Developer Update - 20 October 2022

Official Dev Updates
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Welcome to the Developer Update for October 20th, 2022!

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If you’d like to catch up, you can read our previous Developer Update from October 13th.

Spookality Submissions close soon!

Spookality is in full swing, and we’re nearly at the end of the submission window!

If you’ve got something cooking to show off in the Jam, please make sure you submit it before submissions close.

They’re currently set to close at 12PM PT on Saturday, October 22nd.

If you need a countdown timer to get motivated, head on over to the Jams page where you can see how much time you’ve got left and submit your entry!

VRChat 2022.3.1p2

Earlier this week on Tuesday, we dropped a patch that had a few tweaks and fixes. It also included a bunch of new SDK features, including a long-awaited improvement release for the Udon Node Graph!

If you prefer to wrangle nodes, you definitely should check out this update, which includes a ton of shortcuts for editing and repetitive actions.

VRChat 2022.3.1p2

Client

Features

  • Main menu and Quick menu can now have separate wings
    • Uncheck “Wing Persistence” in “User Interface” settings to enable

Improvements

  • Re-added mouse sensitivity & invert controls to Input menu
  • Various performance improvements
    • Reduced stutter when switching to VRCat’s Variety Box tab
    • Removed performance overhead of having “Pin FPS and ping” enabled

Fixes

  • Fixed camera focus
  • Fixed menu breaking if a page is left open for longer than 5 minutes
  • Fixed crash with some user-uploaded gallery images
  • Fixed an issue where long saved search texts would appear broken
  • Fixed camera modes used for VRC+ being selectable even if you didn’t have VRC+ (invite image, icon)
  • Removed avatar haptic settings on Quest (the feature isn’t available on Quest, but the settings were still visible)

Udon Node Graph

Features and Improvements

  • Udon Node Graph: Added lots of hotkeys!
    • Press and hold one of the following keys, then click anywhere on the graph to create the corresponding node:
      • 1 : float
      • 2 : Vector2
      • 3 : Vector3
      • 4 : Vector4
      • b : Branch
      • + : float addition
      • - : float subtraction
      • = : float equality comparison
      • Shift+B : Block
    • Press and hold C, then click on a constant to convert it into a variable
      • You can also do this by right clicking the constant
    • Ctrl+G for quick grouping
    • L+Click logs the value of the selected node
    • Shift+A for aligning nodes
    • Press and hold Shift+F, then click on a node that outputs an array type, to generate a ForEach loop automatically
    • Most of the above are also available via the right-click menu
  • Added a new topbar that shows the currently open graph, and opens new “tabs” to it when you open more graphs
    • You can close each tab with the X button
  • Events/Groups entries are clickable in the sidebar for fast navigation
  • Added search bar at the top which allows you to search through your active graph
    • Press Ctrl+F to move focus to the searchbar
    • Search activates after entering at least 3 letters
    • Pressing Enter while having multiple search results will jump between them
  • There is a new “Highlight flow” toggle on the topbar, which, when enabled, will highlight the nodes connected via the flow edges
    • Use this to quickly see how does the program arrive to the particular node
    • If the node doesn’t have any flow connections - nothing will happen

Changes

  • Changes video link in UdonSyncPlayer example to point to new location

The VRChat Creator Companion

The VRChat Creator Companion is a helper application that sets up Unity projects for you, making it super easy to create content for VRChat. It keeps your SDK up to date with the latest features and fixes, lets you install additional modules like ClientSim and UdonSharp, includes a new way for creators to set up their packages for easy installation, corrects common issues, and more!

Migrating your project over to the VCC is easy. Install VCC from the VRChat Home website, point it at your existing SDK3 project, and it’ll migrate you over easily.

We’ve talked about the VCC as part of the VRChat Creator Toolbox. VCC has been in testing, iteration, and full production for quite some time now. It’s a vital and central part of our creation pipeline!

The VRChat Creator Companion will be required in 2023!

The reason we’re reminding you about the VCC is that we’re planning to distribute all SDK updates solely via the VRChat Creator Companion starting in 2023. This means that we will no longer offer direct unitypackage SDK packages, and all updates will be solely delivered via VCC.

As such, please migrate your projects to VCC soon! If you have a friend who creates content for VRChat, please forward this info to them!

We have a whole set of documents and guides written for the VCC. It’s quite extensive! If you want to get started by learning how to migrate your project, check out our migration guide.

And, of course, don’t forget:

Ongoing Development

Hide Personal Mirror in Camera

We’ve gotten lots of requests to make it so the Personal Mirror can be hidden from the camera. We found some time to implement this feature, and it’ll be included with an upcoming update!

