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sami.612879's avatar
sami.612879
Honored Guest
29 days ago

Spatial Anchors

Hello, I have a virtual reality arcade and we use a free roam game where players can move completely freely in a 300-square-meter space. The game system allows 10 players to be in the same place, but we use Meta Quest 2 headsets and Spatial Anchors for tracking and map building. However, we sometimes encounter issues such as drift or a player losing tracking and ending up in a different location. Even though we fill the room with pictures, posters, and good lighting, these problems still persist. I believe the issue is with the technology itself. Does anyone have an explanation or suggestion for this problem? Is the issue with the Spatial Anchors system itself? For reference, we can control the game since I am the developer.

1 Reply

  • Degly's avatar
    Degly
    Start Partner

    I like this question because it's a perfect time to ask about this. I think this is a known limitation of Quest inside-out tracking + spatial anchors, especially at your scale (300m² + 10 users).

    Common causes of drift:

    • Large space → tracking error accumulates over distance
    • Low/uneven features (even with posters, still not uniform)
    • Lighting changes / reflections
    • Multi-user mismatch (each headset builds slightly different maps)

    What helps in production setups:

    • Break space into zones with anchor resets (don’t rely on one global map)
    • Add strong, unique visual features (not repetitive patterns) like the ones you can find on LBE experiences 👀
    • Periodically re-align players to a known anchor (soft correction)
    • Keep lighting consistent and diffuse
    • Avoid large empty floors/walls

    For LBE/free-roam, most teams use custom re-centering + correction systems on top of anchors as relying purely on anchors will drift over time.

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