Navigate via GPS / place scenes in real-world locations

[jywarren]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Yes and no; I want to be able to use Mozilla Hubs scenes depicting real places interactively when visiting those real world sites. I'm developing a project reconstructing a destroyed neighborhood -- Providence's historic Chinatown -- in Hubs, and I'd like to be able to navigate the scene by walking around the present-day site of the neighborhood.

Describe the solution you'd like

AR.js has a simple library to locate A-Frame models at a latitude and longitude:

• https://github.com/AR-js-org/AR.js#location-based-example
• https://ar-js-org.github.io/AR.js-Docs/location-based/
• tutorial at https://medium.com/chialab-open-source/build-your-location-based-augmented-reality-web-app-c2442e716564

Describe alternatives you've considered

I could export the gltf but I would lose the multiplayer environment, the atmospheric effects, the interactivity. It wouldn't be Hubs anymore without all those great features!

Additional context

I'm also interested in whether I could achieve this as an "add-on" -- that is, by running JavaScript (say, from a bookmarklet) on top of a running instance of Hubs, especially if this feature isn't accepted or if it takes a long time to implement. AR.js suggests this code; maybe it could be adapted to run on top of an existing Hubs scene?

        let latitude = place.location.lat;
        let longitude = place.location.lng;

        let model = document.createElement('a-entity');
        model.setAttribute('gps-entity-place', `latitude: ${latitude}; longitude: ${longitude};`);
        model.setAttribute('gltf-model', './assets/magnemite/scene.gltf');
        model.setAttribute('rotation', '0 180 0');
        model.setAttribute('animation-mixer', '');
        model.setAttribute('scale', '0.5 0.5 0.5');

        model.addEventListener('loaded', () => {
            window.dispatchEvent(new CustomEvent('gps-entity-place-loaded'))
        });

        scene.appendChild(model);

Thank you!! ❤️

[jywarren]

I realized that the VR headset interface "walks" you around as you move in the physical world. I wonder if it uses a standard location API to do so, even if it's doing its own tracking with acceleration and video to feed into that api?