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armaitus · 5 years ago

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TL:DR – This post contains some of the history behind Niantic’s POI (point of interest) submissions and an overview of how submissions work in Ingress and Pokémon GO.

For over a week now, level 40 Pokémon GO players have been able to submit new POI to Niantic, in the hope that their submissions will become Pokéstops or Gyms in what is arguable Niantic’s most popular AR enabled GPS based game.

I’ve played Niantic’s original GPS capture-the-flag-esque game, Ingress, since December 2013 and my first submission to their POI database was made very early in 2014.

As you can see, it was rejected as a duplicate of an existing submission.

Since then I have made hundreds of submissions, some of which were rejected and some of which made their way through to Niantic’s games. To date I’m responsible for 297 Ingress portals and a single accepted submission via Pokémon GO!

The history of Niantic’s POI submissions has been rocky. Back in the halcyon days of early Ingress, there was no limit or level cap on making submissions. Any and all players weer welcome to suggest new portal locations to Niantic. This led to a massive backlog of submissions to review. IT could take several months for a portal to be accepted or rejected.

Niantic made the decision to remove the feature from Ingress.

Over a period of several months, the team at Niantic slowly worked through the backlog before announcing a new programme “Operation Portal Recon” (also known as OPR). This came around the same time that portal submissions were made available to higher level Ingress players, albeit capped at limit of 14 submissions every 13 days.

OPR allowed Ingress players to review portal submissions, voting on whether a portal candidate should or should not be brought into the game. Players had to be a certain level and to pass a test before being granted access. OPR has since been replaced by a programme called Niantic Wayfarer, I intend to write more on this over the weekend.

Over the year or so that submissions have been available again, I found myself called upon, by players amongst the Pokémon GO community, to submit various POI in the hope that they become Pokéstops or Gyms.

As I’ve written about previously, I play all 3 of Niantic’s GPS based games: Ingress, Pokémon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. So, I didn’t mind going out of my way to enhance the games for other players – I was effectively enhancing the games for myself anyway.

That being said, with a limit of 14 submissions every 13 days, the local backlog had grown quite large, with over 100 suggestions from players across the local community.

Other Ingress players had stepped in also, using their submissions to help other players gain POI in areas close to their daily routines. When Niantic announced that submissions would be coming to Pokémon GO, we were over the moon.

I created a Facebook group to try co-ordinate local submissions, prevent duplication of effort and to help educate people as to what makes a good “wayspot” (as Niantic now refer to their POI). As I’ve already mentioned, I intend to write more on Niantic’s Wayfarer programme, later. The purpose of this post is to discuss the submission of wayspots through Pokémon GO.

What makes a good Wayspot?

In Niantic’s own words:

High-quality nominations are those that help users discover and enjoy their community, such as:

A location with a cool story, a place in history or educational value.

Interesting story behind the location/object

Signboards with educational information

Historical significance (apart from just being old)

A cool piece of art or unique architecture

Statues, paintings, mosaics, light installations, etc.

Venues that showcase fine art (e.g., performance art theaters and museums)

Buildings designed by renowned architects/structures famous specifically for their architecture

A hidden gem or hyper-local spot

A popular local spot that you would take a friend visiting your community for the first time

A popular spot where locals gather, but may be lesser-known outside the community

Tourist spots that showcase local flavor and culture and that make your city/neighbourhood unique

More off-the-beaten-path tourist attractions (i.e., if you weren’t a local, you wouldn’t necessarily know to go here)

Adventurous tourist attractions – think lookout towers, observatories, signs or markers atop mountain peaks, etc.

In addition to using the above acceptance criteria, we often add nominations that are a special nod to industries and networks that connect people around the world. These include:

Public parks

Public parks are great, high-quality places for Wayspots: they are common all around the world and encourage players to walk, exercise and enjoy public spaces

Public libraries

A nod to education and discovery, a cornerstone of Niantic

Includes little free libraries, provided they are not on private residential property; does not include mobile libraries

Public places of worship

A nod to the spiritual

Transit stations

A nod to the transportation industry, which also connects and unites people around the world

Accept transportation hubs (like Grand Central Station), but not every single small transit stop (like a subway station or a bus stop)

I feel bad for lifting that from Niantic’s own description but I genuinely couldn’t put it any better.

