Hi All, I’m working on a project that would allow visitors of a local park to use a Web AR app that would detect where a visitor was on a park trail and invoke different content in the Web AR app experience based on what their location is. Is this location based capability something that Zappar can handle?
Thanks!
Yes and No.
No if you want to use Zappar app or Zappar WebAR.
Yes if you use the Universal AR with say Unity. I know there is a sale at unity and there was a GPS plug in on sale. Don’t know if it will work with the unity WebGL.
Steve
Thanks for the reply. That’s actually what I wound up doing, i.e., UAR and GPS plugin. I actually did pick up that GPS plugin you mentioned. Unfortunately, not the best for stability of the position of AR objects. Seems that GPS is not precise enough and there tends to be hopping and scale changes of the AR object. My guess is that until there is maybe some millimeter level of precision for GPS (not sure if that is/will be possible or whether that’s what’s needed), this might not ever be the solution for rock solid persistent location placement of AR objects. I’m guessing that there needs to be some SLAM capability as well as the GPS in order to nail down the AR object in question to the given location. Love to hear what others think about that.
1 Like
I don’t think anyone’s implemented a usable web-based SLAM AR engine yet. I’d love to know if they have though.
Given the limitations of GPS, and the limitations of the current tracking options in Zap (which are, to be fair, pretty good for the current state-of-tech), the best approach right now will be hybrid.
GPS can tell you where in the park the device is, so you can use that to switch between chunks of content. I’m not sure you can get a compass heading (tho the GPS plugin may be able to tell you that?) but you could certainly put some relevant stuff on the screen (“Meet the penguins!” or “Please step out of the lion enclosure”), and direct the user to find a particular target for tracking stuff. Nothing to stop you using instant tracking to put some CGI penguins on the ground etc.
All depends on what kinda content you’re hoping to present in each section.
Compass heading could be really useful in general, actually, even without GPS; it’d mean you could correctly orient photo-spheres, and gyro-based 3D content. Hmm.
1 Like