I originally said I would be updating the player weekly which, although I'm a bit crap at hitting the monday deadline do still intend to do. However this first update has run into a snag. I've discovered a bug in the Oculus SDK that stops the cursor from being locked into the centre of the the screen. This means that when using the Oculus and using the mouse the user can find themselves easily clicking outside of the window and losing focus on the player.
The only solution I've come up with is to move over from the Oculus SDK to OpenVR. This is a big change and needs proper testing and I've already come across issues with flickering menus. However the player for the Oculus still functions as you would expect.
What this means is that rather than updating the main default player I've continues the beta stream. So you can choose to try the beta if you want to see new updates. I've emailed in the Oculus forum to get some sort of resolve on this and once I can get a fix or some kind of solution I will start updating the default stream again so everyone benefits.
Just to note that the Oculus still works fine in this beta build, it just might have some flickering when loading videos.
So What's changed since 3.4. Find below a list of the changes. The main updates have been to the Vive controller, Gamepad and Explorer. I've also added Stereo separation as an option.
To try the beta, right click on Whirligig in steam, go down to properties and across to betas. Select 3.52 beta in the list
--------------------Whirligig release notes---------------------------------------
3.52
-Updated to Unity 5.4.0b19.
-Oculus is now using OpenVR and because of this I've had to rewrite the reset position.
-optimsed Gamepad save.
-A new custom format has been added to the custom format list. LG360 support. Many thanks to Andrew Hazelden http://www.andrewhazelden.com/blog/ for making it. Check out his great tools for VR 360 production.
-An ability to change video separation. Keyboard commands are 'v' and 'b'. You can also add the shortcut to the gamepad. I have to admit the keyboard is getting pretty cluttered. I am looking at adding a keyboard options window also.
-Vive controller now works with just one controller.
-Vive controller is default right handed. If you want left handed turn off the laser controller which will switch the Vive laser to the left hand and then back on again. Or just swap the controllers.
-Sleep Vive controller. Pressing the grip will turn off the Vive controller panels and laser, pressing again will turn them back on again.
-Desktop (Non VR) mode works with the Mouse. There is still an issue with the save slots which can only be accessed with the menu off. Hopefully fixed in next version.
-Explorer look has been change to have white text and dark background. Hopefully this is considered an improvement. I felt that the bright drop downs where a bit jarring. I also wanted to make it feel more part of the player.
-Gamepad look also changed to feel like the Explorer.
-Scrollbars in both the gamepad and explorer have been worked on so that they are easier to grabish. The colliders were incorrectly generating so that they weren't in the right place. Hopefully this will make it feel more stable.
-Hide and show menu now assignable to a gamepad control.
-Added play, rewind and forward to the menu. Although you can easily play a video by hitting outside of the menu area this might help people new to the player to understand the controllers.
-When changing an option in the menu with the crosshair that menu option gets selected. This is useful for a couple of reason one being that you can then use the left and right keys, d-pad to change the option. It also allows you to use the keyboard to type the number in you want to set it two.
-f9 Doesn't reset to the original menu any more but resets the options for the video you are currently watching. The default settings are Cinema, Tilt 0, Rotate 0, Scale 0, Distance 0, Stretch 0. I will be looking at building a more robust reset for really big errors but at the moment this should help just to reset the video to something you can see.
-Scaling/Radius really small no longer pushes the menu outside the sphere. It makes the Menu smaller which makes it a bit harder to use but you should still be able to see it.
OK I think that's it for this weekly update. I've added a few larger updates and smaller ones and I've tested the update a bit to make sure it works. However if you found yourself having problems you can revert back to the previous version in the beta drop down in Whirligig properties.
If you like the updates and find Whirligig useful please give good reviews. If you aren't happy and want things to work differently let me know in the discussion groups so I can work out how to make it better. The stereo separation, Vive control support updates and a few other bug fixes all came from there :)
Again happy Whirligiging. I hope you continue to enjoy using the player and I hope to continue to improve it.
All the best
Phil