Building and creating in EXA just got easier with the new “Clone” feature. You can now create exact duplicates of ringers, loops, sections, documents, and groups – just select the ones you want to copy, and then use the “Clone” menu button. As a first test, you could clone the “curved piano” group twice, and use the new groups to create a full “wrap-around piano”!
For players eager to get their EXA creations into their favorite DAW or audio tools, there is now an “Export” feature that converts recorded loops into WAV files. Just select all the loops you want to export, use the “Export” menu button, and then collect the WAV files from within your “Documents/EXA-VR/” folder when you’re ready.
You now have the ability to switch between different audio output devices from within EXA. Even better, you can choose to route EXA’s “non-musical” sounds to a different device. For example, you might send your performance to speakers for the audience, while sending the metronome-ticks only to your headphones.
This release also includes a “one-sided ringer” mode, a “Notifications” panel, and several other improvements and fixes.
Thank you to the EXA community for the continuous feedback and ideas! Please watch/share the new DevUp video and read through the full details below.
DevUp VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr63mYkBrPI
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr63mYkBrPI)
CLONE ITEMS
- The new “Clone” action creates duplicates of ringers, loops, sections, documents, and groups. From any item-specific menu (like “Ringers” or “Loops”), use the “Selection > Clone” button to create a copy of each selected item.
- To clone multiple item types at the same time, first put those items into a group (select the items, then use the “Layouts > Group Items” menu). Then, you can select and clone the entire group.
- When multiple (non-group) items are cloned at the same time (for example, several ringers), the resulting clones are placed into a group. This allows you to quickly and easily move all the clones as a unit (without disrupting their positions relative to each other) to the desired position in the layout.
- The position of the cloned items is always roughly 15cm from their source position, shifted in a directly that is based on your current head position and rotation. The goal is to create enough separation between the original items and the clones, while also placing the cloned items in a convenient position for the player.
- To avoid potentially severe performance issues during the cloning process, the creation of clones is spread out over time. Also, this clone functionality now makes it fast and easy to create very large/complex layouts – please be aware that this may strain the overall app performance.
EXPORT AUDIO
- The new “Export” action creates a WAV audio file from a recorded loop. Use the “Loops > Selection > Export Audio” menu to export one audio file for each selected loop. This process can take a moment, so the menu displays a progress bar until the export is complete.
- The exported loop files are saved to the “Documents/EXA-VR/user-[SteamID]/Exports” directory.
- Because individual loops don’t have names, the exported audio files use the following naming convention: “[Timestamp].loop[LoopID].b[LoopBeatLength].bpm[MetronomeBeatsPerMinute].wav”.
- The exported audio does not always stop at the last beat of the loop. Instead, the audio file continues until all notes have finished creating sound (i.e. they have faded out completely).
AUDIO OUTPUT
- The “Application > Audio” menu now includes two buttons for setting “Ringer” and “Metronome” audio outputs. The “Ringer” output receives all musical sounds (from ringers, loops, and sections). The “Metronome” output receives all other sounds (from the metronome, tool snaps, menu selections, and so on).
- A common use case for this “split” audio output is for the player to receive the metronome sounds via headphones, while the musical sounds go to the speakers (for the audience or screen-capture tool). However, it is perfectly fine to pick the same device for both types of audio output.
- Within each “Audio Output” menu, there are two presets (“System Default” and “VR Headphones”) and also a “Custom” option. The “System Default” preset is selected by default for both audio outputs.
- The “System Default” preset checks for the default output device at the OS level, but the player’s VR settings can override this. For example, if the Oculus audio setting sends audio to the built-in Oculus headphones (this is the default option), then EXA will choose the Oculus headphones as the system default. See this article for instructions on changing the Oculus/Vive audio settings.
- The “VR Headphones” preset checks for devices (by name) that represent the Vive or Oculus headphones, or otherwise anything with “headphone” in the device name. Depending on your VR settings, this preset may be the same as the “System Default” preset.
- The “Custom” option opens a larger menu. This menu shows a row of audio drivers, and a list of available devices for the selected driver. EXA silently tests each device, and disables that option (with an error message on the button) if it is not available.
- Your audio output selections are stored (across app sessions) by the audio device name. If that device is not available when you start EXA, the output will automatically switch back to the “System Default” preset.
