Imagine presenting an AR artwork that is only accessible if you are standing on the correct street corner, or creating an AR treasure hunt that only works when the user is inside specific stores.
Sometimes you want to make AR experiences that are only available within a restricted set of GPS coordinates, and this is where location triggers come in.
An important thing to remember is that GPS coordinates can be very precise within less than 5 meters, but they can also be inaccurate up to more than 30 meters depending on your location. To learn more about potential confounding factors when using GPS, go to this site.
Setting up a Location Trigger
Start by creating a Hololink and add a scene to it. I'll start by adding a 360 scene, but you can start with any scene type you want.
Now add a second scene. Once again, I'm choosing a 360 scene, but you can use any scene type you like. Now you have two scenes in your storyboard.
Open the scene called "starting scene" and click on "Add Location" under "Location Triggers" in the right hand column.
You're now in the location trigger modal, where you can add as many location triggers as you want to this scene.
Drag the circle to your desired location, or enter gps coordinates in the relevant fields.
Now decide what radius you want the location trigger to have. Meaning how far from the actual GPS coordinate you want the location trigger to be active.
Yo've now set your Location trigger. Now choose "Action when on location", choose "Change Scene" and choose "Scene 1" as your target scene.
Remember to click save when you've edited the settings for your location trigger. You can now see your new location trigger "inside location" in the storyboard.
Now open Scene 1.
Click the 360 button in the left hand column and choose a 360 image. I've chosen "360 Hills and Ocean".
You can now test your Hololink by walking from outside the GPS coordinates into the radius of your chosen location. Click on the preview button and scan the QR code with your phone. Then make sure that you are outside the designated area before clicking the start button on your phone's screen.
You now have a portal when you enter the radius of your location trigger:
But there's more
In addition to adding a single location trigger, you can add as many as you like, meaning that you could have a main scene that potentially leads to several different scenes, depending on where the user is situated.
So the three location triggers below lead to...
three different scenes:
You can also choose to add a location trigger for when a user is outside a location, so that you can go to another scene when the user leaves the location. In this way you can link two scenes with an inside location and an outside location trigger in each scene respectively, letting the user go between the two scenes by simply walking in and out of an area.
You can now let your users search for experiences in the world around them, leading them to the locations where you want them to go.