Redesigned new user experience & intro tutorial - Metaverse Training Center 2.0
Hello and welcome to another weekly update!
This week we have good news mainly for all the new users coming into Neos VR as we have finally overhauled and extended the introductory experience to Neos, to make sure everyone has their basics setup and knows how to navigate Neos.
There have been improvements on a few fronts, including a new setup guide, which then leads to the redesigned MTC (Metaverse Training Center) with a simple interactive tutorial that walks through the basic controls and interactions in Neos VR.
[h2]Setup Guide[/h2]
Starting a few updates ago, any new user will be now welcomed by a new setup guide on their dash, which walks them step by step through some basics, ensuring that Neos is in the right language, the correct audio input device is selected, some crucial settings are set and ideally registers an account before continuing.
Once the user finishes the setup, they’ll be offered a choice between starting the intro tutorial as public world or as a private. Making it public will allow community members to join and help them out. We wanted to make that choice ultimately up to the user and what they’re more comfortable with, as we have received many reports of users getting startled when others have joined their sessions unexpectedly.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Some of the existing flows were improved as well to make the process simpler, for example the registration process will now automatically login the user after they click on the verification link, rather than requiring them to type their credentials again.
During the intro tutorial, closing the dash or switching to another screen is also disabled, to ensure that new users don't accidentally get lost before completing the tutorial.
If you'd like to try out the new setup guide yourself, you can force it to start by passing -ForceIntroTutorial to Neos on startup or using similarly named option in the Neos Launcher.
[h2]New MTC with intro tutorial[/h2]
The meat of the new user experience is in a brand new MTC 2.0 hub (Metaverse Training Center), which now features an UIX based interactive guide that walks the user through basic controls and interfaces of Neos.
We have redesigned the look and feel of the MTC as well, to make it more open and inviting, with the new design having more out-door lighting, water and plants, combining with the futuristic architecture design.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Currently only the main hub is redesigned, with the Avatar, Creation and Recording/Streaming rooms still using the old design, but they will also be redesigned one by one.
Thanks to all the additions, improvements to Neos as well as new experience since the first MTC, building the new version was much simpler and more flexible. Making the main tutorial based on UIX rather than static textures provides several benefits as well. It makes it much easier for us to update as we continue to overhaul more of the UI’s and makes it localizable.
Not even a day after its release, the new starter tutorial is already available in Japanese, Esperanto, Chinese, Korean, Czech and Russian, making Neos more accessible to many non-English speaking members. Thank you everyone for translating!
Much of our team has come together to build this new experience, from direction, art design, video editing, scripting, world building and sound effects and we had a few community members help out as well, notably Ryuvi and Earthmark, with many other members providing feedback.
Even after release the experience is open to suggestions and feedback, you can leave them at our official Discord or at GitHub.
Our goal is to make Neos a lot more comfortable to new users and remove a lot of the common initial frustrations and problems that new users encounter. Knowing what users get stuck on or what frustrates them can help us a lot to smooth those issues out over time and help the community grow!
[h2]New Audio Input Selection[/h2]
As part of the new experience, we also built some new UI’s to make certain common tasks easier. One of them is a new easier way to switch the active audio device, which now lists all the available devices and shows a live waveform and volume from the currently selected one, utilizing the waveform procedural mesh that was recently added.
It also features a quick way to check the microphone by playing the audio back to the user, allowing to easily verify if the selected audio device is correct one or not or if there are any issues with the sound.
You can access the new selection through Settings screen at the original location of the audio switching. It’s also part of the new Setup Guide in the dash, making sure new users start with the correct audio device.
[h2]New Language Selection[/h2]
Similarly to audio devices, we have also built new proper UI for selecting Neos’ language. It will list all the currently available languages, rather than having to type a specific locale code to override the active one. Note that Neos will use system locale by default, so in most cases there shouldn’t be a need to change it in most cases.
Since many of our community members are continually putting effort into translating new strings to their languages, we have also added a list of credits for the currently selected languages (picked up from the list in the locale file itself), to make sure every contributor is properly credited for their efforts.
The language selection is also part of the new Setup Guide and can be accessed anytime in the Settings dialog. Looking at the list it’s impressive how many translators have sprung to get Neos translated into different languages, with 20 locales available!
[h2]Community highlights[/h2]
[h3]Charma’s breakdance[/h3]
We've seen an epic trend of VR Dancers utilizing Neos VR's fullbody tracking. Charma shows off their spectacular moves in this newly released Twitter video, check it out here!
[h3]School of fish simulation by thotgamma[/h3]
If you like playing with simulations in VR, you should check out the new “Boid Simulation” world by thotgamma, which simulates a school of fish that you can interact with.
[h3]Turtle Drawing VM by thotgamma[/h3]
Another very technically impressive creation by thotgamma is implementation of the classic turtle drawing algorithm. The implementation features a simple VM, which executes instructions, making a turtle move around and draw various shapes.
[h3]Oscilloscope Music visualization by June[/h3]
June, one of our newest Moderators, has created a fun way of showing off the power and precision of our new oscilloscope features. By connecting the oscilloscope with Jerobeam Fenderson's Oscilloscope Music, June was able to recreate the visuals that are created by Soundwave programmed into the music!
------------------------------------
Anyway this is all for now! We hope the new MTC experience will help out many new users and make it easier and less frustrating to get started in Neos. We still plan to rework many of the old UI’s in the future, which should make things more intuitive and with the new design, we can update the MTC much faster and easier, rather than it growing progressively more outdated.
We wouldn’t be able to put all of this together without you and your support and feedback and if you know of anything that could make Neos easier to use for new users, please let us know! Even if we cannot address certain issues right away, we put them on our long term roadmap when redesigning many of the new systems.
