| title | description | author | ms.author | ms.date | ms.topic | keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Shared experiences in Unity |
Share the same holograms between multiple users in a Unity application. |
thetuvix |
alexturn |
02/24/2019 |
article |
Sharing, Anchor, WorldAnchor, MR Sharing 250, WorldAnchorTransferBatch, SpatialPerception, Azure, Azure Spatial Anchors, ASA, mixed reality headset, windows mixed reality headset, virtual reality headset |
A shared experience is one where multiple users, each with their own HoloLens, iOS or Android device, collectively view and interact with the same hologram which is positioned at a fixed point in space. This is accomplished through spatial anchor sharing.
You can use Azure Spatial Anchors to create durable cloud-backed spatial anchors, which your app can then locate across multiple HoloLens, iOS and Android devices. By sharing a common spatial anchor across multiple devices, each user can see content rendered relative to that anchor in the same physical location. This allows for real-time shared experiences.
You can also use Azure Spatial Anchors for asynchronous hologram persistence across HoloLens, iOS and Android devices. By sharing a durable cloud spatial anchor, multiple devices can observe the same persisted hologram over time, even if those devices are not present together at the same time.
To get started building shared experiences in Unity, try out the 5-minute Azure Spatial Anchors Unity quickstarts.
Once you're up and running with Azure Spatial Anchors, you can then create and locate anchors in Unity.
In situations where you cannot use Azure Spatial Anchors, local anchor transfers enable one HoloLens device to export an anchor to be imported by a second HoloLens device. Note that this approach provides less robust anchor recall than Azure Spatial Anchors, and iOS and Android devices are not supported by this approach.
If you're following the Unity development checkpoint journey we've laid out, you're in the midst of exploring the Mixed Reality platform capabilities and APIs. From here, you can proceed to the next topic:
[!div class="nextstepaction"] Locatable camera
Or jump directly to deploying your app on a device or emulator:
[!div class="nextstepaction"] Deploy to HoloLens or Windows Mixed Reality immersive headsets
You can always go back to the Unity development checkpoints at any time.