Loosing WorldAnchors when shifting from Unity editor to deployed version

cgvg

Hi,
I'll try to summarize as clearly as possible our problem. We are currently designing our application with Unity editor in remote mode, in order to fine-place our holograms into the room and then attach world anchors to them.

Everything works like a charm, we place our objects, we change their position, we restart everything after days and all our holograms are there in the the correct place.

But (there's always a but...), we tried deploying the application to the device and then all our anchors disappeared. The anchor store is totally empty. We start again from the editor, the store includes our anchors.

So, first question is: when working with the editor in remote mode, where are the anchor stored? Apparently, not on the device (hololens) but locally. If this supposition is correct, how can we access them and possibly use them in the deployed version?

Second question. Given the previous problem, we tried to serialize (from editor remote mode) our world anchors through the WorldAnchorTransferBatch.ExportAsync function to save them into a binary file and open them in the deployed version. However, we always get a SerializationCompletionReason.AccessDenied result. The question is: is it possible to use anchor serialization in editor remote mode (or any other method to do a custom serialization)?

Concluding, what are we doing wrong?
Thanks in advance for any possible help

cgvg

Hi all,
here attached you will find a script that allows to recreate the problem. You simply have to create a hololens project, add an empty object, give it a label and add the script to it. When the application starts, you will see a big sphere in front of you.
Then, you can place the game object (not the sphere) from the Editor in the desired position and, pressing 's' key, you can add a world anchor and save it. Press 'c' to clear the world anchor and change the object position. At startup, if the anchor has been saved, it is loaded and the world anchor is restored.

For debugging purposes, the sphere color reflects its state (white: sphere not locked, red: object anchor not loaded from the store, green: object anchor loaded from the store, blue: anchor not saved).

When starting the application in remote mode from the editor everything works (once saved, the object is locked in the correct position in the following launches), when the application is deployed (after having saved the anchor), the sphere starts in red color, highlighting that the anchor could not be loaded.

Again, any idea of what we are doing wrong?

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.VR.WSA;
using UnityEngine.VR.WSA.Persistence;

public class AnchorPlacer : MonoBehaviour
{
    private bool loadAnchorAtStartup = true;
    protected WorldAnchorStore store = null;
    protected GameObject sphere = null;


    protected void StoreLoaded(WorldAnchorStore store)
    {
      this.store = store;
      if(loadAnchorAtStartup)
        LoadAnchor();
    }

    protected void Update()
    {
      // s key to save object anchor
      if(Input.GetKeyDown("s"))
        SaveAnchor();
    
      
      // c key to clear object anchor, thus allowing to change its position from the Unity editor
      if(Input.GetKeyDown("c"))
      {
        WorldAnchor anchor = gameObject.GetComponent<WorldAnchor>();
        if(anchor != null)
            DestroyImmediate(anchor);
    
        SetColor(sphere, Color.white);
      }
    }


    protected void SetColor(GameObject obj,Color color)
    {
      Renderer renderer = obj.GetComponent<Renderer>();
      if(renderer == null)
        return;
    
      renderer.material.color = color;
    }

    protected void Start()
    {
      sphere = GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Sphere);
      sphere.transform.parent = transform;
      SetColor(sphere, Color.white);
      WorldAnchorStore.GetAsync(StoreLoaded);
    }

    public bool SaveAnchor()
    {
      //do the cleanup: if an anchor already exists, destroy it (from the gameobject and the store)
      WorldAnchor anchor = gameObject.GetComponent<WorldAnchor>();
    
      if(anchor != null)
        DestroyImmediate(anchor);
    
      if(store != null)
      {         
        store.Delete(gameObject.name);
    
        //add a game anchor to current object
        anchor = gameObject.AddComponent<WorldAnchor>();
    
        //save the anchor to the store
        if(!store.Save(gameObject.name, anchor))
        {
            Debug.LogWarning(string.Format("Anchor {0} NOT saved", gameObject.name));
            SetColor(sphere, Color.blue);
        }
        else
        {
            Debug.Log(string.Format("Anchor {0} successfully saved", gameObject.name));
            SetColor(sphere, Color.green);
            return true; //return true, because everything went all right
        }
      }
      else
        Debug.LogWarning(string.Format("Anchor {0} NOT saved because there's no access to the store", gameObject.name));
    
      //if we're here, we failed somehow
      return false;
    }

    public bool LoadAnchor()
    {
      //load the anchor of this object if available
    
      if(store != null)
      {         
        //get current world anchor (if it doesn't exist, add it)
        WorldAnchor anchor = gameObject.GetComponent<WorldAnchor>();
    
        if(anchor != null)
            DestroyImmediate(anchor);
    
        //load the anchor from the store
        if(!store.Load(gameObject.name, gameObject))
        {
            Debug.LogWarning(string.Format("Anchor {0} NOT loaded", gameObject.name));
            SetColor(sphere, Color.red);
        }
        else
        {
            Debug.Log(string.Format("Anchor {0} successfully loaded", gameObject.name));
            SetColor(sphere, Color.green);
            return true; //return true, because everything went all right
        }
      }
      else
      {
        Debug.LogWarning(string.Format("Anchor {0} NOT loaded because there's no access to the store", gameObject.name));
        SetColor(sphere, Color.yellow);
      }
    
      //if we're here, we failed somehow
      return false;
    }
}