Thanks again and see you at the next update!
This week we have good news mainly for all the new users coming into Neos VR as we have finally overhauled and extended the introductory experience to Neos, to make sure everyone has their basics setup and knows how to navigate Neos.
There have been improvements on a few fronts, including a new setup guide, which then leads to the redesigned MTC (Metaverse Training Center) with a simple interactive tutorial that walks through the basic controls and interactions in Neos VR.
[h2]Setup Guide[/h2]
Starting a few updates ago, any new user will be now welcomed by a new setup guide on their dash, which walks them step by step through some basics, ensuring that Neos is in the right language, the correct audio input device is selected, some crucial settings are set and ideally registers an account before continuing.
Once the user finishes the setup, they’ll be offered a choice between starting the intro tutorial as public world or as a private. Making it public will allow community members to join and help them out. We wanted to make that choice ultimately up to the user and what they’re more comfortable with, as we have received many reports of users getting startled when others have joined their sessions unexpectedly.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Some of the existing flows were improved as well to make the process simpler, for example the registration process will now automatically login the user after they click on the verification link, rather than requiring them to type their credentials again.
During the intro tutorial, closing the dash or switching to another screen is also disabled, to ensure that new users don't accidentally get lost before completing the tutorial.
If you'd like to try out the new setup guide yourself, you can force it to start by passing -ForceIntroTutorial to Neos on startup or using similarly named option in the Neos Launcher.
[h2]New MTC with intro tutorial[/h2]
The meat of the new user experience is in a brand new MTC 2.0 hub (Metaverse Training Center), which now features an UIX based interactive guide that walks the user through basic controls and interfaces of Neos.
We have redesigned the look and feel of the MTC as well, to make it more open and inviting, with the new design having more out-door lighting, water and plants, combining with the futuristic architecture design.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Currently only the main hub is redesigned, with the Avatar, Creation and Recording/Streaming rooms still using the old design, but they will also be redesigned one by one.
Thanks to all the additions, improvements to Neos as well as new experience since the first MTC, building the new version was much simpler and more flexible. Making the main tutorial based on UIX rather than static textures provides several benefits as well. It makes it much easier for us to update as we continue to overhaul more of the UI’s and makes it localizable.
Not even a day after its release, the new starter tutorial is already available in Japanese, Esperanto, Chinese, Korean, Czech and Russian, making Neos more accessible to many non-English speaking members. Thank you everyone for translating!
Much of our team has come together to build this new experience, from direction, art design, video editing, scripting, world building and sound effects and we had a few community members help out as well, notably Ryuvi and Earthmark, with many other members providing feedback.
Even after release the experience is open to suggestions and feedback, you can leave them at our official Discord or at GitHub.
Our goal is to make Neos a lot more comfortable to new users and remove a lot of the common initial frustrations and problems that new users encounter. Knowing what users get stuck on or what frustrates them can help us a lot to smooth those issues out over time and help the community grow!
[h2]New Audio Input Selection[/h2]
As part of the new experience, we also built some new UI’s to make certain common tasks easier. One of them is a new easier way to switch the active audio device, which now lists all the available devices and shows a live waveform and volume from the currently selected one, utilizing the waveform procedural mesh that was recently added.
It also features a quick way to check the microphone by playing the audio back to the user, allowing to easily verify if the selected audio device is correct one or not or if there are any issues with the sound.
You can access the new selection through Settings screen at the original location of the audio switching. It’s also part of the new Setup Guide in the dash, making sure new users start with the correct audio device.
[h2]New Language Selection[/h2]
Similarly to audio devices, we have also built new proper UI for selecting Neos’ language. It will list all the currently available languages, rather than having to type a specific locale code to override the active one. Note that Neos will use system locale by default, so in most cases there shouldn’t be a need to change it in most cases.
Since many of our community members are continually putting effort into translating new strings to their languages, we have also added a list of credits for the currently selected languages (picked up from the list in the locale file itself), to make sure every contributor is properly credited for their efforts.
The language selection is also part of the new Setup Guide and can be accessed anytime in the Settings dialog. Looking at the list it’s impressive how many translators have sprung to get Neos translated into different languages, with 20 locales available!
[h2]Community highlights[/h2]
[h3]Charma’s breakdance[/h3]
We've seen an epic trend of VR Dancers utilizing Neos VR's fullbody tracking. Charma shows off their spectacular moves in this newly released Twitter video, check it out here!
[h3]School of fish simulation by thotgamma[/h3]
If you like playing with simulations in VR, you should check out the new “Boid Simulation” world by thotgamma, which simulates a school of fish that you can interact with.
[h3]Turtle Drawing VM by thotgamma[/h3]
Another very technically impressive creation by thotgamma is implementation of the classic turtle drawing algorithm. The implementation features a simple VM, which executes instructions, making a turtle move around and draw various shapes.
[h3]Oscilloscope Music visualization by June[/h3]
June, one of our newest Moderators, has created a fun way of showing off the power and precision of our new oscilloscope features. By connecting the oscilloscope with Jerobeam Fenderson's Oscilloscope Music, June was able to recreate the visuals that are created by Soundwave programmed into the music!
------------------------------------
Anyway this is all for now! We hope the new MTC experience will help out many new users and make it easier and less frustrating to get started in Neos. We still plan to rework many of the old UI’s in the future, which should make things more intuitive and with the new design, we can update the MTC much faster and easier, rather than it growing progressively more outdated.
We wouldn’t be able to put all of this together without you and your support and feedback and if you know of anything that could make Neos easier to use for new users, please let us know! Even if we cannot address certain issues right away, we put them on our long term roadmap when redesigning many of the new systems.
Thanks again and see you at the next update!