Aligning and locking your scene in mixed reality

While creating architectural designs in Arkio you can work in different scales. You can easily switch between god-scale where you look at the scene like a maquette or in human scales when teleported inside the model or zoomed down to 1:1 scale using your controller grips.

God scale locks

In mixed reality on god scales (scales higher than 1:2) you might want to align and lock your model to a physical surface in your environment like a table, cabinet, or the floor. This can be done by pressing the lock button on your non-dominant hand bracelet. If the model is locked the highlight on the side of the lock icon will show. This scene will now stay in position on that scale and surface and we prevent you from accidentally moving the model by making the grip buttons on the controller less sensitive. 

When a scene position is locked in mixed reality this position is stored and the next time that you put on your headset and Arkio you can still find this model in this locked position. Any time you teleport back to god scale from human scale the model is also positioned in this location. You can remove a god scale locked position by clicking the same lock icon again and you can set a new default god scale position by activating the lock again.

Breaking out of a locked position

When locked in a god or human scale position you can get out of this lock by moving your controller grip buttons beyond a certain threshold to break yourself out of the locked position into alignment mode. While in alignment mode your vertical and horizontal pan movements are damped to allow you to place and align the models with more precision. While in restricted mode the lock status on your wristband is off, selecting the lock again will update the previous position to this newly aligned position. This mode is great for quickly making small adjustments to your position when your device loses tracking accuracy (at large distances or in bad lighting conditions) or if the model appears to no longer be aligned precisely. 

If you don't want to be in this restricted alignment model you can move your grips to scale up and down even further using both controllers and get yourself back into the normal Arkio grip scaling mode where there is no horizontal or vertical damping. You can also manually click the lock icon on your bracelet to break out of the lock in god or human scales or teleport outside your locked position from human-scale.

Human scale locked positions

When you click (using the laser) or touch (using your index finger) the lock button in human scale (1:1) this will save a human scale locked position in your model indicated by a cyan-colored disk that is visible in god scales (higher than 1:2). This disc indicates your current human scale position in the model and updates if you walk around so you can see where you currently are when you want to go back to human scale. The disc lets you teleport back inside your previously human-scale locked position so you can quickly jump between working in human and god scales to make adjustments to your model by laser or by hand.

When you work in human scale and mixed reality Arkio automatically creates a new human scale lock if you create new objects around you (eg a piece of imported furniture or a wall) so you can jump back to this position later. This might result in unwanted saved positions but you can easily remove them using the delete tool (see next chapter)

You can save several human-scale locked positions in a model and if you are a host in a meeting you can share these locks with other colocated users. This allows for some interesting use cases where you can prepare several human-scale viewing points, include several human-scale alignment points to optimize your device tracking accuracy for large-spaced, or make several mixed-reality designs in one scene. 

You can break yourself outside these human-scale locked positions by moving your controller grip buttons more extremely or using the unlock button as described in the "Breaking out of a locked position" chapter you can also use the teleport tool to jump somewhere else in human-scale or to teleport back to the god scale (locked) position

Removing human-scale lock positions

If you saved human-scale locks in your model that are no longer needed you can easily remove them using the delete tool from the main menu. Locks can also be shared with your devices from a host in a colocated meeting group. These shared locks can then be used like normal locks and can also be deleted or updated.

If you have issues with your saved locks you can remove all the previously saved positions at once from the first tab in the settings panel. This will remove any previously made locks from your scene and will also reset your god scale locked position.

Aligning virtual models to the real world

When you are mapping out your environment in mixed reality with Arkio's modeling tools or when loading 3D models from other design software to us in mixed reality you want to make sure the models are aligned correctly to the real world.

The easiest way to see if your models are aligned well is by using the boundaryless blending of your real-world and virtual geometry when walking around on human-scale (1:1). You can keep moving yourself when unlocked in VR and make small adjustments to your scene position using the controller grips. Once the model is aligned well in one floor/wall corner you can walk around more to inspect if other corners of your 3D model align well. Once the position is looking good you can hit the lock icon to save your position. You can now teleport back to this position at later times and adjust or share these saved human-scale alignments with other Quest devices in a colocated meeting.

If you are loading a CAD or BIM model to align with your surroundings you can best focus on an easily recognizable 3-plane intersection point like the corner of a floor/wall connection or a corner of a recognizable column hitting the floor.

You can then use the same trick with the boundaryless blending to align the model to the real world or use some passthrough painted geometry to better see and align a specific part of the model to something else. Once you are properly aligned you can lock the position and your mixed reality explorations, coordination and design collaborations can begin!

Once your imported model is loaded and human-scale position is locked. Your headset can always teleport back into this position after a restart (even offline for places without internet) and you can also share the models and human-scale locked positions with others using an Arkio meeting and the colocation feature

You can also place larger objects like entire buildings on sites and align them to their real-world location using the grip control and panning the scenes in human-scale to fit in your physical environment. Using a combination of imported models, passthrough materials Arkio shapes you can even blend in the objects between and behind other models, and using rendering modes like X-ray mode enables all sorts of interesting use-cases for architecture, construction, and spatial design mixing outdoor and indoor world with your virtual models!