audio narration to where they left off. Or perhaps you want to gamify this, maybe by adding 5 seconds to the timer if the user answers a question correctly.
This action gives the user more navigational freedom, and means they don’t have to re-watch everything but can jump to where they want to go.
4.1 Modify Variable
This action allows you to modify a variable in many ways.
You are able to modify not only your custom variables, but also CenarioVR’s standard variable, for example, “SCORE”.
Variables are a great way to have multiple scoring in a scenario, to track your user’s progress, and to tailor a course to your user’s needs (for example, if a user has selected a button at the start to show subtitles throughout, a “subtitles” variable can be set to “Yes”, meaning every video from there on will know to display subtitles).
I will expand further on variables in a future blog.
4.2 Add to Score
This action allows you to add to the default score that is recorded in CenarioVR.
This default score will automatically be updated when the user answers a question object correctly, but if you wish to add to this score further( perhaps you have created a custom activity), this is the way to go.
If you need to subtract from this score, enter a negative value into the entry field.
This default score variable is the score that is recorded in the Learning Management System (LMS) and it will be out of 100.
Here is an excerpt from the CenarioVR training manual:
"By default, every scenario gets a variable called “SCORE” automatically. This, as you can probably guess, is the current score of the scenario. The score is automatically calculated based on the number of questions in the scenario, so if there are 4 questions in a scenario, each question is worth 25 points, if there are ten questions, each question will be worth 10 points, and so on. The score can also be manually generated using the actions “Set Score” and “Add to Score.” If either of these actions is used anywhere within a scenario, automatic scoring will be disabled, and you as the author will be expected to fully manage the score."
"So basically scoring is completely automatic based on questions, until you have any set/add to score action, and then it's all manual"
- John Blackmon, CTO of eLearning Brothers and Creator of CenarioVR
4.3 Set Score
This action allows you to set the default score to a specific value. (See Add to Score to learn more).
4.4 Send Completion
If you have published your scenario as a SCORM package, this action will mark your scenario as complete/passed in your LMS.
The scenario’s default score will also be recorded and displayed in the LMS.
If you have not set a passing score, the score will be set to 100% and the course marked as ‘complete’ in the LMS when this action is triggered.
If you do have a passing score, the score will have to meet the minimum requirements before the scenario is marked as completed/passed.
4.5 Reset
The reset action gives you the option to reset the current scene to its initial state (basically starting fresh from the beginning of the scene) or resetting the entire scenario, including the variables.
4.6 Exit Scenario
This action will close the scenario. This action will only work if you are viewing your scenario via the CenarioVR app or an LMS.
5.1 Web Link
This action is used to open external URL links. This action will only work if the user is viewing the scenario on a web browser. It will not work in the CenarioVR app or on VR Headsets.
5.2 Open Attachment
This action will launch any attachments you have added to your scenario. The attachment will launch itself in a new tab/window or will directly download to your device.
This action will only work if the user is viewing the scenario on a web browser. It will not work in the CenarioVR app or on VR Headsets.
Please note that CenarioVR only supports the following attachment file types: PDF, CSV, RTF, TXT, PPT, PPTX, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX.
This is a great way to provide your user with any handouts they can take away to reinforce or summarise the learning. In a recent example of ours, the user downloads and prints out an attachment, then fills in the sheet as they watch the scene.
We will take a look at action conditions and triggers in a future blog.
Summary
This has been a brief overview of the actions found in CenarioVR. Stay tuned for future posts on helpful tips and tricks for creating your 360 VR content.
Visit our showcase to see some CenarioVR® content.
If you have any questions, are interested in us producing CenarioVR content for you, or would like a live product demo, please get in touch using the contact form at the bottom of this page.
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