I didn’t think of that but that could help. I don’t think Niantic care about that that aspect?
I was just interested in what, if anything, would make Wayfarer users do scans since they have convinced some Ingress players to do them and might convince Go players to do them.
Hmmm. That’s a tough question.
Finding a potential POI, or a current Wayspot, and snapping a picture or two can be interesting, fun, challenging, etc. It’s sort of its own reward, in addition to being a component of the Wayfaring process that may also feel rewarding.
I don’t have any such feeling of affiliation(?) with the quasi-cinematic activity of scanning. I suppose I can imagine a role-playing thing within Ingress that might encourage scanning, though I have never tried that game.
Either the task must be given meaning, or the reward has to be significant enough, or something has to change, or nobody is going to be motivated.
I’m not sure what would make it fun, meaningful or lucrative enough to make me want to do it.
Perhaps if the photosphere became somehow a part of the game environment?
Presently, in PoGo, the primary photo of a spot will appear as the background while you are interacting with a gym. It’s as though the photo were stretched around a part of the inside of a dome, with you looking from inside.
If I knew how to create a ‘good’ scan, and knew that everyone would enjoy it when they visited, and was somehow compensated and/or received feedback about it, perhaps that could lead to the desire to create and improve the virtual tourist spots.
I dunno. Just spitballing, but that’s the best I have come up with.
I have been scanning in ingress because of the badge. Which to be honest is very tedious. The amounts for the badge are very excessive, not to mention that unless you upload on the spot you don’t know if you will gain scout controller or not if someone was already listed. For those that don’t know, it is whomever has the most scans in the past 30 days. But it doesn’t tell you if the current scout controller is older than 30 days. That is a bit annoying.
I liked overclocking, but was a bit annoyed when some of the portals I set to be vps activated turned out that I couldn’t overclock them. A few were “couch portals” and I don’t have access to the floor, wall, or ceiling that the individual with the 30+ scout controller does.
Not to mention that even those in public don’t always work because we don’t want to look too crazy scanning an object that isn’t that interesting. Some work and I like that, but I glyph hack so I typically don’t have much room. The issue is you don’t have to actually scan the object for it to count. I do typically scan the correct object and have people ask me what I am doing. This is easier if I am with my kids. Also being female at a playground is better than if you were male. Sorry but it’s the truth. I prefer scanning when it’s cold since it is less busy outside, plus more likely that I can get scout controller by uploading my one scan at home on wifi.
In POGO my kids usually ask me to scan to power up a stop, but the rewards are not great. Plus again, as my youngest told me “you don’t need to actually scan it, just scan the ground”. Which is true.
I would like it if scanning would help with verifying a wayspot or possibly gave better rewards. But it also uses up a lot of data, especially with a newer phone.
I’ve done thousands of scans. First it was a few hundred in Pokemon Go for the Podfin, the only reward that’s not garbage!
Then I discovered Ingress and Overclock. Imagine spinning a pokestop and getting four times the items snd experience! That’s what Overclock is. Players have to do all the activating themselves. Everything was great until December, when incompetent Niantic screwed up the Wayfarer app for activating Overclock. Now it’s very hard to activate Overclock.
Why don’t pick reward only more Pokeball if you scan wayspot. You can more play catch too if you get scan rescreach reward Pokeball.
Sometimes i won’t scan again because reward never been changed again. I hope reward AR scan will be changed.
In terms of wayfarer it would make most sense to have it a an option when either submitting or making an edit. I say option because I wouldn’t want to do it every time and I would also want to submit later as uploading data with little signal is not good.
This would definitely help with things like location edits too, so often its impossible to tell which if any is correct.
Absolutely agree that it would have to be option, the process is already frustrating enough for many people so it would just add an extra barrier for many.
@26thDoctor as far as encouraging wayfarers to scan I dont think Niantic really care about these things as you say. The rewards would have to be good, much better than anything we get from reviewing currently, I cant see them building a useable system to do this or providing adequate rewards to encourage me to do more free work for them.
Soooo… Most people don’t want to do it but some will for rewards and Niantic will probably break it anyway 
Yeah, pretty much. I think in the past some people would have done it to help improve Wayfarer because they were genuinely passionate about the project and were eager to help improve it.
Unfortunately Niantic has chased most of those people away with their ineptitude and people just don’t trust them any more, especially when these projects are so half-arsed with such poor communication that nobody knows how they are even supposed to operate.