How to submit in Pokémon GO

Last weekend I placed my first wayspot submission through Pokémon GO. The process is all but identical to submitting via Ingress, except Pokémon trainers only have 7 submissions every fortnight, as opposed to Ingress’s 14.

Yes, that does mean I get 21 per fortnight as a player of both games.

From the settings menu, I selected to submit a new Pokéstop.

The next few screens walked me through the basics of the process.

Step 1: Choose a location.

I was walking into Huddersfield on my usual weekend route and spotted a King George V era postbox that was ripe for submitting. These never used to be acceptable POI for Niantic but apparently the older postboxes are classed as “historic” and so are fair game.

This particular box is really close to an existing Gym, so is unlikely to come through to Pokémon GO (it has since been accepted as a wayspot).

Step 2: Take a photo

Actually, you’ll need to take two photographs:

The first is the photo that will be displayed on the portal/pokestop/gym/inn/greenhouse/fortress.

The second is used to provide evidence that your submission is safe to access and won’t put players at risk of being run over or assaulted by villains.

I didn’t take a screenshot of my supporting photograph, it was basically a shot of the clear pavement and pillar box. Some people like to use the Google street view app to take a 360 photograph to upload here.

Step 3: Give it a name

The next step is to give your wayspot a name and description. This is what will appear when players click on this POI.

You are also asked to confirm the location at this point.

I called this one “George Rex Pillarbox”. The important thing is to make sure your name is unique. I’ve seen (and submitted) comedy names in the past but always related to the POI itself; comedy names can get a submission rejected.

Step 4: Justified

The 4th and final step is to add justification of why this is a great POI to include in Niantic’s games. Here is where you can explain more about what is special about this submission or how it is safe to play near.

Many new users seem to be using this section to state “We need more Gyms” or “Meets criteria” with little thought put to the intended use of this step.

Here you can see that I have put a great deal of effort into my own submission. Paying little or no attention to spelling or content.

I could have mentioned how George V emblazoned pillarboxes are valid under Niantic’s “historic importance” criteria. I could draw attention to the pillarboxes GR cypher.

Instead, I wanted to carry on walking… Community days don’t play themselves you know.

Once your submission has gone through, you should receive an email, like this:

If you have a Niantic Wayfarer account, you’ll also see your submission in there. It can take a week or more for a response and if successful there is no guarantee that your wayspot will appear in Pokémon GO.

Unlike Ingress and Wizards Unite, Pokémon GO limits the number of POI that can appear within a specific S2 cell. If you ever want to see what’s in an area as base POI, check out Ingress Intel.

S2 Cell? Whatchootalkinabout?

Here’s where things get pretty funky in Pokémon GO.

S2 cells are a mathematical mechanism used in cartography to help computers translate the 3D shape of Earth’s “sphere” into a 2-dimensional map.

Pokémon GO sees the world overlaid with S2 cells sized at L14 and L17. If you click here you can see sunny Huddersfield as it appears with the relevant S2 cells overlaid.

Pogomaps is a community-fed tool used to track POI in an area. There are other tools out there that you can use but some of them are technically against Niantic’s terms of use within their games.

Each L14 cell is made up of 64 L17 cells. Pokémon GO will only allow a single POI to appear within a single L17 cell. If a cell contains more than one wayspot, only one of them will appear in Pokémon GO.

This can be frustrating but there is no way round this, it’s just how Pokémon GO choose to handle the POI available to the game. It can take a day or so for a wayspot to pull through to Pokémon GO. I’ve been told that new Pokéstops pull through at 18:45 Tuesday to Friday with an update of POI across all games around 18:45 on a Monday. No new submissions pull through over a weekend. Any new POI accepted before 08:45 that day should pull through.

There are other mechanics at play when it comes to gyms. When you hit certain quantities of Pokéstops within an L14 cell, a Pokéstop will become a gym. This is usually the oldest Pokéstop but can be influenced by up-voting photographs on portals in Ingress.

If there are 2 POI within an L14 cell, one of them will become a gym; once there are 6 POI, another gym triggers with a 3rd and final gym being triggered at 20 POI. I’ve read conflicting views on a 4th gym, with some sites reporting that 35+ POI will trigger another gym. I have not seen that in my experience however.

All in all, this is an exciting time for Niantic’s player base. Hopefully we’ll see an increase in POI in out of the way places, making it easier to play all 3 of Niantic’s games.

