Priority Issue voting for Patreons, removing climbing lag, progress on desktop
Hello everyone and welcome to the weekly update!
This week we bring a new feature specifically for our Patreon supporters - ability to formally give a priority vote to specific GitHub issue, giving it a greater weight when we decide what to prioritize. Currently it takes form of a simple Neos bot command, but will be expanded upon in the future.
We also bring you latest updates on the progress on the desktop mode, having designed more underlying subsystems (notably the input binding system) and implemented more parts, like automatic audio input switching between desktop and VR or basis of a neck model for more natural movement.
From the community highlights we have a look at some of the groups and events taking place in Neos, from game jams, exercises to meetups!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Priority Issue voting for Patreon supporters[/h2]
Over the past several months, we have been moving bug reports, tweaks and feature requests to GitHub, to keep things better organized and more manageable as the volume of requests grows. However this has made it more difficult to track which requests are from our Patreon supporters and which are not, causing confusion on how to make the priority support requests.
We have now made the first step towards resolving this, by giving any Patreon supporter the ability to mark a single GitHub issue as their priority using a Neos bot command. Simply send /priorityIssue message to the Neos bot account in your friends list in Neos and it will give the issue with the given number your vote!
You can see a list of all voted issues on this URL. The issues show both how many individual votes they get and how many points each one has, based on the level of support on Patreon. While far from perfect, we hope this will give you a clear way to put spotlight on issues that matter to you the most and help us when deciding what to prioritize.
Whether you're a Patreon supporter or not, voting on GitHub itself is still a good way to help indicate what’s important too. Deciding which issue to prioritize is a complex combination of votes (with Patreon ones being given greater weight), implementation complexity, prerequisites, impact on the codebase and community, maintenance burden, security impact and even our current focus.
Voting helps tilt the scales, but it doesn’t also guarantee that the issue will be resolved immediately. For example easier issues might get implemented sooner with fewer votes, while for the more complex ones we’ll have to steer general development and large scale priorities over course of time to be able to fulfill them.
In the future we will expand on this functionality, incorporating it directly into in-game UI as well as giving you the ability to spread your vote over multiple different issues at the same time rather than a single one.
[h2]Removing climbing lag, optimizations, bug fixes[/h2]
While our focus is mainly on the proper desktop mode, we still sprinkle smaller additions, tweaks and improvements throughout and this week was no different. One particularly notable one is the new reference streaming mechanism, which now streams the user's coordinate space along with the coordinates.
Not only does this improve behavior when the user’s coordinate space changes (e.g. when being parented under a vehicle or elevator), preventing them from briefly flickering as they enter or leave, but when climbing environment or other users they will now also move with them instantly, rather than lagging behind due to network latency.
Some smaller optimizations have been made too, for example to the object Destroy process the same way Duplication was optimized a few weeks earlier and we resolved some performance issues with asset uploads, causing the upload processing queue to get backed up.
If you’d like to know all the changes, you can always check the release notes on Steam or on our official Discord.
[h2]Progress on the desktop mode[/h2]
This week we are gonna focus on some of the groups of Neos. Various groups have been doing something in the world of Neos from maps, events, or even workouts! Showing off their efforts I figured would be only fair. Thanks everyone for coming together and making cool stuff!
[h3]Input Binding system[/h3]
A lot of our current focus is on working on the new desktop mode. We have made important progress with the Input Binding system, which is one of the crucial underlying pieces to unify the VR and desktop implementations.
The system is now largely designed and partially implemented and will be likely rolled out soon for internal use, simplifying and unifying the interactions in the code. We have designed the system to allow us to implement a wide range of devices and combinations of devices, from VR controllers, to classic keyboard and mouse, gamepads, joysticks or even the 3DConnexion Space Mouse.
With the system in place, in-game behaviors like locomotion or grabbing interactions will be fully abstracted from the controls. For example the physical locomotion should not care whether you’re in VR using a controller to navigate or using keyboard and mouse in screen mode, it only needs to know in which direction you want to go and when to jump.
