Hi there, I’ve been participating with portal scanning in Ingress for a bit, I have a gold scout controller badge, and overclocking has been an interesting game mechanic. I look forward to seeing what AR modes might be in store for other Niantic Games like Pokemon Go and Monster Hunter in the future.
I checked out Scaniverse in the last few days, scanning a few landmarks on one of my walks, and I must say I’m really impressed with the quality. Just one scan on scaniverse really blows the “community scans” already on the map out of the water in quality.
I’d go out and scan even more, but I must admit I’m a little hesitant since I’m not sure what the roadmap ultimately is for this stuff? Any chance we could get a little more peek behind the curtain on how these scans might effect Niantics other games in the future? I scanned a couple things that are already Wayfarer POI’s, is there a way to “merge” these scans in with the community scans to create higher quality? I notice on the map one of my scans is right on top of a community scan, it’s a shame they can’t merge together somehow. Yes some in-game credit would be nice too, but I notice as it is today Pokemon and Ingress don’t share scanning credit. Even knowing that these Scaniverse scans could help overclock-enable portals and whatever pokemon or monster hunter might have in store in the future for AR would be helpful and let me know my efforts aren’t just an “oh, neat” thing in one app unconnected to Niantic’s other apps.
Niantic’s AR gaming has generally been a great incentive for me to walk and get more exercise every day. It would be great to see some sort of “gamification” for Scaniverse too.
Thanks for reading, please enjoy this scan of a creepy baby statue that inexplicably exists at this housing complex on the route of one of my walks:
Yes as Niantic promised about helping the Ingress overclock enable for the portals with the addition of scaniverse. But it seems like there is no way we can see any addition of scans to the wayfarer where we can activate the wayspot into a vps status.
Thank you for downloading Niantic Scaniverse and trying it out. I’m glad to hear you’re impressed with the quality of the splats you’ve been creating. The ones you see on the map contributed by the community (those in blue) come from over 100,000 scanned Wayspots in Pokémon GO and Ingress. When we re-processed them, the quality of the submitted scans determined how good of a splat we were able to produce, so yes you might definitely see a difference in quality.
Regarding the roadmap, while it’s not tee-ed up to share just yet, I’ll share this feedback with the team as well as the interest in emerging or adding to community splats to improve them and make sure they know it’s an interest from our community.
You also asked about the plans to use splats in other Niantic products and we’re excited to continue exploring ways to leverage these maps to deliver new in-game experiences in Ingress, Pokémon GO, etc. and in full transparency it’s still something we’re working on as there’s many moving pieces to consider such as safety, game lore, etc.
Lastly, we’re not quite there with gamification yet but we know how fun and important it is to have challenges, recognition, badges, and other forms of motivation. Hang tight as it’s something on our minds already. We welcome any suggestions on ways in which you’d like to see if gamified in the meantime.
Hope this helps and thanks for your interest in Scaniverse and other Niantic products!
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate you all hearing me out. I think it’s a great start knowing already that Pokemon Go will accept waypoint appeals via scaniverse. I know I have submitted removal requests before for something very much not there and wondering how a proper decision can be made without a real look at the place.
I don’t have a lot of ideas on gamification yet, but I just hope anything I’ve been doing to this point can end up being retroactive with whatever it is, that’s my biggest concern on scanning all the cool stuff before any good perks come. Maybe if somehow our splats can be “attached” to wayspots in wayfarer to help speed up the process of activating overclocking an ingress portal that would be an awesome start.
I added a few more splats on my pokemon community day walk today, I hope every one is helpful in roadmapping the future
