Whirligig News

Hi Everyone

Another week and another beta. I've continued to work on overall improvements in UI, usability and optimization. I've also wanted to make Whirligig a viable desktop player so I've included some updates relating to that. This also includes bug fixes and probably additional bugs. Please let me know if you come across anything and I'll do my best to fix it.

[h2]Updates[/h2]

• Set cinema mode to full screen. This makes your cinema playback act like a standard desktop player making the screen fill the window.
  
• Rooms is now better organised into 360 stereo (rooms that are 3d overunder images) and 3D environments (full 3D environments). In addition the "360 Stereo" rooms have a brightness control that can be applied continuesly or dim when the media is playing.
  
• Audio output. Now you can change your audio output device. So if you wish to output to a surround sound system you can. The options are currently Mono, Stereo (best for VR), Quad, surround, 5.1 and 7.1. These options are only applied when using Media Foundation and WinRT as all other video paths have direct access. I'll be looking at making it the same with VLC at a later date.
  

[h2]Tutorial videos[/h2]
I'm going to making a good amount of tutorial videos about all the options in Whirligig. I'll be posting regularly these updates to the Steam video section and my youtube channel. So look out for those :)


[h2]Bug reporting[/h2]
Please report any bugs you come across. You can either post in this news feed, o the discussion board or email me [email protected].

[h2]User reviews[/h2]
User reviews are always welcome, more so if they're are positive :) Please let everyone know if you like Whirligig, it helps to inform people before purchase and helps me know I'm still making something that people like.

[h2]And finally[/h2]
I'm hoping this will be the version I either release as default or close too. Development still continues and with all the changes recently I'm now in a better position to add more features. I hope that what I'm making is being enjoyed by everyone and look forward to hearing all your comments :)

Happy watching

Phil

Hi everyone

After the last release and all the work on the browser I received a couple of comments about Whirligig failing to open. I started examining this issue and discovered on the first run of Whirligig, Whirligig would take a very long time to open while being unresponsive giving the impression that it had crashed. Every time after that Whirligig would open much quicker. So down the rabbit hole I went and I've been improving loading times, reducing overheads and fixing issues to make Whirligig faster than ever. I'll go over some of the improvements.

[h3]Rooms[/h3]
Rooms would load into memory at start which slowed things down quite a bit. I've changed this so that Whirligig only loads the room when when you're using it.

I've temporarily removed two rooms (the 3D ones at the end) as I need to determine what overheads these have. I hope to improve all the rooms in the future.

[h3]Controller Models skins[/h3]
I've done the same as the rooms and they will only load in when you choose them.

[h3]UI improvements[/h3]
I've spent a long time reducing all the texture for the UI as many were duplicates. This has reduced resource use and allowed me to standardise a lot of the look of the UI's. This will massively help me in the future when adding new features and improving the UI.

[h3]Added features[/h3]

• Added another page of blank backgrounds so you can add more of your own.
  
• 
  
• Two new mapping input options for Rotate. Rotate exists as a projection option and a position options. They work differently but now you can choose either one and they are better labeled.
  
• 
  
• Vsync as an option to the quality menu. Some people have experienced black flashes in either the headset or the monitor. Enabling this can remove this issue.
  
• 
  
• Reset all has been added to the position menu.
  

[h3]Bug fixes[/h3]
I've also spent a large amount of time fixing issues as I go. Any time I've come across a problem I've address it so hopefully many of the little problems will be ironed out.

I'm not going to list them here as there are a lot of small ones and many of which may have been added during the optimisation process. If you reported a bug and I've addressed or attempted to address the issue I'll post in the respective forum/email to let you know.

[h2]Please let me know of bugs[/h2]
I'm currently replacing a lot of the core code so any issues you have please let me know as I'm in the best position to address them right now. The more bugs reported the more I can fix and I very much appreciate when people let me know there is an issue I can fix :)


Well if you do, let me know with a good review :D Me like many developers thrive on positive feedback and are destroyed by bad reviews, which cut much deeper than a good one helps.

In all seriousness though a positive review really helps me to know that the changes I'm making are improving Whirligig and that I'm still providing something that people want to use. That also goes for feature requests, bug reports and general questions. I'm a lone developer and rely a lot on feedback to make Whirligig better. If there are ways I can make your experience better let me know.

If you are having issues with Whirligig I will understand if you write a negative review and it will make me sad :( I would however appreciate if you let me know what the issue was so I can improve Whirligig for the future :)


Thanks to everyone who enjoys Whirligig, you're support is very much appreciated. I look forward to hearing your suggestions for future updates.