We went through several different approaches for the input binding and have simplified the design, with the core inputs being very basic values, like booleans, scalars and vectors, with complexities of locomotion and controller direction being abstracted by functions.
This will reduce complexity of creating and customizing the bindings and allow for reuse of common patterns, rather than baking them into the bindings themselves. Even though the initial use of this system will be internal and not exposed to you yet, we have made considerations in the design to allow for high degree of flexibility, but also ease of use once the binding configuration becomes accessible.
If you’d like to learn more details about the design considerations, check out the #devlog channel on our official Discord and/or the following design notes.
[h3]Neck Model and beginning of procedural positioning[/h3]
While most of the work so far is architectural and under the hood, first visual bits are starting to show. One of them is implementation of a neck model. In the debugging screen mode in Neos when looking around, the avatar’s head typically moves in a strange way, because the pivot is around the user’s eyes.
With the proper desktop implementation we have instead added a neck model, where the rotation happens at the neck, making the eyes/viewpoint swivel around it. This produces a much more natural look, as you can see in the video below.
There’s still much to do with this system, like adding natural hand positioning and even subtle head movements when idle, but hopefully this shows where the system is headed and the importance of the underlying systems to support this.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]Unique Audio Settings for Screen and VR[/h3]
Another part of the desktop mode that was implemented is automatic switching of audio settings depending whether VR or Screen mode is currently active. Since Neos supports dynamically switching from VR to Screen without restart, reconfiguring your settings (active microphone and volumes) would be pretty tiring.
In the latest build of the audio input device, its settings (noise gate, normalization and filtering) and master volume are unique for each mode. The desktop mode isn’t in a practically usable state yet, but once it gets to that point this mechanism will prove useful.
[h2]Progress on the MTC 2.0[/h2]
Another of our on-going efforts is an update to the Metaverse Training Center (MTC) to make Neos friendlier to new users. We are finalizing the Avatar & Lobby environment, with the environment mostly completed and the interactive content and tutorials built right now.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
In the meanwhile the environment for another room, the Streaming & Record is being built in parallel. This room will teach players how to use the interactive camera in Neos and its features, as well as provide cool places to try it out and convenient access to green green as well.
We can’t wait to have those environments ready for everyone to try out, if you’d like to see the latest updates, check out the #devlog channel on the Discord where we post work in progress pictures and videos!
[h2]Community Highlights[/h2]
[h3]Global Game Jam[/h3]
The NeosVR JP Community recently participated in the Global Game Jam! The theme for alot of their maps had colors, or some form of music. It really added to the atmosphere of the map! I only got to try some of them but I was really impressed by Lost Colors and how cute and how well paced the overall presentation felt! Good Job everyone who participated!
[h3]Radio Calisthenics[/h3]
The Neos JP Community has been doing an early morning get together! Every morning around 7:00 JST Time the folks over in Japan will get together and do some early morning workouts to keep limber and stretch! VR Workouts sound really fun! During this lockdown being able to get together to work out sounds so cool. Thanks to everyone involved!
[h3]Ramsford Lookout[/h3]
The Mystic Forge Team has released Ramsford’s Lookout! It’s a nice little low-poly map, teasing some of their projects to come. I assume this is what some of the Mystic Forge team members have been talking about by saying “secret project” if you’ve asked what they’ve been up to! Can’t wait to see what you guys cook up!
[h3]The Metaverse Meetups[/h3]
The Metaverse Meetup is a social event hosted by “The Metaverse” a group focused on trying to liven up and grow the social scene of Neos. It gives everyone in the community a day to kick back, relax and enjoy everyone’s company! This week was pretty big as we had about 40-60 concurrent users for about like 3-4 hours and a good amount of 80-100 unique users participating! It was really neat too because we had “Stargates” setup to switch from world to world (we had like 3 sessions filled with people!). It was really easy, and it made swapping sessions really streamlined. Props to everyone involved! I only expect them to get crazier and bigger.
---------------------------------
That's all for this week! Check out our official Discord for the latest info as we continue development and share what you've been making or playing with in Neos yourself. And as usual, huge thanks goes to you, our growing community and supporters, for making this project possible and helping us improve it every day. See you next week!
