Issue with VPS Functionality under Educational Old Pro Plan

Technical Support
1

Hello,

I am a researcher at a university in Japan, working on xR-related projects. We are currently experiencing an issue where VPS does not function properly when using an APP KEY issued under the old Pro plan (which we had contracted under an educational license).

To investigate, we used the following minimal VPS project provided by 8thWall:

We conducted the following test steps:

  1. We created a self-hosted project in the workspace of each account (our university account and a company account I’m affiliated with).
  2. From the geospatial-browser tab, we added the same public Wayspot to both projects.
  3. Using the same project, we simply switched the APP KEY to match each account and ran the test.

Using this setup, we observed the following:

  • APP KEY from the company’s old Pro plan → VPS worked as expected
  • APP KEY from the university’s old Pro plan (educational license) → VPS scanning never completes

Our understanding is that self-hosted development is still supported under the old Pro plan. However, it seems that when using the university account, only the VPS functionality is restricted.

Could you please clarify the following points:

  1. Is VPS functionality still supported for accounts under the old Pro plan, including those with educational licenses?
  2. If not, has there been a recent policy change that limits VPS usage for educational or legacy accounts?

If you need any additional information, please feel free to ask.

Thank you very much in advance for your support.

2

VPS Should definitely still be working even if you’re on a legacy plan. I can look into this further.

3

Thanks a lot! That would be really helpful.
Let me know if you need any other info!

4

Just to confirm:

  1. Yes, VPS is completely supported on Pro plan accounts.
  2. There has been no policy changes.
5

Hi George,

Thanks for your reply, and for confirming that VPS is fully supported on Pro plan accounts.

However, the issue is still persisting on our end. Let me summarize the situation again with more detail:

  • We used the following VPS example project and changed only the APP KEY in the code. Nothing else was modified:
    web/examples/threejs/vps at master · 8thwall/web · GitHub

  • Each APP KEY was tied to a project created under a separate Pro license workspace:
    one from our university account (educational license) and one from another company I’m affiliated with.

  • The same public Wayspot was added via the geospatial-browser tab to both projects.

  • When using one of the APP KEYs, VPS recognizes the environment almost immediately.
    But with the other APP KEY, the scan never finishes and stays stuck at “Scanning…”.

  • We deployed the project and switched between the two APP KEYs on the spot, so time, location, and conditions were identical.

  • We also cleared the browser cache and tested in private browsing mode (iPhone 15, iOS 18.5).

Based on this setup, we strongly suspect that one of the Pro license accounts may be restricted in some way.

If helpful, we’re open to sharing access to the affected account for further investigation.

Could you please take another look?

6

The AppKey has no impact on VPS functionality. If the AppKey wasn’t working the experience would spit out an error long before you get to Scanning.

Likely your VPS location is having trouble localizing in general. Can you share the name and ID of the location? Feel free to also email us at support@8thwall.com if you don’t want to share the details here.

7

Hi George,

Thanks for the quick follow-up.

The VPS Wayspot we used for the experiment is:

Name: ĺ’Ść•™
Address: 7 Chome-96 Kamiaraya, Kanazawa-shi, Ishikawa-ken 921-8065, Japan

That said, based on your answer, it sounds like the accuracy of VPS recognition could vary depending on the workspace, even when using the exact same Wayspot. This feels strange to me, since both projects were created with identical code and the only difference was the AppKey/workspace.

Could you clarify why the recognition result would differ between two workspaces for the same Wayspot?

8

I’m saying the opposite actually, there’s no difference in scan-ability per project using the same Location. To clarify I mentioned that if you’re AppKey was invalidated it would prevent your experience from loading at all, it would not change the localization capabilities.

That said I’ll forward this info to our mapping team who can take a look.

9

Thank you for the clarification.
Just to avoid any misunderstanding, I wasn’t suggesting that scan-ability itself changes depending on the workspace. What I meant is that it feels strange that the same Wayspot behaves differently depending on the account being used (especially since both accounts are on Pro plans). I just wanted to confirm whether there could be any account-related factor behind this.

I really appreciate you sharing this with the mapping team. Please let me know if you need any additional information.

Also, I plan to test with other public Wayspots to see if the same issue occurs — that VPS recognition only works under one workspace and not the other.

10

No problem! I agree that is strange but there is no reason that the same Location would be acting different based on anything account related.

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