Ingress Updates [ENG]

2021-09-01 23:56:17 After Niantic announced their plan to move the Ingress Portal Network (the database for the portals) to Niantic Lightship, Thia has now announced that this move has been completed. All nominations and portal edits that were made during the preparation for the move will now be processed. If a portal is considered eligible for Ingress, it will also appear.

Thia clarified that a portal submission does not guarantee a inclusion in Ingress, rather, the nomination will be added to the Niantic Lightship database, after which all Niantic games can sync them from there to their own games. This means that it is possible that a submission might appear in Pokemon GO, but not necessarily in Ingress, as each game can decide how to use Lightship’s Wayspots to populate and shape their specific gameboard.

Thia also mentioned that the move to Niantic Lightship means that submissions which were previously only visible in other games can now populate Ingress as well. Niantic also acknowledged that "the number of new Portals on the gameboard is shockingly different from what you’re used to in some countries" and that they should have taken more time to test the impact of those portals. Thia closes with suggesting Agents to, if they come along a portal with no picture, submit a photo or, if the portal does not "meet Wayfarer standards", to report it.

With this, Niantic answers questions of Portals appearing in other Niantic games, but not in Ingress without any apparent explanation, as well as questions about thousands of portals, seemingly imported from Foresquare, appearing without any quality checks or pictures. Unsurprisingly, Agent are not thrilled with this statement and are asking for the current criteria for a portal to be imported into the game, as well as the removal of the low quality portals that were imported.

Source: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/comment/152012/#Comment_152012

@IUENG Open / Comment

2021-08-27 23:02:15 Niantic has published release notes for Ingress Prime v2.79.1!

We have another attempt at a COMM fix!
In this update, the COMM will fill the full width of the screen, won't be shifted to the left or appear blank and the lack line on its side is gone!
Furthermore, a "Latest" button was added to quickly jump to the most recent COMM update.

In other fixes: the Agent header won't overlap the drone view any longer and Portal Scanning won't get darkened to avoid making scanning difficult.

Source: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/16506/ingress-2-79-1-release-notes

@IUENG Open / Comment

2021-08-22 19:47:24 Are you on track to reach the Courier Gold Medal? Agent @SpineyNorman has created a website with which you can check if you'll meet the requirements needed for the three badge tiers, if you continue at the same pace.

Check it out here: https://ingress.otheroom.com

@IUENG Open / Comment

2021-08-21 14:56:48 Ultimate Mission Maker

Enlightened Agent @Vashiru, with the help of Agents @j00rtje and @DanielOnDiordna has created an IITC plugin to speed up the (banner) mission creation process for everyone to use: Ultimate Mission Maker!

UMM is an IITC plugin to streamline the (banner/mosaic) mission creation process. UMM allows you to draw your entire banner in IITC in a drawtools like fashion. You can then export it as a JSON file, import that JSON into Niantic's Mission Authoring Tool and it will automatically pre-fill the title, description and, most importantly: all portals. If you've ever created a mission, you probably know how annoying it is to hunt down all those portals in those orange blobs on the map. This will no longer be required as all portals will just be loaded from your import.

The code is not obfuscated or minified so anyone with basic programming knowledge can see that the plugin is safe to use!
The plugin can be found at https://umm.8bitnoise.rocks along with its (work in progress) documentation and a telegram group exists for support on usage.
Please note that, as this is the first release, the plugin is still limited in functionality. The team is already working to add new and useful features!

Many thanks to this group of Agents for providing yet another useful tool to the whole Ingress Community!

@IUENG Open / Comment

2021-08-19 20:27:21 Another announcement from Niantic!

For the upcoming September Second Sunday Mission Day, Niantic stated that any 6 missions created by any mission author, including previously-completed missions, completed during the Event timespan, will earn you a point on your Mission Day Medal!

Note, feedback from this SSMD Event will be analyzed and this rule may change in future Events.

Source: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/16458/ingress-second-sunday-update-for-september/

@IUENG Open / Comment

2021-08-19 19:51:53 After hearing feedback from the Agents, Niantic has decided to reduce the Drone cooldown to 15 minutes for the duration of the event as an additional bonus on top of the 888AP for every all-time unique Portal visit.

Source: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/16450/coming-soon-courier-meet-you-out-there-challenge

@IUENG Open / Comment

2021-08-18 23:27:21 Niantic has announced details for the upcoming #MeetYouOutThere Challenge.

From Friday, August 20 @ 1600 UTC to Monday, August 30 @ 1600 UTC, you will have the opportunity to earn a special medal. You must earn a certain amount of AP within the event for the Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels:

Bronze: 88 888 AP
Silver: 888 888 AP
Gold: 2 888 888 AP

Also, for new portals that you have never visited before, 888 AP will be awarded when you visit them. You can find them with the layer button in the scanner.

There is also a free Apex, a one-time special offer for 8 Apex for 8 000 CMU, and special media that can be hacked during the event.

Source: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/16450/coming-soon-courier-meet-you-out-there-challenge

@IUENG Open / Comment

2021-08-13 19:04:38 To celebrate Hyperion, the god of the Sun, and the Summer in the Northern hemisphere, Niantic has released the Hyperion Medal! It will be available in the in-app store from Friday, August 13th @ 1600 UTC to Monday, August 30th @ 1600 UTC for the price of 2500 CMU!

Source: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/16395/celebrating-hyperion-god-of-the-sun-and-father-of-eos-and-helios

@IUENG Open / Comment

2021-08-12 23:49:26 Niantic has launched a private beta for Niantic Chat. Niantic Chat complements COMM and the forum by allowing agents to join and create public or private groups directly from Ingress without having to switch apps. Agents can coordinate events, farms or meetups with reminders pinned to the Niantic Chat world map. Agents can also optionally choose to temporarily share their location with their groups to help coordinate operations.

The first invitations for agents who are not Vanguards or XMAs have been sent. The next waves of invitations, which will be spread out over several months, will include NL-1331X #MeetYouOutThere Meetup participants and C.O.R.E. subscribers.

Niantic Chat can also be accessed from other Niantic games, such as with Catan.

Source: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/16377/niantic-chat-closed-beta

@IUENG Open / Comment

2021-08-10 00:12:44 Niantic has announced that the backend for the Ingress Portal Network will be upgraded to the latest version of Niantic Wayfarer and Niantic Lightship. During these upgrades, photo submissions as well as portal edits will be delayed by several weeks. Niantic asks that you do not submit them twice.

Also, the email you receive when you submit a portal proposal or a decision has been made about it will be adjusted. In the future, this email will come directly from the Niantic Wayfarer platform, which will tell you that your proposal has been accepted by the Wayfarer community. This does not mean that it will result in a Portal. It is being changed to make it clear that acceptance of a suggestion does not necessarily mean that it will become a portal.

The Ingress team knows that many use these emails to keep track of which portals have come online, and they are exploring ways to bring this notification back.

Source: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/16303/update-on-portal-nominations-edits-and-photo-submissions

@InvestigateXM for @IUENG Open / Comment