Virtual desktop access in Neos dash, OWO Game vest support, first science study
Hello and welcome to another weekly update!
With the Holidays around the corner we hope that everyone is getting into a festive mood. The Winter holiday party hosted by Creator Jam is taking place today at 2PM EST (UTC 19:00), don’t miss it if you have the chance to visit!
We have also brought you some new features, notably virtual desktop in the Neos dash! Now you can view and interact with your desktop without even leaving Neos and we’ve already seen users build extra functionality on top!
As part of our goal to support a wide variety of hardware and integrate them with a fully functional metaverse engine, we’ve introduced support for the OWO Game haptic vest which is currently in development.
[h2]Christmas themed livestream[/h2]
On our regular Friday livestream we have adopted the festive mood and decorated our avatars and the environment with Christmas themed objects and went out and rode sleds in the world, in the classic Neos fashion with lots of shenanigans. If you missed the stream, you can watch the recording here:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Virtual Desktop Access in Neos Dash[/h2]
One of the major features added this week is ability to access your desktop directly from the Neos dash. You might’ve noticed the new “Desktop” button at the bottom bar of your Neos dash, accessing your desktop is as simple as clicking this button and then using your lasers to interact with the screen.
If you’re using multi-monitor setup, you can invoke a screen selection menu by pressing the App/Menu button (the one that normally opens your context menu) on your controller while pointing at the screen and selecting a different screen.
This menu also lets you invoke the virtual keyboard for typing and triggering shortcuts. The system automatically works with all custom keyboards as well and Unicode input, giving you a lot of power and flexibility to customize the access.
While the default Neos keyboard doesn’t expose functional keys like the Win key, or the functional keys (F1, F2, F3, F4…), they are fully supported by the underlying system, allowing anyone to add them to their customized keyboards.
For those who use their desktop with the physical keyboard and mouse inside of VR, we have added “Follow Cursor” mode, which will switch the active screen to whichever one the cursor is at. This can improve workflow with multi-monitor setups, as you don’t have to pick your VR controller up to switch screens.
This feature is also a first step towards screen share functionality, which will allow you to share your screen to other users. This is not supported at the moment and we don’t have timeline on when it’s going to be prioritized yet, but we hope that the desktop access itself makes it easier to bring content to Neos and make your stay on the platform more comfortable.
[h2]OWO Game haptic vest integration[/h2]
Following the recently added haptic framework, we have integrated another haptic vest directly with Neos, bringing your more choice in hardware that you can use with Neos. This vest is still in development, if you’d like to see more check out their official website.
Since the vest is based on a different principle, we had to make some adaptations and extensions to our haptic system. Haptic Volumes now support a list of “hints”, which allow the driver to map a specific sensation provided by the suit maker. For example instead of generic “pain” sensation with certain intensity, you can specify sensations like “insect bites” or “dagger wound”.
This way you can customize the in-game haptics for specific hardware, while other hardware still uses the more general sensation type with intensity. For example you could create a haptic volume with pain sensation and 25 % intensity and add an “OWO.InsectBites” hint to it. If no hints are present, the driver for the OWO Game vest will use the closest matching sensation.
[h2]Community highlights[/h2]
Hey everyone! Hope your Holiday Festivities are all going well! If not here’s some weekly goodies to cheer ya up!
[h3]Playing DOOM in Neos by GhostZ[/h3]
Recently, we pushed out a really nice feature “Desktop Mirroring!”, that’ll let you view your desktop within Neos! This is really handy if your working on projects, want to quickly look at your desktop, or even check things like twitter or discord. Or even in GhostZ’s Case, can it play Doom? Why yes, it can.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1340223411394637824
[h3]Cyberpunk Cathedral by Zanibar[/h3]
With the holidays fast approaching and everyone locked in doors due to COVID, and everyone playing Cyberpunk2077. I know sometimes we all need a nice gathering spot for those of the more pious nature. Made by Zanibar it’s the Cyberpunk Cathedral! Maybe you can speak to the ghost in a machine in here!
[h3]Neos Pong by Rabbuttz & kinoko_b[/h3]
With all the Neos Festa 2 Festivities going on this week, I didn’t expect to see this! From the minds of Kinoko and RabbutZ we have Neos Pong! A Nice 1v1 Match for those of you with a more competitive nature, will you be the last to ping? Or the first to pong.
https://twitter.com/Rabbuttz/status/1338386184246968321
[h3]First peer reviewed study using Neos published by SHFR[/h3]
One of our most prominent users in the education/research sector, the Sydney Human Factor Research (SHFR) have been using Neos ever since we released public beta back in May 2018 and have used it as a tool to conduct a variety of studies.
The first of those was now published in a scientific journal, with more to come. The study is named “Law and (rec)order: Updating memory for criminal events with body-worn cameras” and studies how criminal reports can change with the presence of a body-worn camera.
A simulated theft scenario was created in Neos VR which was then experienced by a group of participants (n = 97) with a virtual chest mounted camera tracked by a motion controller in Neos. They were then asked to recall the events, with some of them viewing the recorded footage from their chest camera and others using control footage.
If you’d like to read the study in detail, you can find it here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243226
We are very proud that Neos can serve to improve science and research and we hope to see more of such use cases.
