Spatial Mapping components

To facilitate Spatial MappingThe process of mapping real-world surfaces into the virtual world. More info
See in Glossary in Unity and allow easy access to its features, Unity provides two Spatial Mapping XRAn umbrella term encompassing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) applications. Devices supporting these forms of interactive applications can be referred to as XR devices. More info
See in Glossary componentsA functional part of a GameObject. A GameObject can contain any number of components. Unity has many built-in components, and you can create your own by writing scripts that inherit from MonoBehaviour. More info
See in Glossary:

• Spatial Mapping Renderer

• Spatial Mapping Collider

You can use these components together or independently. Each Spatial Mapping component uses its own SurfaceObserver to understand changes to the physical world. Each Spatial Mapping component periodically queries the Spatial Mapping system to understand what changes have occurred in the physical environment (how often they perform these queries depends on how you configure them). When the system notifies the component of relevant changes, the component prioritizes baking the various changed Surfaces.

The baking process involves generating a Mesh FilterA mesh component that takes a mesh from your assets and passes it to the Mesh Renderer for rendering on the screen. More info
See in Glossary with a MeshThe main graphics primitive of Unity. Meshes make up a large part of your 3D worlds. Unity supports triangulated or Quadrangulated polygon meshes. Nurbs, Nurms, Subdiv surfaces must be converted to polygons. More info
See in Glossary that corresponds to the physical Surface. The components use this Mesh Filter in their own specific ways.

Each Spatial Mapping component is independent of other Spatial Mapping components. This means that each component maintains its own list of Surfaces, even if multiple components see the same Surface. We recommend that you limit the number of Spatial Mapping components you use, in order to optimize performance.

• 2018–05–01 Page published with editorial review

• Spatial Mapping for Hololens documentation updated in 2017.3