Alternate World Portal Lens

Inspiration

We wanted to answer a simple question: what if any doorway could take you somewhere else? AR has been stuck in the "point your camera at a flat surface and place a 3D object" phase for years. We wanted to build something that uses your whole body — something you physically walk through, not just look at. The idea of a portal you can actually step through felt like the kind of AR experience people imagine when they think about the future, but rarely see executed.

What it does

Alternate World Portal Lens is a Snap Lens that places a glowing portal in your physical environment. As you physically walk toward it and cross the threshold, a seamless transition transports you into an entirely different world — a 360° immersive environment that surrounds you. Tap to reset the portal and walk through again into a new experience. It turns any room into a gateway to somewhere else.

How we built it

We built the lens from scratch in Lens Studio 5.19 using JavaScript and Snap's Device Tracking in World mode, which gives full six-degree-of-freedom positioning. The core mechanic is a proximity detection script that continuously calculates the real-world distance between the user's phone and the portal object. When the distance drops below a threshold, it triggers a white flash transition and dynamically swaps the environment by enabling an inverted sphere textured with a 360° equirectangular skybox image. On reset, the portal repositions itself in front of the user's current location so the experience is infinitely repeatable.

Challenges we ran into

Lens Studio 5 overhauled much of the interface and API from version 4, so most online tutorials and documentation didn't match what we were actually seeing. Component names changed, script.api was deprecated, and workflows like attaching scripts to objects were completely different. We had to learn the new paradigm in real time. Getting the skybox sphere to render correctly was another hurdle — we discovered that the camera's clipping distance was cutting off large objects, and had to dial in the exact scale where the inverted sphere was both large enough to feel immersive and small enough to actually render. Testing was also a challenge since the Lens Studio preview didn't accurately simulate world tracking, so we had to constantly push builds to a physical phone to verify our work.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built the entire experience from a blank project in under 12 hours with no prior Lens Studio experience. We're also proud of the reset mechanic — tapping to spawn a new portal wherever you're standing makes the experience replayable, which is important for demoing and real-world use.

What we learned

We learned Lens Studio 5 from the ground up under pressure, including Device Tracking, world-space coordinate systems, material rendering, and the scripting API.

What's next for Alternate World Portal Lens

First, refining the user experience making the experience of seeing the portal and skybox more aesthetically pleasing. Then, making the experience of "hitting" the portal more exciting- possibly using iPhone's vibration mechanic? Then, re-publishing with Lens+ for monetization!