Pokéstop Go TL:DR - This post contains some of the history behind Niantic's POI (point of interest) submissions and an overview of how submissions work in Ingress and Pokémon GO.

#Ingress #niantic #POI #Pokémon GO #Pokéstop #Wayfarer #Wayspot

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shiny-pokemon-giveaways · 5 years ago

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A question for my fellow Niantic Wayfarers: You’ve probably already noticed all the glitching gyms by now. It’s pretty annoying; but I’m wondering if the current gym glitches are affecting gym creation.

I submitted a Wayspot at a boat launch and triple checked the location to make sure it was in a separate cell than the other Pokestop there. I submitted it, got it accepted, and then it didn’t appear. Now I’m sitting here trying to figure out why the hell it didn’t appear.

The only thing I can think of is the gym glitch messing up my submission because the Wayspot should have been a gym if it got accepted. I’m wondering if anyone else has had this same issue earlier.

#Niantic Wayfarer #Niantic #Pokemon GO #Ingress #I'm salty #I did the math #The location was ON POINT #Is there another factor besides cells that determines Wayspot creation??

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quackercracker · 2 years ago

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I actually went to the community day meetup this time, it’s not inside a shopping centre 🤣

They placed a sponsored wayspot on top of another one

#pokemon go #pikmin bloom #ingress #community day #pokemon go community day #10k with pikmin #pokemon #pikmin #niantic #pikmin bloom community day

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casgroenigen · 5 years ago

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How many pokestops have you made? - - ‼️like+comment+bookmark 📚 - - 🤗follow me for more Pokémon content on instagram: 🎮Pokémon go: @casgroenigen 📸 edits: @editsbycas 👨‍💻lifestyle: @casvangroenigen 🤣pokefun: @poke.fun_page - - 🎶or tik tok fun: @tiktok.funnys - - Follow also my youtube channel please🔴: Cas Groenigen05 - - And follow me on TIKTOK 🎵: @casvangroenigen @CasGroenigen05 @plushiesfromcas - - Hashtags 🏷: #pogocollective #pogogram #pokemongo #pokemon #shinypokemon #teamvalor #wayfarer #pokestop #portal #wayspots #ingress #harrypotterwizardsunite #wizardsunite (bij Planet Earth) https://www.instagram.com/p/B7AxxuwFH4K/?igshid=1ihbgb8u1ndu8

#pogocollective #pogogram #pokemongo #pokemon #shinypokemon #teamvalor #wayfarer #pokestop #portal #wayspots #ingress #harrypotterwizardsunite #wizardsunite

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yes-deepbelievercollector · 2 years ago

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Pokémon GO sai à rua depois da pandemia

Os jogadores do Pokémon GO, da Niantic, estão a voltar à rua depois do período mais restritivo da pandemia. O GameSpot noticia que depois da pandemia, a Niantic voltou em força e só no ano passado foram adicionados 3,84 milhões de wayspots, ou seja, pontos de interesse no mundo real como estátuas ou monumentos, que […]

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pokemon-go-news · 2 years ago