Happy Watching

Phil

[edit] I've had a couple of comments regarding it not loading. I've made some changes including moving the permissions thing for networks so that you'll only be asked if you wish to use the network feature. I've also tried to optimise the startup code as it seems to take a long to to start when started for the first time. I'll continue to look at this over the next few days. The new version is Whirligig 5.11

Hi everyone

I've often had the request for a network location support feature on both Stand alone headsets and PC based headsets. This has been very difficult to implement as I'm not that well versed in network protocols but with the update to the VLC plugin this has opened up the options to include network browsing. It's taken me a while but here is the first release that includes this feature :)

As this has meant a rewrite of the browsing system in Whirligig I've taken the opportunity to improved and optimise the code so it should now run faster and hopefully more stable than before. Here is an example of the new Explorer:



Here is a rundown of the changes:

[Warning, your current shortcuts will be lost, explanation follows]
1 : You'll see that I've added 4 new shortcut options and also had them so they will display the folder name of the shortcut that they are linked two. I've also adjusted the way they are saved in the 'ini' file as they were using a comma as a separator, which is a legal character in folder names. This causes issues if the folder had that character. I've changed this so the conflict won't arise. However this does mean your Shortcuts with be removed on first load as the old system isn't compatible.

2: Local and network browsing has been added. Local will display your local drives (c:\, d;\ etc) and Network will show any Network locations that can be found.

3: With the addition on Network browsing I wanted to find the most space officiant way to improve the browser and also make the browser identical on both standalone and PC. I've removed the direct access to the drives and widened the Folder window. I've also extended address bar to make it easier to see where you are.



LibVLCSharp protocols
To make the network access as future proof as possible I've used the LibVLCSharp network access system to allow the locations to be viewed. This means that Whirligig is using the same system as VLC to browser and playback network located media.

UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) as well as SMB are supported. Basically anything that VLC will find should be found by Whirligig.

Video playback
All video path and image playback will work with network locations. So you should be able to choose your proffered playback engine such as Media Foundation.

[h2]Current Know network browsing issues[/h2]

No Network Password support
This is the first version of the network implementation and as such I've not implemented any password options for shares that require username and passwords. This is, again another difficult implementation and I'll be working on it for up and coming versions. I would like to know how much this is a problem for people as well. In using the VLC network browsing I've noticed it doesn't ask for the username/password. So I'm not sure how much this is expected anyway.

Network shares not being listed or being listed more than once
As I'm using the VLC implementation I'm reliant on the response that it provides. If the plugin doesn't give me the address then I can't show it. I've also noticed that sometimes the same address will appear multiple times.

I am working in checks for these issues, such as checking if the network share has any folders, checking the id doesn't match other locations. These improves will come in over time as I become more aware of them.

Help from you
Basically up until the implementation of this feature I haven't been using a shared network location. Because of this I'm sure I'll miss features that most people want and will need to fix issues for future versions.

If you could tell me what is missing, if you are finding that it's working and any feedback that might help me to improve the feature please let me know :)

[h2]UI interaction and for explorer overhaul[/h2]

Browser
I've rewritten about 80 percent of the code that ran the browser to improve overall speeds, implement the network features, improve the cross support for thumbnail view and list view and open up the ability to add new features and improvements.

I have some features requests such as a search option but are there other things you would also like to see? Also is the new browser causing any problems?

UI interaction
I've also rewritten some of the UI interaction to allow better compatibility and more reliable usage. Previously things like hover over sprite change didn't work and sometimes buttons would get stuck etc. This update should fix a lot of these issues making the overall experience feel more solid and responsive.

As this is a change that effects all interaction in the UI there might be issues that I need to resolve. If you come across anything not working the way you expect please let me know.

[h2]Other updates[/h2]

Improved UI
I've worked on bringing the designs of the UI buttons, toggles and sliders together so that they use the same assets and looks. This should make the whole experience feel more universal and coherent.

Additional updates
I've worked on optimisation to improve overall performance, added link features to the surround sound options, updated plugins, SDK's and the Unity engine version.


This update makes quite a lot of changes that effect the whole of Whirligig. The browser need a complete rethink and UI interaction was broken and needed updating. Because of this please let me know of any issues. I've tested Whirligig extensively during developement of these new features but there are always things that slip through the cracks. It's likely that if something in the UI is no longer working then it will be an easy fix to update for the next version.

Apart from all that. Thank you all again for your support over the years and happy watching :)

Phil

This update should fix the issue with the WMR controllers not mapping properly.

Something I've noticed is that the thumbstick buttons open the SteamVR dashboard and appear to be set to be their default. Because of this I've removed these from mapping in Whirligig and indicated that they open the dashboard in the inputs menu. If this isn't desired please let me know.

Happy watching

Phil

Version 5 is a continuation of the v4 releases. There are multiple updates from the last build with many fixes and a few enhancements.

Current details for this release are available as a news post on steam here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/451650/view/3891737610868401676?l=english

A full list of changes from the previous default will be released soon. If you have any issues either email me [email protected] or post on the Steam forum.

I hope you enjoy the update and look forward to your feedback.

Happy watch and happy new year :)

Phil