VBLFC Con starting today, in-game messaging system optimizations with SignalR
Hello everyone and welcome to another weekly update!
This week we have briefly shifted focus from BEPUv2 integration to integrating the SignalR push notification service for our messaging system and other cloud optimizations to improve responsiveness and fix a number of issues, such as message history not loading for certain users.
Thanks to this new system, the load on the cloud infrastructure has significantly dropped. This should keep the cloud responsive even during busy days with lots of people on and keep scaling as the community keeps growing.
It also opens up doors for new upcoming features and abilities, like full real time sync for cloud variables, cloud impulses and optimizing other parts of the cloud infrastructure. We also used it to improve security of the moderation system, ensuring that any account restrictions take immediate effect.
Security and moderation have received some more improvements as well, preventing some cases of ban evasion. You can now also restrict the in-game File Browser to only specific locations, or none at all.
And also in big news, the VBLFC furry con is taking place this weekend! This is the first con held officially in Neos VR and we are proud to host it on our platform. You can find more information at their Discord and Twitter or register at the website here: They have a lot of exciting events planned. We hope everyone will enjoy their time there!
[h2]VBLFC[/h2]
The Virtual BLFC con is taking place this week! This is the first con held officially in Neos VR and the biggest event to date on our platform. The organizers have prepared an awesome set of worlds and other cool things for the attendees. We are honored to host this event and we hope that everyone will have an awesome time!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
You can find more information at their official website and register for attendance. They have also made this amazing trailer for the event.
[h2]Integrating SignalR for messaging system[/h2]
As our community keeps growing, we have started noticing the cloud infrastructure being heavily taxed during the busy days, causing the cloud service to become less responsive. With some big events coming up, we decided to prioritize integration of SignalR push notification service, which was on the roadmap for a while, to improve how well the system scales and introduce some new capabilities.
The in-game messaging system has been redesigned to use this service. Instead of repeated REST (HTTPs) requests, all the communication is done via WebSockets. This is significantly more efficient for both your connection, as well as on the cloud service - the previous system was responsible for using the majority of the system’s throughput!
Thanks to the new system, the messaging system should be significantly more reliable and robust in the long term (after fixing some initial bugs and issues), decreasing the latency of the messages and cases where they wouldn’t be delivered at all or be slow to respond.
Decreased database usage after optimizations. Shows last 7 days.
The system also enables some new features, like getting message read notifications (can be disabled in settings based on community request) and in the future message writing or voice message recording notifications.
The service is also planned to be used for more as well in the future, notably updating the session status, current profile status and synchronizing cloud variables fully in real time across different clients. You can check out more at our roadmap on GitHub.
[h2]More cloud optimizations[/h2]
When working on the cloud, we found out more underlying causes of issues that were resulting in some slowness, particular slow message loading, due to the database queries being highly suboptimal. Those have now been optimized, resulting in significantly more efficient queries and much quicker loading of message history as a result.
Server usage split by endpoint. The orange line is fetching new messages. You can see the significant decrease after SignalR release, but still some large spikes. Those were addressed near the end of the grpah.
Some other parts of the cloud were tweaked and improved as well to be more robust, improving the rate limiting system with a new solution based on Redis and adding fallbacks in case of transient connectivity issues.
Overall we hope those changes will help resolve a number of issues that you might’ve been experiencing in the past, but we’ll keep monitoring the system and making more improvements as the community keeps growing.
If you run into any problems, let us know either on Discord or our GitHub!
[h2]Security and moderation improvements[/h2]
Our moderation tools have gotten some improvements as well based on some community reports and incidents. Notably we have expanded the ban evasion detection system to cover more loopholes in the system and used the SignalR service so any global bans take effect immediately.
We have also added a configuration option that allows restricting the functionality of the built-in File Browser so it can only access certain paths on your system or none at all. Simply setup an array of paths under pathWhitelist in Config.json file in the Neos installation. Providing an empty array (“pathWhitelist: [ ]”) will disable the File Browser completely.
This can be useful for additional security or when running Neos at public events, schools and other places where you don’t want the visitors/users to access all the files from within VR.
--------------------
Anyway that's all for this week! Also apologies for posting so late, this week has been a bit crazy. We've had some storms and lost power (and internet) for a while, which delayed a few things, but better late than never!
We'll see you next one, keep an eye on our official Discord for info. And as always, huge thanks for everyone for supporting the platform, without your help we wouldn't be here!