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The Niantic Wayfarer team has published an official forum post in which they outline a number of future improvements to the PokéStop submission and approval procedure, as well as other Wayfarer upgrades. NOTE: Sometimes You Can Check This page because i would add more gadget and feel free to comment below more suggestion, hope you like my list! ^-^ and don’t forget to Visit My Youtube Channel for Daily Pokemon Go Videos! ON THIS PAGE: Trainers will be required to take an exam before reporting new Niantic Wayfarer modifications. New Gameplay Elements What is in store for the next months? upcoming events New features include Nomination Management: New features include: Nomination Management: Email notifications: Community Forum: Among the notable modifications are the following: Before participating in Wayfarer, submitters and reviewers will be required to complete a test, which will substantially decrease the amount of incorrect contributions. During the submission process, Pokémon GO users will be able to view current Wayspots. [caption id="attachment_1123" align="alignnone" width="150"] Trainers will be required to take an exam before reporting new Niantic Wayfarer modifications.[/caption] Here is the official announcement from the Wayfarer Forums: New Gameplay Elements[ps2id id='New Gameplay Elements' target=''/] We also added two popular features to Pokémon GO: the PokéStop picture gallery and the Submit Management tool, which allows you to upload your image submissions or AR scans later while at home and connected to WiFi. Please tell us what you think of these new features! And, psst, we're working on a few additional improvements to your overall contribution experience for both Ingress and Pokémon GO. Read More: Rare Candy Tier List – Best Pokémon to use your Rare Candy on What is in store for the next months?[ps2id id='What is in store for the next months?' target=''/] We're expanding our team! Expect us to interact with you more often in the coming months through the forum and social media. upcoming events:[ps2id id='upcoming events' target=''/] The Wayfarer Challenges for 2021 are still being designed. We'd love to hear your ideas on where you'd want to see it go next! Additional instructional material available in more locations: We're working on additional material and tools to help you thrive as a contributor, and we'll be releasing more as time goes on. New features include:[ps2id id='New features include' target=''/] We're improving the in-game contributing experience, including the option to view which Wayspots have previously been accepted during the Pokémon GO Wayspot nomination process. Redesigning the onboarding process: Newly qualified Explorers will soon be required to understand the Wayfarer criteria before they may submit and evaluate contributions. Nomination Management:[ps2id id='Nomination Management:' target=''/] Significant enhancements to the nomination management experience are on the way, including (drum roll...) the option to appeal rejections! Stay tuned for additional information, as we are currently ironing out the kinks. Email notifications:[ps2id id='Email notifications:' target=''/] We haven't abandoned our commitment to improve the email notification experience. The experience will be much more tightly linked to your Wayfarer Nomination Management page. We want to make sure you know where to go for further information about your contributions and what you can do next. Reviewers: A fresh product design for the reviewer's enjoyment Read More: Pokémon GO Eevee Evolution Guide Community Forum: [ps2id id='Community Forum:' target=''/]We've been testing a few quality of life enhancements for the forum as well, and will be implementing a few minor but significant modifications The Wayfarer Group

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tastydregs · 3 years ago

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Niantic to Launch City-scale Visual Positioning System for AR Devices Later This Month

Niantic says it plans to launch its Lightship Visual Positioning System at its developer summit later this month. The system aims to form an underlying 3D map of the world so that all devices can share the same frame of reference even on massive scales.

Many AR devices today are capable of localizing themselves within an arbitrary environment. An AR headset, for instance, looks at the room around you and uses that information to understand how the headset itself is moving through the space.

But if you want to enable multiple devices to interact in a shared space, both need to be able to localize themselves not just to the environment, but with regards to one another. Essentially, you need both devices to share the same map so that both users see the same thing happening in the same place in the real world.

That’s the goal of Niantic’s Lightship Visual Positioning system, which the company says will allow AR devices to tap into a shared digital map to establish their real-world position with “centimeter precision.” While GPS would be far too inaccurate for the job, such a system would allow devices to understand if they’re in a shared space together, allowing for content to be synchronized between the two for multiplayer and persistent content.

Niantic has been talking about its Visual Positioning System for some time now, but the company says it will first launch the feature as part of its Lightship AR development platform at the end of the month. That will coincide with the company’s first developer event, Lightship Summit, which is happening May 24th & 25th in San Francisco.

Although Niantic has been pitching is Visual Positioning System as a ‘world-scale’ solution for syncing AR content between devices, out of the gate it will be much more limited. For now the system is only approaching ‘city-scale’ as the company says it will initially function only “at certain Niantic Wayspots in select cities.” The company plans to expand coverage of the Visual Positioning System by crowdsourcing mapping data from the devices that use it, though it’s not clear how quickly that data can be transformed in the way needed to expand the map.

In theory, the system could enable persistent AR content at large scales, which could allow anyone in the area to see the same things (if they’re using the same app), like the concept above that the company has shown previously.

It will surely be some time yet because the Lightship Visual Positioning System achieves anything close to being truly ‘world-scale’. However, the company has one major potential advantage; it could tap into data from its existing games—like Pokémon Go and the upcoming Peridot—to move at a greater mapping pace than almost any other company could. As far as we know, that’s not happening at the moment, but could be in the works.

The post Niantic to Launch City-scale Visual Positioning System for AR Devices Later This Month appeared first on Road to VR.

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wutaibandit · 4 years ago

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Lucian Thievery

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Another day, another steal. Marthe sniffed at the open air of the Leide region with a slight crinkle of the nose, unappreciative of the need to hang around such an arid place for longer than necessary after he had briefly escaped a narrow encounter with some of the vermin wildlife that roamed the outdoors. From one extreme to the other. The sensation of thirst nips at the delicate flesh of his throat as another breath is taken. It is fairly tropical despite the lack of rain at all in the air, and miserably heated—but what else was there to expect of a desert portion of Lucis? Even with the breeze flowing across the landscape providing a touch of humidity to each fleeting breath permeating his lungs, it does little to alleviate the subtle burn crackling at exposed skin to the sunlight.