------------------------------
But that’s all for this week! We hope everyone has been enjoying their week and hope to see you sometime in Neos VR Soon! Don’t forget there’s also a Creator Holiday Party going on today. Don’t forget to stop by and bring a gift! It’s an Trade Santa Party! :)
With the Holidays around the corner we hope that everyone is getting into a festive mood. The Winter holiday party hosted by Creator Jam is taking place today at 2PM EST (UTC 19:00), don’t miss it if you have the chance to visit!
We have also brought you some new features, notably virtual desktop in the Neos dash! Now you can view and interact with your desktop without even leaving Neos and we’ve already seen users build extra functionality on top!
As part of our goal to support a wide variety of hardware and integrate them with a fully functional metaverse engine, we’ve introduced support for the OWO Game haptic vest which is currently in development.
[h2]Christmas themed livestream[/h2]
On our regular Friday livestream we have adopted the festive mood and decorated our avatars and the environment with Christmas themed objects and went out and rode sleds in the world, in the classic Neos fashion with lots of shenanigans. If you missed the stream, you can watch the recording here:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Virtual Desktop Access in Neos Dash[/h2]
One of the major features added this week is ability to access your desktop directly from the Neos dash. You might’ve noticed the new “Desktop” button at the bottom bar of your Neos dash, accessing your desktop is as simple as clicking this button and then using your lasers to interact with the screen.
If you’re using multi-monitor setup, you can invoke a screen selection menu by pressing the App/Menu button (the one that normally opens your context menu) on your controller while pointing at the screen and selecting a different screen.
This menu also lets you invoke the virtual keyboard for typing and triggering shortcuts. The system automatically works with all custom keyboards as well and Unicode input, giving you a lot of power and flexibility to customize the access.
While the default Neos keyboard doesn’t expose functional keys like the Win key, or the functional keys (F1, F2, F3, F4…), they are fully supported by the underlying system, allowing anyone to add them to their customized keyboards.
For those who use their desktop with the physical keyboard and mouse inside of VR, we have added “Follow Cursor” mode, which will switch the active screen to whichever one the cursor is at. This can improve workflow with multi-monitor setups, as you don’t have to pick your VR controller up to switch screens.
This feature is also a first step towards screen share functionality, which will allow you to share your screen to other users. This is not supported at the moment and we don’t have timeline on when it’s going to be prioritized yet, but we hope that the desktop access itself makes it easier to bring content to Neos and make your stay on the platform more comfortable.
[h2]OWO Game haptic vest integration[/h2]
Following the recently added haptic framework, we have integrated another haptic vest directly with Neos, bringing your more choice in hardware that you can use with Neos. This vest is still in development, if you’d like to see more check out their official website.
Since the vest is based on a different principle, we had to make some adaptations and extensions to our haptic system. Haptic Volumes now support a list of “hints”, which allow the driver to map a specific sensation provided by the suit maker. For example instead of generic “pain” sensation with certain intensity, you can specify sensations like “insect bites” or “dagger wound”.
This way you can customize the in-game haptics for specific hardware, while other hardware still uses the more general sensation type with intensity. For example you could create a haptic volume with pain sensation and 25 % intensity and add an “OWO.InsectBites” hint to it. If no hints are present, the driver for the OWO Game vest will use the closest matching sensation.
[h2]Community highlights[/h2]
Hey everyone! Hope your Holiday Festivities are all going well! If not here’s some weekly goodies to cheer ya up!
[h3]Playing DOOM in Neos by GhostZ[/h3]
Recently, we pushed out a really nice feature “Desktop Mirroring!”, that’ll let you view your desktop within Neos! This is really handy if your working on projects, want to quickly look at your desktop, or even check things like twitter or discord. Or even in GhostZ’s Case, can it play Doom? Why yes, it can.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1340223411394637824
[h3]Cyberpunk Cathedral by Zanibar[/h3]
With the holidays fast approaching and everyone locked in doors due to COVID, and everyone playing Cyberpunk2077. I know sometimes we all need a nice gathering spot for those of the more pious nature. Made by Zanibar it’s the Cyberpunk Cathedral! Maybe you can speak to the ghost in a machine in here!
[h3]Neos Pong by Rabbuttz & kinoko_b[/h3]
With all the Neos Festa 2 Festivities going on this week, I didn’t expect to see this! From the minds of Kinoko and RabbutZ we have Neos Pong! A Nice 1v1 Match for those of you with a more competitive nature, will you be the last to ping? Or the first to pong.
https://twitter.com/Rabbuttz/status/1338386184246968321
[h3]First peer reviewed study using Neos published by SHFR[/h3]
One of our most prominent users in the education/research sector, the Sydney Human Factor Research (SHFR) have been using Neos ever since we released public beta back in May 2018 and have used it as a tool to conduct a variety of studies.
The first of those was now published in a scientific journal, with more to come. The study is named “Law and (rec)order: Updating memory for criminal events with body-worn cameras” and studies how criminal reports can change with the presence of a body-worn camera.
A simulated theft scenario was created in Neos VR which was then experienced by a group of participants (n = 97) with a virtual chest mounted camera tracked by a motion controller in Neos. They were then asked to recall the events, with some of them viewing the recorded footage from their chest camera and others using control footage.
If you’d like to read the study in detail, you can find it here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243226
We are very proud that Neos can serve to improve science and research and we hope to see more of such use cases.
------------------------------
But that’s all for this week! We hope everyone has been enjoying their week and hope to see you sometime in Neos VR Soon! Don’t forget there’s also a Creator Holiday Party going on today. Don’t forget to stop by and bring a gift! It’s an Trade Santa Party! :)