Try Shared Spatial Anchor with Discover project

Presence Platform has recently released significant improvements regarding spatial anchors, more precisely, it pertains to Shared Spatial Anchors. Essentially, they are the same thing, but the ‘Shared’ acronym represents a further step forward in the design possibilities offered by Meta.

The Shared Spatial Anchor, as the name suggests, does just that – it shares a point in physical space between two MetaQuests.

As stated by Meta, let’s not confuse this with Scene Understanding, a feature of Guardian that allows for environment recognition. Spatial Anchors record a point in our physical space to save and retrieve it in a subsequent session (so Scene Understanding is used, but it is a separate entity in itself).

We’ve discussed Spatial Anchors, now let’s get to the point and talk about Shared Spatial Anchors. So, ever since Meta Quest was introduced, we’ve been seeing these bizarre ads about a metaverse that we don’t always fully understand – where it’s located and how to use it, you know what I mean?

For example, two doctors using two Meta Quest 2 devices performing open-heart surgery on a polygonal patient in the same space, or two colleagues discovering the art of pottery just like in that famous scene from Ghost. Well, suffice it to say that these development features have only recently become available.

So,with Shared spatial anchor, now two MetaQuest users can share this point in the local space, naturally while being in the same physical location. The room needs to be the same.

To avoid misunderstandings, this doesn’t apply to experiences where you encounter other avatars online – you can’t have the same references since you’re in different spaces.

What if you’re online but in the same physical space? That’s exactly how it works. In the Unity showcase called Discover, we use Photon to share this experience.

Photon is an SDK that enjoys considerable recognition – it’s a user-friendly and easily understandable multiplayer SDK. It allows for creating multiplayer experiences and comes with very reasonable costs; you might say that usage is free up to a certain limit.

The package used for the showcase is called Photon Fusion. Take a look here if you’re interested in the matter.

“Discover” is a project that utilizes both Spatial Anchors and Shared Spatial Anchors. This way, we can finally share the meta space with our colleagues. We can learn to adjust a bicycle in a shared space, shoot down drones that descend from the ceiling, all together in the same room and the same metaspace.

You can find the Discover project on GitHub, and you can also directly download it onto your headset through this link.