Throwing his arms behind his head, the thief takes a moment to turn away, taking in the serene view before him. Worn boots sunk into the sandy ground, kicking grains as he trudged onwards, and the scuffing sounds of his boots somehow adds to his immersion. As he looks forward, shades of blue are all that he can see cracking through the tufts of grey in the heavens. The weather REALLY was always so unpredictable in this part of Lucis ever since growing up. Some things never changed, despite the change in governments. With the fall of Insomnia to the Nifs just days ago, it didn't look like he'd ever find the answers he had been searching for all of his life. The death of the King meant his questions would forever go unanswered... He finds it bitter, to say the least to swallow.

With the shake of the cranium, the young thief turned his attention back to the task at hand while expelling a shallow, sharp breath to alleviate himself to strolling across what finally felt like a straight in the road. Getting out of the sandy-desert onto solid asphalt felt like the best thing right now, especially for his appearance. Hopefully that could lead to one of the many wayspots to find another quick heist on some traveller stopping by to pick up gas or supplies along the way.

Slender arms faltered back into place at sides while traversing down the windy-road that led to the coastal port of Galdin on the southernly part of Leide, mentally thinking for the inkling of a chance to pilfer a few wallets from the citizens that more likely lingered in places like this.

Expensive sea food, massages, and spas littered this resort—what better place for a heist for a thief?

Leather soles trek carefully along the beach as sea water suffused to fill the indentations left behind in his wake leading onto the wooden decking of the pier. The instant he drew closer to the building on the horizon, a familiar scent grasps his nose. Fish. Judging from how unusually strong it appears to be today, there must have been quite a few patrons ordering seafood today from the restaurant. For now he was keeping it cool, despite the rush of excitement to delve into those deep pockets of the patrons to relinqiuish them of their gil. “I wonder jus' who'll be on the menu today?” He says, as his blue optic’s were scanning the area. now surely wasn’t the kind of place he was expected to live in with such luxeries. Luxury, huh? Quiet, peaceful, no harm nothing. Really? At the time, he didn't like it...seeing such content faces that had little to no-care in the world to what they were living under: Imperial occupation of the Nifs.

How could anybody be happy under that?!

It derived a momentary scowl across the young Lucian's features. He would then begin to explore the inner establishment, walking around aimlessly, beneath the canopy of the resort. He was observing all his surroundings, and the sounds he could've happened to hear. But still nothing of interest. There was no doubts that something were a miss. He was a thief for a reason. He wasn’t calling shots, at least not yet. When he wasn’t paying attention, from wandering around. Just then, something jolted the thief from his momentary traipse of the mind—sharply hitting a solid mass—Marthe untintentionally had bumped into something by accident during his meandering of thought. He would quickly turn around and just stare ahead at this person garbed in jet-black leather attire.

“Uh, sorry.” He said in an apologetic tone. First assuming the guy were some rich Nif taking a relaxation tour (not the kinds of people you wanted to anger). A singular gloved hand reaching back to ruffle the strands of hair at the rear of his head as his other hand had already taken advantage of the confusion to had pickpocked the stranger's cropped-trouser pocket with nimble-fingers, keeping his gaze on what seemed to be a lone person around the same age of himself, if he were to hazard a guess.

“Didn't mean to bump into ya there...enjoy yer stay at Galdin 'ere, pal!” Flashing a wry grin at the patron with a mock bow, Marthe made little time in leaving before the stranger could offer a response. Hastily, he quickly took to scarpering away down the pier once more to put some distance between them, as best he could. Finding a quiet, secluded spot just off the tail-end where he hopped off to take a seat on the beach to see what spoils he managed to steal from that sap back there.

(A Lucian smart-phone, and a wallet...)

The finds of the wallet turned out only to be a few, measly gil... just how much of a pauper was that guy!? Considering his fancy-riggings for clothes and the latest smart phone in Lucis, this proved to be quite the disappointment for the Lucian thief. Ugh.

#avulsusprinceps #prince & the thief #stealing the lucis treasures right under nocts nose

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