SAVE LOCATION
- The EXA save location has moved from an obscure directory provided by Unity to your main “Documents” directory. EXA files are now stored within “Documents/EXA-VR/”, with a player-specific subfolder called “user-[SteamID]” (where “[SteamID]” is a several-digit number).
- Within “Documents/EXA-VR/user-[SteamID]/”, there are four folders: “Documents”, “Exports”, “Layouts”, and “Soundfonts”. Your previously-saved layouts have all moved to the “Layouts” folder.
- The “Documents” and “Soundfonts” folders are now configured (via “AppSettings.json”) for use as dropping zones for your custom documents (images and text files) and Soundfonts (SF2 files). You can add subfolders here (recommended) to organize your custom files.
- The subfolder names can match/overlap with the EXA’s existing ones – for example, placing SF2 files in a “Soundfonts/Strings/Guitars/” subfolder organize them with the other guitars in EXA’s “Sounds” menu hierarchy.
NOTIFICATIONS
- EXA now communicates various updates, events, messages, and errors via the “Notifications” panel. There are four types of messages: Info (blue), Success (green), Warning (yellow), and Error (red). Messages appear in chronological order, with the oldest at the top.
- Whenever a new notification occurs, the panel pops-up (or slides) into your field of view -- much like the other menus do when you make a new item selection. You can grab and move the “Notifications” panel just like any other menu.
- Use the “Clear” button on each notification message to remove it from the list. The entire “Notifications” panel fades out when the last notification is removed.
- A “version update” notification will appear the first time you load a new version of EXA. It shows a quick summary of everything that’s new, and won’t appear again. You can always get the full details of a new version in these build notes and their related DevUp video!
OTHER
- Added an optional “one-sided ringer” mode, toggled via the “Application > Interaction > One-Sided Ringers” checkbox. This affects all “flat” ringers (rectangle, triangle, ellipse), and only when using the “strike” tool or striking with the “mute” tool. The strike-able side of a ringer is determined by your head position at the time of the attempted strike.
- Updated the items and menus to provide grab-related visual feedback (border and corner highlights, etc.) for any tool type when the “grip-to-grab” setting is enabled (it is enabled by default). This visual feedback is the same as you get with the “grab” tool. This feedback makes it easier to know when an item is in grabbing range for the tool, and (if many items are nearby) which exact item will become grabbed.
- Removed EXA support for saving layouts to the Steam Cloud. The average size of a layout file is growing due to the ability to create more complex loops and layouts, and is frequently more than 1MB. Given the maximum 10MB user space available in the Steam Cloud, the space is quickly consumed.
- Improved the Oculus Touch haptic feedback for the “bow” and “prox” tools.
FIXES
- Fixed issue where tiny drawings stay in “drawing” state (instead of becoming ringers) and thus were unable to be selected and deleted.
- Updated newly-drawn ringers to expand to the minimum ringer size.
- Fixed issue that occurs when selecting and deleting a ringer immediately after drawing it. To avoid this, ringers now wait a moment (until their brief “entry” animation completes) to become grabbable/selectable.
- Fixed issue causing an item menu to reappear if you grab an item, delete the item while it is still grabbed, and then release the grab.
- Fixed an issue caused by trying to match/navigate to missing Soundfont files in the "Sounds" menu.
- Fixed an issue causing the loading of a layout to fail in certain conditions. This was related to conflicts between item IDs within the layout. These conflicts are now resolved without failures, and future conflicts should be avoided.
- Fixed an issue with the “Group Items” menu’s corner indicators, which allowed them to grow to a comical size in a particular scenario.
- Fixed an issue that allowed EXA to start with a “system default” audio output device that is invalid or unacceptable, causing the app to produce no audio. See the “Audio Output” section above for details.
- Fixed an issue that could break the display of loops that were saved in the old (pre-v1.2.1) layout file format.
- Fixed an issue causing multiple documents within a layout to unload/hide each other’s page contents.
- Fixed issue causing the loop chart to provide enough width for notes beyond the loop's endpoint.
- Fixed issue causing incorrect loop playhead positions if the loop duration is changed in a way that leaves no playable notes.
- Fixed issue causing the "nearest item to cursor" highlights between two nearby groups to work inconsistently.
PATCH 1
- Fixed issues caused when an audio device has a null "Name" string.
- Fixed various issues that occur when no audio devices are available.
- Improved the handling of scenarios where the audio system fails to initialize properly.