This week we have briefly shifted focus from BEPUv2 integration to integrating the SignalR push notification service for our messaging system and other cloud optimizations to improve responsiveness and fix a number of issues, such as message history not loading for certain users.
Thanks to this new system, the load on the cloud infrastructure has significantly dropped. This should keep the cloud responsive even during busy days with lots of people on and keep scaling as the community keeps growing.
It also opens up doors for new upcoming features and abilities, like full real time sync for cloud variables, cloud impulses and optimizing other parts of the cloud infrastructure. We also used it to improve security of the moderation system, ensuring that any account restrictions take immediate effect.
Security and moderation have received some more improvements as well, preventing some cases of ban evasion. You can now also restrict the in-game File Browser to only specific locations, or none at all.
And also in big news, the VBLFC furry con is taking place this weekend! This is the first con held officially in Neos VR and we are proud to host it on our platform. You can find more information at their Discord and Twitter or register at the website here: They have a lot of exciting events planned. We hope everyone will enjoy their time there!
[h2]VBLFC[/h2]
The Virtual BLFC con is taking place this week! This is the first con held officially in Neos VR and the biggest event to date on our platform. The organizers have prepared an awesome set of worlds and other cool things for the attendees. We are honored to host this event and we hope that everyone will have an awesome time!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
You can find more information at their official website and register for attendance. They have also made this amazing trailer for the event.
[h2]Integrating SignalR for messaging system[/h2]
As our community keeps growing, we have started noticing the cloud infrastructure being heavily taxed during the busy days, causing the cloud service to become less responsive. With some big events coming up, we decided to prioritize integration of SignalR push notification service, which was on the roadmap for a while, to improve how well the system scales and introduce some new capabilities.
The in-game messaging system has been redesigned to use this service. Instead of repeated REST (HTTPs) requests, all the communication is done via WebSockets. This is significantly more efficient for both your connection, as well as on the cloud service - the previous system was responsible for using the majority of the system’s throughput!
Thanks to the new system, the messaging system should be significantly more reliable and robust in the long term (after fixing some initial bugs and issues), decreasing the latency of the messages and cases where they wouldn’t be delivered at all or be slow to respond.
Decreased database usage after optimizations. Shows last 7 days.The system also enables some new features, like getting message read notifications (can be disabled in settings based on community request) and in the future message writing or voice message recording notifications.
The service is also planned to be used for more as well in the future, notably updating the session status, current profile status and synchronizing cloud variables fully in real time across different clients. You can check out more at our roadmap on GitHub.
[h2]More cloud optimizations[/h2]
When working on the cloud, we found out more underlying causes of issues that were resulting in some slowness, particular slow message loading, due to the database queries being highly suboptimal. Those have now been optimized, resulting in significantly more efficient queries and much quicker loading of message history as a result.
Server usage split by endpoint. The orange line is fetching new messages. You can see the significant decrease after SignalR release, but still some large spikes. Those were addressed near the end of the grpah.Some other parts of the cloud were tweaked and improved as well to be more robust, improving the rate limiting system with a new solution based on Redis and adding fallbacks in case of transient connectivity issues.
Overall we hope those changes will help resolve a number of issues that you might’ve been experiencing in the past, but we’ll keep monitoring the system and making more improvements as the community keeps growing.
If you run into any problems, let us know either on Discord or our GitHub!
[h2]Security and moderation improvements[/h2]
Our moderation tools have gotten some improvements as well based on some community reports and incidents. Notably we have expanded the ban evasion detection system to cover more loopholes in the system and used the SignalR service so any global bans take effect immediately.
We have also added a configuration option that allows restricting the functionality of the built-in File Browser so it can only access certain paths on your system or none at all. Simply setup an array of paths under pathWhitelist in Config.json file in the Neos installation. Providing an empty array (“pathWhitelist: [ ]”) will disable the File Browser completely.
This can be useful for additional security or when running Neos at public events, schools and other places where you don’t want the visitors/users to access all the files from within VR.
--------------------
Anyway that's all for this week! Also apologies for posting so late, this week has been a bit crazy. We've had some storms and lost power (and internet) for a while, which delayed a few things, but better late than never!
We'll see you next one, keep an eye on our official Discord for info. And as always, huge thanks for everyone for supporting the platform, without your help we wouldn't be here!