POOLS News

[p]Hello everyone,[/p][p][/p][p]We’re proud to share that POOLS is taking part in the WDC World Ocean Day Charity Steam Sale, which runs from June 5 to June 12.[/p][p][/p][p]This special event supports the wonderful folks at Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), the leading global charity dedicated to protecting whales, dolphins, and the oceans they call home. Proceeds from the sale will help fund critical global conservation work, including missions to remove deadly ghost fishing gear from the sea, and operations where divers clear lethal entanglement hazards from reefs, the seabed, and shipwrecks in UK waters - protecting both marine life and scuba divers.[/p][p][/p][p]By picking up POOLS (or grabbing a copy for a friend), you’re not just diving into liminal spaces, you’re helping protect the real world too.[/p][p][/p][p]If you want to read more about WDC, you can do so here: [/p][p]https://whales.org/ [/p][p][/p][p]The charity sale goes live June 5 at 10 am PDT | 7 pm CEST.[/p][p][/p][p]Let’s save some whales and dolphins![/p][p]
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PC VR mode is now available for free in the Demo version of the game (Windows only). Thank you for your patience & keep your feedback coming so we can keep improving the VR mode to be as enjoyable as possible! ːfancyduckː

Full changelog:

• Chapter 0: Fixed hotel doors sometimes opening to wrong directions
  
• Added "deletePlayerPref" command to the developer console - Example: "deletePlayerPref vr-tracking-origin-mode" command restores the VR tracking mode back to seated mode
  
• (VR) Improved standing / roomscale VR tracking mode - reduces the chances of camera getting stuck on the floor when enabling the setting
  
• (VR) Fixed bugs related to water slide entering: players could get stuck inside the environment, players wouldn't be teleported to the exit position when the "skip water slides" setting was enabled
  
• (VR) Added a tiny bit of smoothing to free movement to help eliminate judder
  
• (VR) Optimized some volumetric effects in Chapter 0
  
• (VR) Added "haptics intensity" slider to gameplay setting
  
• (VR) Disabled transparent material screen space reflections because of compatibility issue with water surface shader
  

We are investigating and pursuing performance optimizations with the goal of switching the rendering mode to multi-pass rendering in the future. Screen space water reflections do not have the misalignment issue when using multi-pass rendering, but it does come with a larger performance overhead when compared to the currently active single-pass instanced mode.

Thank you very much for the VR related feedback and every bit of support we've received thus far! We'll continue fixing bugs and working towards those performance improvements.

Also - VR support will be added to the Demo version hopefully tomorrow. We'll post an update about it once it is available.

PC VR mode is out now as a free update!

Full changelog

• Windows: Add PC VR support
  
• Add view distance setting
  
• Chapter 2: restored "Look At" event functionality to the statue surrounded by plastic chairs
  
• Chapter 2: possibly make Anatidaephobia easier to trigger
  
• Linux: Fix crash at the end of chapter 6 which caused ch0 to not unlock
  

Note: For Linux and Mac users; the VR is not officially supported, but might work. Feedback appreciated

Full changelog:

• Chapter 0: improved audio stability and performance - should fix most audio crackling issues
  
• Chapter 0: fixed missing audio clip variant for "Laminate" surface type footstep
  

Patch is now out on Windows and Linux. Mac version will be updated as soon as we can.