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ChilloutVR News

Developer Update #6

We have just released Developer Update #6 with lots of information about changes to our schedule, new features, changes to our terms of service and more.

Many things you have asked for.

You can give it a read at the link below!

https://forums.abinteractive.net/d/107-developer-update-6

Status report WN16 2021

Hi there, it is time for another status report to get you all to know what we have been working on and what's coming next.

**Status report WN16 2021**

In this status report, we want to talk about upcoming changes to experimental and the next game update.
We also want to highlight a few new features that we plan on adding after the next update.


**Video Players**
The video players are mostly ready, and come with their own UI (can be disabled).
The following features are available:
- Streaming from multiple sites (videos and livestreams)
- URL whitelist / blacklist
- Playlists
- Video Live view
- Video scrubbing, skipping to a specific time
- Per-VideoPlayer-Volume
- In-Game YouTube search
- Sync and Late-Join sync

All of the above mentioned features will be fully available with the next experimental as well as the next CCK update.
As the VideoPlayer component was changed, please wait for the CCK 3.0 update before preparing your worlds with video players.


**In-World Interactions**
The next experimental will bring the first iteration of the interactable networking, allowing better creation of minigames and world features from then on.

**Groups & The Event System**
The Groups & Events system is currently being worked on, an early version is likely available with one of the next experimental updates.
You will be able to create groups, group-internal ranks, setup permissions for those ranks, comment on a groups board, see group members feeds, use and share avatars, props and worlds with or from a group,
schedule events for everyone, group-only or invite-only.

For the events system, the game server automatically enforces the guests lists for the closed lobby types.
Group moderators can be made instance moderators for events created with the group lobby type.
Per-Event moderators can be defined.

**New User Interface**
The new Quick-Menu will be available with the next experimental update. The new main menu will follow with one of the experimental versions after.
We have put work into the technical side of the menu and will offer an easier way for customization as well as a workshop for UI themes and plugins.

**Responsiveness and UX**
We have implemented various improvements to help with UI responsiveness and further improvements will be added during the route to r160.
The long loading times for specific pages or details as well as the missing haptic and audible feedback will be a thing of the past with r160.

**Third-Party apps**
Infra 2.0 will bring the public api (ABI Gateway). To use our API in your services our applications, you will have to implement our authentication system.
Documentation and limits will be provided and custom lowering of limits can be requested on a per-app basis. To request early access, please mail us at [email protected] and tell us about the app you want to create.

**Performance optimizations and resource management**
ChilloutVR 2021r160 contains drastic improvements to how the memory is managed as well as multiple improvements in code to ensure increased performance and responsiveness.
Our goal was to optimize the game for lower end systems, especially systems with low amount of RAM. You will be able to test these changes with the next experimental update.

**Magica Cloth Support**
With one of the next experimental updates, we will be adding support for magica cloth, a better alternative to dynamic bone.
Naturally, we will also add support for magica cloth interactions, allowing you to still interact with other peoples bones.
Dynamic bone will not be removed, we plan on optimizing dynamic bone further to reduct its impact on the performance slightly.
If you do not want to switch, you can ignore this change.


If you want to participate in the testing, you are welcome to opt into #experimental-opt-in to be notified about new updates to test early.
We are more than thankful for all of your support, cheers!

Status Report WN09 2021

Hi there, as we are now back from vacation, we will give you all a few hints on what we will be working on within the next weeks and what we have planned.
One of the first changes: We will not indicate fixed release dates anymore. We will only refer to more dynamic terms like "early april" or "late march" to prevent unnecessary pressure on our side.

We plan to do status reports on a bi-weekly basis to indicate what we have been working and progressing on.
This status report mainly covers our upcoming plans for the next weeks and months. The next status reports will focus more on what was actually done and what the short-term goals are.

**Status Report WN09 2021**

> (1) Documentation [Mid March]
We are currently working on new documentation and expect the first articles to be out and available around mid to late march.
We will continuously work on extending and improving the documentation to ensure that we have all major features documented by the release of UI 2.0

> (2) Audio System Rework [Late March, Secondary Focus]
Audio on avatars, props and worlds was never as great as it could be, bigger rooms felt laggy audio-wise and crackling occured.
For late march or early april, we have those issues on our list and are planning to get first improvements in by then.
Our main goal is to allow proper audio on avatars, worlds, props and players without the strong audio crackling some users are experiencing right now.

> (3) User Interface 2.0 [April]
We have started with the implementation of the new Interfaces (quick menu for now) and expect to have first changes ready in early april.
We will push them to experimental early then and make a specific announcement showing off more parts of it in time.
For those, that did not see the new quick menu design preview yet, you can check it our here: https://twitter.com/AlphaBlendNET/status/1361317837118267394
This will also include the public release of the calls feature and other additions that are waiting for the UI rework.

> (4) Network availability / Connectivity [April, Primary Focus]
We have been working on improvements regarding network availability and stability - changes are mostly ready and will soon go into internal testing.
As this includes bigger changes, we will need some time for testing and hardening those changes.
The changes made will make it easier for us to scale and handle big player peaks in the future. It will also drastically improve the lags and delays when loading UI pages within the game.
We expect to have changes production-ready sometime in april.

In addition to the above mentioned points, we have further side tasks including performance optimizations and a more user friendly locomotion system planned.
We would love to hear what you have to say. Feel free to message us at [email protected] with your feedback, we will try to get back to you as soon as possible.

ChilloutVR 2021r159p2

We have just released ChilloutVR 2021r159p2 on Steam, including the following changes:

- [Input] Added Vive Advanced Mode. You are able to run with vive controllers by only clicking once and then keeping your finger on the touchpad.
- [Props] Interactable on Props only supports on interact down and on interact up action
- [Props] Fixes to the single and Delete all my props function
- [Avatar] Fixed a Bug where The Advance Avatar input single was not properly working in the Menu
- [World] Fixed an error where Props were invisible on maps without reference camera

ChilloutVR Halloween 2019

Hello and thank your for reading our event announcement for Halloween 2019.

We at Alpha Blend Interactive have been working hard to finish enough features to host a halloween event this year.

These include the addition of VR-Support, Index-Controller support, Humanoid avatars, world loading and local asset caching and the instancing system.

There will be a public test on October 19, 2019 22:00 GMT+2 and our Halloween event will start at October 30 20:00 GMT+2 and will run until November 1 20:00 GMT+2

The halloween will feature a small themed event map and we will host several QNAs and community talks to keep everyone whos interested up to date.

There will be another announcement when we release the new update before the test starts.

Thanks for reading.