Hello there, and thank you so much for checking in!
This month’s Status Report includes a recap of some exciting new changes for the next update, a new web developer, updates to our infrastructure, and news on Cross-Instance Calls.
R171 Progress and Recap
With the next stable update for ChilloutVR soon approaching an official release; we wanted to quickly go over some of the important changes being introduced, as well as some of the process we’ve gone through to get here, once more while we continue to squash a few remaining bugs in the meantime.
Unity Update
The move from Unity 2019 to 2021 has been a big and complicated undertaking. While this was initially the plan from the start, due to some bugs with this version of Unity that were found during development, we considered switching to 2022 instead. However, even more problematic issues were found, so we ultimately decided to stick with Unity 2021 for now and work around the core problems. Thankfully in that time, Unity was able to fix some pressing issues that were impacting development, so we could proceed with less on our plate. We will continuously look for new releases and evaluate if further upgrades would benefit the game, but we can assure that future upgrades will be a smoother process.
Benefits of upgrading to Unity 2021 include better performance, fixing some long-standing bugs with the Unity game engine, easier handling of multi-platform support (such as Pico and Quest), as well as increased compatibility for future hardware, software, and features.
Rendering optimizations
Unity 2021 introduces a new rendering method called Single Pass Stereo Instanced. Simply put, this provides a more optimized method of rendering meshes by drawing it once for both eyes rather than once per-eye, essentially reducing both GPU and CPU usage while cutting down the amount of necessary draw calls by half in many situations. However, for uploaded content to utilize this new system and be displayed properly, the shader applied to the material(s) a mesh is using must support it. Otherwise, it will only display in one eye in VR. This may affect some legacy content, but systems are in place to mitigate this issue as much as possible by replacing the shader, or falling back to a standard shader. Not all content will be compatible with these replacement methods though. We urge creators to take this time to test and update their content with the current Experimental Beta before r171 launches.
Vivox
ChilloutVR’s voice chat system will be switching from Dissonance to Vivox. This fixes a number of issues experienced due to limitations of the former, such as crackling and cut-outs; whereas Vivox demonstrated much better voice quality and stability in both development and community testing, offering an improved experience for user-to-user communication.
OpenXR
ChilloutVR was planned to switch from OpenVR to OpenXR with this upcoming update due to the deprecation of the former, as well as to better unify development across all VR platforms. Unfortunately, limitations of OpenXR prevented a smooth transition, and introduced some problematic issues for some hardware setups. Because of that, the Steam release of ChilloutVR will continue to use OpenVR. However, OpenXR implementation is still planned for additional supported platforms, such as the Oculus/Meta store for PC, Quest, and Pico standalone headsets, upon release.
For those who still want to try out our OpenXR implementation with the Steam release of ChilloutVR, the following launch option can be used in Steam: --force-openxr
Content Creation Kit 3.5
Along with the upgrade to Unity 2021, an updated CCK will be provided for compatibility, in addition to a few extra new features for creators:
- Spawnable Pickup Markers
- Suggestive and Nudity advanced tagging
- DisplaySpawnableDetailPage for intractable actions
- AnimatorDriver StateMachineBehavior - Allows animator parameters to be changes on State Enter and Exit
- Snapping points for attachment targets - Allows defining snapping behavior to predetermined points
- PlayerMaterialParser Component - Component that allows parsing the following positions of players to a Vector4[255] on a specified material: Root, hip, head, left/right hand, chest, left/right foot
A preview of CCK 3.5 can be downloaded to use these new features from our Discord’s Experimental section now!
Accessibility Controls
New accessibility options have been added for VR input customization by allowing users to select which hand they would like to use for movement, turning, and opening the Quick Menu. Additionally, One-Handed Control now allows users to fall back to using a single controller for movement and Quick Menu controls if the other controller becomes unavailable.
We hope that this enables more people to comfortably play ChilloutVR the way they prefer, and want to continue adding more accessibility options in the future for that very reason. Try them out now in the current Experimental version.
New Web Developer
Last month, we announced that a Web Developer position was open for applications. We’re happy to mention that this new position has been filled!
As mentioned on our Hub, a major rework of our website has been planned for some time. They will be focusing on the rework of the hub alongside other - completely new - pages that will help users to find the information they are looking for. We aim to make it as easy as possible for those who are trying to dive into the worlds of ChilloutVR for the first time by providing necessary information on easily locatable sources outside of the game itself.. We hope to make this available in the near future.
Infrastructure and Backend Upgrades
Our backend developers have been working on upgrading ChilloutVR’s infrastructure to increase the reliability of our network. While we’ve already made great efforts towards this over the past year, now being able to handle many more connections and interactions, our goal is to support a much larger scale in the long term with minimal interference. To do this, we will be adding more hosts to our supported regions for better reliability and network redundancy, among further necessary optimizations. Additionally, we will bring the AS server region back.
Cross-Instance Calls
Members of our community that are familiar with the Main Menu have more than likely noticed an unoccupied “Call” section. This was a very early look at a planned feature intended to allow users to communicate across worlds and instances, but was never fully implemented. We’ve wanted to revisit it for some time, but limitations of our old voice chat system were not ideal for supporting such a feature. However, with the introduction of Vivox, this concept is much more conceivable and with convenient features built right in.
It’s too early to say when Calling will make an appearance, however the foundation has been built and we’re very excited to see how the community utilizes it to further expand player communication across ChilloutVR. We hope to have more information in the near future.
Final lines & social links
As always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of ChilloutVR's development.
Going forward, all Status Reports will be posted within the first week of each month, rather than a set date that may be delayed due to various circumstances.
Tune in next month for more updates like this, see you next time!
Social media
Find us on social media with the links below:
Discord: https://discord.gg/abi
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlphaBlendNET
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@AlphaBlendInteractive
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChilloutVR/
Support Alpha Blend Interactive
Like every company, we need financial support to be able to push updates and improve our product. We are grateful for every bit of support we get.
If you want to support us you can do so here: https://www.patreon.com/AlphaBlendInteractive
We are more than thankful for your support!
Not on our Discord server yet?
Use the link above to join our discord server and get in touch with our wonderful community, get help with creation-related topics and find people to play with.