There’s a long way to go to improve organisation, communication and rebuild trust to gain loyal users again before something like this will work I feel. Either that or amazing rewards!
Maybe the memory cheats but I think they need 25+ scans on a Wayspot.
I’m interested to see how they’ll ‘make’ Go players do quality scans rather than just add more videos to someone’s foot f3tish collection.
upgrades are becoming more and more useless to nominators/ reviewers.
having an upgraded nomination sit in queue is a slap in the face. It’s one thing to sit in voting, but it’s another for it to be in queue.
Does this happen? If I upgrade it is usually decided on within 24-48hours. Unless it is a new nomination.
I just don’t like upgrading certain nominations unless they are completely obvious since it will be people from further away reviewing. I have had to appeal several upgrades.
If we can imagine the near future evolution of gaming, we can also imagine what AR scanning will be used for.
However, unlike Ingress agents, most PGO trainers cannot imagine what AR will be used for soon.
This is why Ingress agents are relatively cooperative while PGO trainers are uncooperative.
But in reality, Niantic has already shown more future in PGO than Ingress. Unfortunately, given that the majority of trainers do not understand them, PGO trainers will continue to be uncooperative even as AR representations get closer to reality.
@NianticTintino
In the future, AR scans should not be dependent on the game app as in the Wayfarer review, but rather the game app should act as a gate, and the scans and achievements should be commonized as in the Wayfarer review.
Ingress has a large number of players who cooperate with scanning, but due to differences in versions of the game, some players are unable to scan because their smartphones are more limited than those of Pokémon GO.
It would be more effective to work with a cooperative gaming cluster rather than relying on a largely uncooperative one.
In addition, the recently launched “Scaniverse” scan data import functionality can be added to Wayfarer for even greater effectiveness.
Gotta scan 'em all 
https://lightship.dev/products/vps?hl=en
https://blog.scaniverse.com/scaniverse-introduces-support-for-3d-gaussian-splatting-9f7f63f5469b
I found a good case study on waypot location accuracy and what it has to do with AR scanning.
It’s a statue in Times Square in NYC.
Unfortunately, these wayspots are duplicates.
And interestingly, when looking at each wayspot, one (the correct location) is already online with VPS status and the other (the wrong location) is ready for activation.
If the wayspot is far away from the wayspot, the AR scan cannot be performed.
Therefore, looking at the AR scan data for the way spot at the wrong location would help the team understand the current problem.
Another interesting point is that the Wayfarer team and Niantic used to work on improving location accuracy in major cities around the world, including New York City, to improve the accuracy of the VPS, but this was left out.
Well, I think we simply forgot about it.
The information that should be employed for each of these is probably as follows
The original wayspot is considered to be a wayspot in the wrong location information. And the wayspot in the correct location information is thought to have been created later.
Therefore, the wayspot in the wrong location information should be moved to the correct location, and the wayspot in the correct location information should be integrated.
The scan data should use the one in the correct location information.
The scan data in the wrong location should be used by the Wayfarer team to discuss their issues.
The title, description, and location seem more appropriate for the new wayspot.
All photos should be merged.
I’ve heard Photosphere mentioned, and occasionally seen links in nominations. Would you mind explaining to me what it is and how I could (or should) use it in helping my nominations if you have a few minutes please?
Thank you in advance!
Photosperes were something that used to be available to create through an app provided by Google that would then appear on on their maps. Essentially a 3D scan of an area that would show up as one of the blue points that you can still see on maps today.
The app was unfortunately retired but there are still ways to do them. I use an old 360 camera that I have and upload using the Pano2VR method from the link below, it’s clunky and looks awful but it does work and can provide that extra boost to get a submission understood.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NianticWayfarer/comments/11y48kq/guide_how_to_photosphere_in_2023/
I haven’t used maps.moomoo.me but I understand others have had good results with that too.
I hope that helps, good luck!
Thank you for your reply, I’ll have to look into things!
I’ve been using maps.moomoo.me with a Pixel 7a’s built-in camera app to create photospheres and upload them to Google Maps without issue.
Photospheres are an invaluable tool for adding context to an area on the map that’s either recently changed or isn’t near an existing Street View location. Those are the main cases where I’ll include a direct link to a photosphere to make it very clear to a reviewer what is going on.
Thank you!