First, it's important to note that you do not have to be perfect with your photo alignment. You just want to be fairly close and fairly consistent. That's part of the power of RealPlaces - you do not need high-precision whatsoever.

Currently, all spots must consist of exactly 8 photos, which are roughly spaced in equal (45 degree) increments. If the streets or landmarks align with the 8 major compass directions (i.e. N,NE,E,SE,S,SW,W,NW) it's quite easy and natural.

But not all places naturally align with the major compass directions, and this page will help you plan for those situations. We have lots of improvements planned, but for now, these tips should help make it easier to create your places.

• Places which are aligned N/S/E/W like this are easy to work with. Just go for it!
  
• Places which are aligned along NW/SE and NE/SW lines also work great. If you start shooting each spot facing down one of the streets, remember to choose that direction as the "start dir" on the Sort page when you sort your photos.
  
• Even if your place has open space with relatively little structure, you're still fine. Just try to keep your spots aligned in "paths" that follow the 8 major compass directions. You have a lot of flexibility when doing this, but practice helps.
  
• Rotated Grids. Until recently, the situation shown in the image below was difficult to deal with. Note that the natural landmarks (the streets and buildings) are aligned with the green line, which is almost directly between 2 of the 4 major compass direction lines.
  
  
  It's now fairly easy to work with this situation. The UI is rudimentary, but it works.
  
  After sorting your photos into their respective spots, move to the Locate/Link page and place the spots on the overhead map. Picture a line that crosses through a set of your spots. Or perhaps there is a street or other landmark to approximate this. Compare that line with the closest of a N/S or E/W or NE/SW or NW/SE line, and estimate how many degrees your line is from one of those 4 cardinal compass direction lines. Click the Set Rotation button and enter that value as a + or - offset, with + being clockwise and - being counter-clockwise. Because you offset from the closest cardinal line, the value you enter should be no more than about 15-20 degrees.
  
  You can click the Set Rotation button before or after placing the spots, but you should do so before linking the spots, as any existing links will be removed when the rotation is changed.
  
  Example 1) In the picture above, if your spots align along the green line, then the closest major directional line is the NW/SE yellow line. You can make a rough estimate that the green line is about 15-20 degrees away from the NW/SE line in a counter-clockwise direction, so you would click Set Rotation and enter -17 (degrees). You do NOT need to be precise - just close!
  
  Example 2) If you were shooting pictures on a street that's almost N/S, but leans just slightly toward NE/SW, you might enter 5 or 10.
  
  Feel free to ask questions in the Forum. There is a thread there with some information in the Create Your Own Places -> Locate/Link section called "My Place is not nicely aligned in a N/S/E/W orientation."
  
  
• Lastly, even if your area of interest looks like it was modeled after a plate of cooked spaghetti noodles (below), you may find there are sections which are still straight. Just treat them as separate places and set a rotation offset for each place. If things are extremely twisty you may have difficulties linking more than a small number of spots, but we will be able to handle many arbitrary situations like that in the future.
  
  Also, it is not a requirement to link together all spots in a particular Place! You can choose to create your Place with some spots not connected to others. Either individual spots or clumps of spots, it's your choice. This means users may need to click on these spots on the overhead view in order to visit them, but that's better than not including them at all!
  

That's it for now. This page will be updated as we introduce more functionality and features! If you have questions or comments, please use the appropriate section in the Forum.