We’re back with a BIG, BIG update for A Release Called Quest. There’s a lot to dig into, so let’s get ready to rumble. We’ve got updates and improvements for Sansarians of all bents; scripting changes, store listing revamps, and… Standardized Geometry? What is this - a high school syllabus? Let’s move on.
As always your feedback is a big help to the team when we’re creating our road map. We’re excited to announce that we’re implementing a couple of very popularly requested features. What can they be? Are you on the edge of your seat? We won’t keep you waiting any longer.
New features
Improvements & Changes
- New Snap Turn settings feature to change your turn mode in VR. This will be good for VR users who want an alternative way to turn your avatar camera view in VR for better maneuverability and avoid nausea. For more information, please see Settings.
- Following popular request by the community, avatar item creators can now update the inventory image for their avatar items post-upload. For more information see Editing an inventory item’s image.
- Avatar item creators can now change the inventory names of their items post-upload. Any name changes only affects items within your inventory. For more information see Editing an inventory item’s name.
- For existing listings on the store, you can also change the inventory name of the items that get sent to your buyers through the Edit Listings page on the website.
- We’re removing the ‘Standardize Geometry’ option on the import window. If you need to reduce the triangle count of scene objects, you will have to reduce it though a 3D modeling software. Notes on this change can be found here.
Script Updates
- New ability for scripts to have references to other components, whether the components are in the same object or in another object or location in the scene. For more information, see Referencing scene components with scripts.
- Renamed a few scripts in the Script Library.
Materials updates
- New emissive mask for the standard + emissive + uv animation material
- Added the ‘Emissive Map’ texture field, which behaves like an alpha mask, except for the RGB channels of the emissive material
- Added flag to selectively scroll the emissive map texture
- Added ‘Fix Shimmering’ flag, which addresses shimmering artifacts that can occur when bright emissive materials are scrolling at high speed on thin objects
- Updated the emissive material with similar features as the billboard material, with the exception of the camera facing aspect.
- Added the ‘Emissive Map’ and ‘Mask’ texture fields. The ‘Mask’ field behaves like an alpha mask, except for the RGB channels of the emissive material.
- Added the ‘Absorption’ field, which determines how much of the light coming from behind the material is prevented from being transmitted through the material (i.e. absorbed).
- Added flags to selectively scroll either (or both) the emissive and mask textures
- Added Loop parameter to UV scrolling materials to allow flipbooks with partially-filled sheets, giving you more flexibility with using flipbook animations with a different UV frame configuration.
- Objects with the same UV animation material in the same experience will no longer be “in sync”.
- The ‘diagnostics’ toolbar/ribbon now displays the size of the geometry and texture data dedicated for display on the GPU. When the total of these two numbers exceeds the amount of physical memory on the GPU, performance will decline.
Fixed issues:
Fixed crashes caused by:
- Joining an experience due to another avatar in the experience not loading properly.
- Joining an experience where another user was chatting in voice and then exited at the same time.
- The quest offer panel should now trigger when interacting with quest givers.
- New textures previewed through the material editor should no longer be applied if the X button is used to close the material editor.
- Quest objectives set to auto-complete when joining should now trigger completion without having the user rejoin the experience.
- Editing a newly-created quest should no longer create a duplicate quest.
- Scene items’ components should no longer scale into the negatives nor beyond the 100 max value.
- Interaction text should no longer appear huge on the screen when walking away from the scripted object when using an XBOX controller.
See the full release notes, including documentation updates here: https://help.sansar.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031074712-A-Release-Called-Quest-Update-1-July-30-2019