This week we bring a new feature specifically for our Patreon supporters - ability to formally give a priority vote to specific GitHub issue, giving it a greater weight when we decide what to prioritize. Currently it takes form of a simple Neos bot command, but will be expanded upon in the future.
We also bring you latest updates on the progress on the desktop mode, having designed more underlying subsystems (notably the input binding system) and implemented more parts, like automatic audio input switching between desktop and VR or basis of a neck model for more natural movement.
From the community highlights we have a look at some of the groups and events taking place in Neos, from game jams, exercises to meetups!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Priority Issue voting for Patreon supporters[/h2]
Over the past several months, we have been moving bug reports, tweaks and feature requests to GitHub, to keep things better organized and more manageable as the volume of requests grows. However this has made it more difficult to track which requests are from our Patreon supporters and which are not, causing confusion on how to make the priority support requests.
We have now made the first step towards resolving this, by giving any Patreon supporter the ability to mark a single GitHub issue as their priority using a Neos bot command. Simply send /priorityIssue message to the Neos bot account in your friends list in Neos and it will give the issue with the given number your vote!
You can see a list of all voted issues on this URL. The issues show both how many individual votes they get and how many points each one has, based on the level of support on Patreon. While far from perfect, we hope this will give you a clear way to put spotlight on issues that matter to you the most and help us when deciding what to prioritize.
Whether you're a Patreon supporter or not, voting on GitHub itself is still a good way to help indicate what’s important too. Deciding which issue to prioritize is a complex combination of votes (with Patreon ones being given greater weight), implementation complexity, prerequisites, impact on the codebase and community, maintenance burden, security impact and even our current focus.
Voting helps tilt the scales, but it doesn’t also guarantee that the issue will be resolved immediately. For example easier issues might get implemented sooner with fewer votes, while for the more complex ones we’ll have to steer general development and large scale priorities over course of time to be able to fulfill them.
In the future we will expand on this functionality, incorporating it directly into in-game UI as well as giving you the ability to spread your vote over multiple different issues at the same time rather than a single one.
[h2]Removing climbing lag, optimizations, bug fixes[/h2]
While our focus is mainly on the proper desktop mode, we still sprinkle smaller additions, tweaks and improvements throughout and this week was no different. One particularly notable one is the new reference streaming mechanism, which now streams the user's coordinate space along with the coordinates.
Not only does this improve behavior when the user’s coordinate space changes (e.g. when being parented under a vehicle or elevator), preventing them from briefly flickering as they enter or leave, but when climbing environment or other users they will now also move with them instantly, rather than lagging behind due to network latency.
Some smaller optimizations have been made too, for example to the object Destroy process the same way Duplication was optimized a few weeks earlier and we resolved some performance issues with asset uploads, causing the upload processing queue to get backed up.
If you’d like to know all the changes, you can always check the release notes on Steam or on our official Discord.
[h2]Progress on the desktop mode[/h2]
This week we are gonna focus on some of the groups of Neos. Various groups have been doing something in the world of Neos from maps, events, or even workouts! Showing off their efforts I figured would be only fair. Thanks everyone for coming together and making cool stuff!
[h3]Input Binding system[/h3]
A lot of our current focus is on working on the new desktop mode. We have made important progress with the Input Binding system, which is one of the crucial underlying pieces to unify the VR and desktop implementations.
The system is now largely designed and partially implemented and will be likely rolled out soon for internal use, simplifying and unifying the interactions in the code. We have designed the system to allow us to implement a wide range of devices and combinations of devices, from VR controllers, to classic keyboard and mouse, gamepads, joysticks or even the 3DConnexion Space Mouse.
With the system in place, in-game behaviors like locomotion or grabbing interactions will be fully abstracted from the controls. For example the physical locomotion should not care whether you’re in VR using a controller to navigate or using keyboard and mouse in screen mode, it only needs to know in which direction you want to go and when to jump.
We went through several different approaches for the input binding and have simplified the design, with the core inputs being very basic values, like booleans, scalars and vectors, with complexities of locomotion and controller direction being abstracted by functions.
