topic Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta! in Vuforia Studio

Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

azupfer — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 15:56:21 GMT

As of Vuforia Studio 9.7.0, the Wayfinder widget is no longer in beta. It is now available for use in production environments.

With the release of Studio 9.5.0, we are launching an open beta for our latest widget - the Wayfinder.

What is it?

The open beta allows Studio users to test our new Wayfinder widget in non-production experiences. The Wayfinder widget allows you to place waypoints that help lead users towards a specific part of a model or place in their environment. Use a Wayfinder when you want to call attention or lead a user to a location on a model or place in their environment.

Who can participate?

Any Studio user can participate after upgrading to Studio 9.5.0!

How can I enable it?

A few manual steps are required to enable the Wayfinder widget. Instructions on enabling this feature can be found in our Help Center.

Who to contact with feedback?

We want to hear from you! All feedback, questions, and comments about the Wayfinder widget are welcome and can be submitted in the comments below, which will be monitored by Vuforia Studio Product Management.

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

ClayHelberg — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 18:26:51 GMT

Hi--

Thanks for adding this, it will be very useful! I have noticed one thing in my testing with the feature: the "arrived" event seems to trigger as expected, but the "departed" event doesn't seem to trigger. I am trying to display a 3DImage when the user approaches the waypoint, and hide it again when they leave. I can get it to appear, but it doesn't disappear, and writing messages to the console log shows that the event doesn't fire, or at least it doesn't call the function I've given for it.

--Clay

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AmberWright — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 19:38:40 GMT

Thank you for your feedback, Clay! We will test this and see if we have the same results you do.

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AmberWright — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 14:53:31 GMT

Hi Clay! I tried this out and was able to get it to work. Please see the attached video. I hope this helps!

(view in My Videos)

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

ClayHelberg — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 18:54:26 GMT

Thanks for looking into it. I'm not able to get it working, and I can't see anything wrong in my project. I am using an area target, maybe that is the difference? Anyway, here is my parallel video of my project. I will also try a model target version to see if I can make it work there.

--C

(view in My Videos)

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

ClayHelberg — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 19:07:05 GMT

I poked at it a bit more, and it seems to be related to the "Auto advance" option. If I turn that off, then I get "departed" events as well as "arrived" events. This is true for both model targets and area targets.

Note that the documentation for the Waypoint widget recommends having this option selected (step 5 under "Minimum steps required for use"): http://support.ptc.com/help/vuforia/studio/en/#page/Studio_Help_Center%2FWidgetWayfinder.html%23wwID0EW13R

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AmberWright — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 13:05:12 GMT

Ah, good catch! Yes, the auto advance will always want you to go "forward", so that makes sense. Yes, we did recommend to have the auto advance feature on for the Minimum Steps so that one can navigate through the waypoints without the need for any additional buttons or scripting. If it would help, we can add into the Help Center that "if you have Auto Advance checked, it will not trigger "Departed" events."

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

ClayHelberg — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 13:32:14 GMT

Yes, it makes sense to have the auto advance option available, but I don't quite see the logic of omitting the "departed" event in that case, especially since the "arrived" event still fires. I think there would be value in having both events fire even when auto advance is enabled. In any case, it would be good to have the behavior documented to avoid any confusion. Thanks!

--C

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AmberWright — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 19:44:50 GMT

For the logic of auto advance not throwing a 'departed' event:

Start with waypoint-1
Arrive at waypoint-1, it automatically advances to waypoint-2
Guidance is now for waypoint-2 so all services and events would be associated with waypoint-2

Because the auto advance immediately brings you to the next waypoint, it no longer considers any of the events on waypoint-1, only waypoint-2. Therefore, since it thinks it is guiding you to waypoint-2, it will not throw the event for leaving waypoint-1. Does that make sense? We do not expect it to throw departed events if the auto advance feature is on because you are always moving forward in the Wayfinder data array.

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AndreaT — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 08:43:35 GMT

Great addition, I've been looking for this for quite a long time.

Will this be added to Hololens experiences after the Beta will end?

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AmberWright — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 13:01:54 GMT

Hi Andrea, Yes! We are working on a HoloLens version as well. When we are ready, we will send out communications.

