Tutorial

When something goes wrong

You're going on an adventure, things are bound to go slightly wrong, we've tried to design the site to be fairly fault tolerant and easy to recover from common issues.

GPS says I'm not here, but I am

This is the most common one. Phone GPS in a city is tricky.

Every screen that names a stop carries an “I'm at [landmark] now →” button. Tap it. That credits the stop and brings up the planet, exactly as arriving would have.

Location switched off entirely? The walk still works it just can't guess which stop you're at, so you'll need to manually tell it. If it's turned off by accident; Turning it back on: camera and location permissions.

I can't reach this stop

At true scale an outer planet lands wherever the astronomy puts it, which is sometimes across bridges, behind a maintenance fence, inside somewhere that's closed, or just two hours further than you have in you today.

Use “Can't get to [planet]? Skip this stop”. It confirms first, then moves the walk on to the next one.

Without this, one unreachable stop would point every future scan at the same place you can't get to, forever. That was the bug it was built to fix.

It credited the wrong planet

On a walk with a small Sun, the inner planets can sit close enough together that one GPS reading covers two of them. If you land on a stop page and it's named the wrong one, tap “Not the stop I'm at →” at the top. That un-does the credit and opens the stop list so you can mark the right one.

You can un-mark any stop at any time from the stop list, on the help page or on the mission map while the walk is active.

I don't know where I'm supposed to be

If you don't know where you're supposed to be at a city block scale, Scan GO. That's its whole job it works out where you are in the walk and shows you the matching screen to get you to the next waypoint. If you're in the right area but aren't sure about the exact spot, we do our best to use large landmarks and helpful images to hone in on the right location. Don't be afraid to walk around a bit and see if something looks familiar in the picture.

I want to do a different walk

You have two options,

Switch to another walk

Starting a new mission while one is unfinished asks you to confirm, naming how far into the old one you got. Say yes and the new walk becomes the active one; the old one remains sitting where you left it. Walks you've started before are listed on the help page so you can jump back any time.

Put a walk down without picking a new one

“Put this walk down for now” clears the active pointer and keeps the progress. Useful when you're travelling: with nothing active, scanning your card in a new city offers you that city's walks instead of the half-finished one from home.

I want to start this walk over

Two ways, depending on where you are. On the finish screen there's Walk this again. Any other time, open the help page, open Start over at the bottom, and choose “Reset this walk to the beginning”.

Both erase this walk's finds and put you back at the Sun. Both confirm first, naming how many finds you're throwing away. Other walks are untouched.

I want to clear everything

Also under Start over on the help page: “Clear everything on this device”. This is the factory reset.

Afterwards the device behaves as if you'd never opened the site. Published walks are still out there, obviously but a walk that only ever existed on this phone is gone for good. This cannot be undone. Export anything you built first: the planner has a share link and a JSON download for exactly this.

There is a developer page at /clear whose main control is that same wipe. Scanning the printed Lost? code sends you to the help page instead, on purpose.

Where my progress actually lives

On your phone. Specifically, in your browser's own storage on the device you're walking with. There is no account, nothing is uploaded, and we could not look up your walk if you asked us to.

The AR won't start

Working down from most to least likely:

• Refresh the page. 9 out of 10 times, especially if you're seeing a blank screen the camera just hasn't initialized properly
• Camera permission. Turning it back on.
• You're on a desktop. Live AR needs a phone desktop browsers aren't supported by the AR engine. we have Photo Editor if you're trying to add a planet to a normal image which should work on a desktop.
• The card is too small in the frame, or out of focus. Get closer so the printed border fills a decent part of the picture, and give the camera a second to focus.
• Light. Harsh glare across the card and deep shade are both harder than plain daylight for the AR system to utilize. Tilting the card away from a reflection often fixes it instantly.
• You're pointing at the wrong side. It's the busy printed border — the wallet card's frame, or the back of the postcard. The postcard's artwork front isn't a tracking target.

If it just won't play ball, don't lose the moment. Take an ordinary photo with the card visible somewhere in the shot, and add the planet afterwards with the photo editor. Same true scale, works on any device, and you can do it on the train home.

Still stuck

Tell us what happened. Which walk, which stop, what your phone did — it's the fastest way for a real problem to get fixed for everyone behind you.