This will reduce complexity of creating and customizing the bindings and allow for reuse of common patterns, rather than baking them into the bindings themselves. Even though the initial use of this system will be internal and not exposed to you yet, we have made considerations in the design to allow for high degree of flexibility, but also ease of use once the binding configuration becomes accessible.
If you’d like to learn more details about the design considerations, check out the #devlog channel on our official Discord and/or the following design notes.
[h3]Neck Model and beginning of procedural positioning[/h3]
While most of the work so far is architectural and under the hood, first visual bits are starting to show. One of them is implementation of a neck model. In the debugging screen mode in Neos when looking around, the avatar’s head typically moves in a strange way, because the pivot is around the user’s eyes.
With the proper desktop implementation we have instead added a neck model, where the rotation happens at the neck, making the eyes/viewpoint swivel around it. This produces a much more natural look, as you can see in the video below.
There’s still much to do with this system, like adding natural hand positioning and even subtle head movements when idle, but hopefully this shows where the system is headed and the importance of the underlying systems to support this.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]Unique Audio Settings for Screen and VR[/h3]
Another part of the desktop mode that was implemented is automatic switching of audio settings depending whether VR or Screen mode is currently active. Since Neos supports dynamically switching from VR to Screen without restart, reconfiguring your settings (active microphone and volumes) would be pretty tiring.
In the latest build of the audio input device, its settings (noise gate, normalization and filtering) and master volume are unique for each mode. The desktop mode isn’t in a practically usable state yet, but once it gets to that point this mechanism will prove useful.
[h2]Progress on the MTC 2.0[/h2]
Another of our on-going efforts is an update to the Metaverse Training Center (MTC) to make Neos friendlier to new users. We are finalizing the Avatar & Lobby environment, with the environment mostly completed and the interactive content and tutorials built right now.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
In the meanwhile the environment for another room, the Streaming & Record is being built in parallel. This room will teach players how to use the interactive camera in Neos and its features, as well as provide cool places to try it out and convenient access to green green as well.
We can’t wait to have those environments ready for everyone to try out, if you’d like to see the latest updates, check out the #devlog channel on the Discord where we post work in progress pictures and videos!
[h2]Community Highlights[/h2]
[h3]Global Game Jam[/h3]
The NeosVR JP Community recently participated in the Global Game Jam! The theme for alot of their maps had colors, or some form of music. It really added to the atmosphere of the map! I only got to try some of them but I was really impressed by Lost Colors and how cute and how well paced the overall presentation felt! Good Job everyone who participated!
[h3]Radio Calisthenics[/h3]
The Neos JP Community has been doing an early morning get together! Every morning around 7:00 JST Time the folks over in Japan will get together and do some early morning workouts to keep limber and stretch! VR Workouts sound really fun! During this lockdown being able to get together to work out sounds so cool. Thanks to everyone involved!
[h3]Ramsford Lookout[/h3]
The Mystic Forge Team has released Ramsford’s Lookout! It’s a nice little low-poly map, teasing some of their projects to come. I assume this is what some of the Mystic Forge team members have been talking about by saying “secret project” if you’ve asked what they’ve been up to! Can’t wait to see what you guys cook up!
[h3]The Metaverse Meetups[/h3]
The Metaverse Meetup is a social event hosted by “The Metaverse” a group focused on trying to liven up and grow the social scene of Neos. It gives everyone in the community a day to kick back, relax and enjoy everyone’s company! This week was pretty big as we had about 40-60 concurrent users for about like 3-4 hours and a good amount of 80-100 unique users participating! It was really neat too because we had “Stargates” setup to switch from world to world (we had like 3 sessions filled with people!). It was really easy, and it made swapping sessions really streamlined. Props to everyone involved! I only expect them to get crazier and bigger.
---------------------------------
That's all for this week! Check out our official Discord for the latest info as we continue development and share what you've been making or playing with in Neos yourself. And as usual, huge thanks goes to you, our growing community and supporters, for making this project possible and helping us improve it every day. See you next week!