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

FionaC — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 21:50:31 GMT

Testing on an iPhone 11 Pro and finding the ribbon dots a bit small. The waypoint location is marked by a white, unfilled circle that does not really stand out; it would be nice if the ribbon's destination was more obvious. I tried changing the .svg of the the circle to orange with a wider stroke, but the program seems to overwrite the file every time I replace it.

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

FionaC — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 22:02:58 GMT

I selected "Show Labels" and "Always on top", and the labels are visible in the Preview but not in the View app on my iPhone.

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

JG_8568288 — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 06:16:25 GMT

Hello,

Thanks for sharing the Beta, we are really looking forward having this widget.

Something I noticed, that property “visible” is not available yet. Instead “enabled” seems to do the job. Till now it is buggy since you first have to set it true, then to false until the wayfinder is invisible.

For anybody who wants to have it invisible by default, this might work:

$rootScope.$on('modelLoaded', function () {

setTimeout(function(){

$scope.view.wdg['wayfinder-1'].enabled=true;

}, 2000);

setTimeout(function(){

$scope.view.wdg['wayfinder-1'].enabled=false;

}, 5000);

});

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AmberWright — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 21:21:29 GMT

Hi FionaC,

Thank you for your feedback! Would you be willing to send us a screenshot of what you are seeing? It would be helpful to understand the type of environment you are trying to use the Wayfinder in so we can understand the different types of situations our users are experiencing.

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AmberWright — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 21:23:33 GMT

Thank you for the feedback, FionaC! We have made improvements to the visibility properties for the next release, 9.7.0. I would like to ask you to please try again once that release is available at the end of the month!

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AmberWright — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 21:33:19 GMT

Hi JG, Glad to hear that you all are looking forward to the widget! Yes, we will not have a "visible" property for Wayfinder, the normal "visible" functionality for hiding and showing the widget is included in the "Enabled" property. The "Enabled" property also ensures that the Wayfinder does not navigate through any of the waypoints while it is hidden.

If I understand correctly, you are trying to have the Wayfinder hidden by default when you first load the experience? I just tried it with one of the later builds and it seems to be working now. If this is what you mean, please try this again when 9.7.0 is out in a couple weeks!

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

AndreaT — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 16:50:18 GMT

Hello again everyone, I've started testing this widget.

As a different use case, I'd like to use each waypoint to trigger a different event.

In my case, I have three different labels, and each time I reach a waypoint I'd like to swith to visible a specific one.

Is there a way using the default properties?

Also, if it can be done in JS, what would be the code to call for each waypoint to trigger the label visibility? I know the label's visibility part, but I mean I don't know the wayfinder code part, example: $scope.app.view['Home'].wdg['wayfinder-1'].????['???']

Does it make sense?

Thank you very much

Andrea

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

RolandRaytchev — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 09:11:04 GMT

Hi @AndreaT ,

I would suggest to use the Wayfinder widget propeties $scope.app.view['YourViewName'].wdg['YourWayfinderWdg']['selectedWaypointValue'] so example what it could contain e.g. for Waypoint-1:

{"rows":[{"position":{"x":0.0642,"y":0.4871,"z":1.2134},"gaze":{"x":0,"y":0,"z":1},"up":{"x":0,"y":1,"z":0},"eventRadius":"0.8","wayfinderDisplayBoundary":"0.4","label":"waypoint-1"}],"dataShape":{"fieldDefinitions":{"gaze":{"aspects":{},"baseType":"STRING","name":"gaze"},"position":{"aspects":{},"baseType":"STRING","name":"position"},"up":{"aspects":{},"baseType":"STRING","name":"up"},"metadata":{"aspects":{},"baseType":"STRING","name":"metadata"},"label":{"aspects":{},"baseType":"STRING","name":"label"}}}}

and
$scope.app.view['YourViewName'].wdg['YourWayfinderWdg']['poi'] which a number starting by 0 no waypoint was found and counting then the waypoints

You could define also callbacks where you can check the values and then start the desired actions here example

and the sample js code for it:

What I observed was that the arrived event was working fine but the departed event does not fire (at leaset in preview mode).

Here sample steps

Re: Wayfinder Widget Open Beta!

RolandRaytchev — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 10:00:21 GMT

Here I want to attach the project where I tested the steps mentioned in the previous post. Because the used model (pvz file) was > 50Mb and could not be uploaded here I used now a small model instead.