New HUD indicator for Push-To-Talk mode

If you didn’t know, we recently added Push-To-Talk mode for VR! Previously, we never had Push-To-Talk mode for VR, only for desktop. In this mode, you only send microphone audio when you’re holding down the microphone button on your controller.

For those that use PTT, it can be useful to be reminded that you’re in that mode. We’ve added a new HUD indicator that lives above the mic to tell the player they’re in PTT mode!

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Action Menu “Tools” Section

We’ve got a lot of cool new features hidden deep in the Action Menu, like the Personal Mirror, Face Mirror, and the Chatbox. We thought they were kind of a pain in the butt to find, so we decided to pull them up to the top level of the Action Menu!

We’ve got some long-term ideas for Action Menu improvements to make it easier to use, but for now, we wanted to help users find the options users are accessing most often.

Plus, this makes the top level of the Action Menu a nice, familiar four-directional menu. Ahh, much better. :blush:

Expect to see the Action Menu “Tools” section appear in an upcoming update!

Creator Companion New UI

Speaking of the Creator Companion, the current application and UI is built in Unity! While that made it easy to initially develop, this approach isn’t what we wanted to stick with forever.

As such, we’ve been busy migrating our Creator Companion away from Unity and into a proper desktop .NET Application, as outlined on our public VCC roadmap. This should bring better UX and performance, as well as allow us to iterate on the UI and functionality much faster. Here’s a little preview of the current state:

This UI isn’t final, but we wanted to give you a peek!

Conclusion

That’s all for this week! We’ll have some more Spookality entries up for you to check out soon.

Thank you!

20 Likes
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Any plans to let us reorganize the 2.0 menu options? Would like access to my fave words as default open, instead of having to navigate a few extra buttons to find it.

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The tools section of the action menu looks great! Im excited to have those features moved out of the options section. I’ve ran into so many people that didn’t know that the personal mirror or chatbox existed because of them being in options.

I’m also glad the UI of the Creator Companion is getting updated finally. Can’t wait to see it release!
The current VCC UI is definitely rough.

1 Like
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Menu customization has always been something we want to get to, but no ETA or active development yet.

Important to note that they’re still in their original positions too! Less Cut and Paste, more Copy and Paste. :slight_smile:

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You can open one of the wings in your Quick Menu, select Worlds and then the playlist you want to show. Then you will have one-click access to them!

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As it stands as of the latest update, opening up the Quick Menu resets your position in the Action Menu to the top menu. I was wondering if this is on purpose, or if I should make a canny post on it.

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Okay, good to know.
I personally think it would be better to fully move them out. Since with the chatbox/mirror in the options, it makes it crowded and difficult to hit some of the options. Moving them out fully to clear up space could help with that.
But ultimately that’s a minor nitpick that I’ve made a canny about in the past. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the difficulties of using the action menu get maybe improved with the mentioned long-term ideas for improvements. But I’ll have to wait and see!

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There’s already a canny about it that’s marked as a “tracked bug.” https://feedback.vrchat.com/bug-reports/p/radial-menu-resetting
So it seems like it’s known and is a bug.

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Any idea on when we can expect the chatbox improvements touched upon in the Sept 22 post?

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Third person when :slightly_frowning_face:

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There’s already a few Canny posts about it, it’s a known issue.

Pretty soon! I think those improvements are in QA right now, there’s been a few back and forths as QA found bugs and pushed it back to engineers.

We’ve talked about it in the past, but we don’t have any plans to implement a third person view. For now, we’re happy with the community implementations via Udon.

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I do not understand the push to get creators to switch to VCC so soon, when the final remade App is not even out. This would mean that creators would have to set up the new app all over again, and get used to the new UI changes when that gets released. Why not wait until the new version is out, then push creators to migrate to it?

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The new app will install as an upgrade to the current one, and use the same settings file, projects, etc. Functionality and UI layout will be mostly the same, with only a few small tweaks as we port over.

3 Likes
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I see, that should be much easier for creators to transition then. I now understand. Thank you for your reply!

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So, in any 4 hours vrc session, I pull out the mirror (and related settings) at least ~20-40 times. The issue with it being in the action menu, is that even with the top level “tools”, it’s always at least 3 joystick motions away (hit button, left + right) . The problem with joystick motions, is that it doesn’t matter what hand dexterity you have, it will always take 0.2-0.5 second to navigate each depth.
What’s actually quick is pointing at stuff in the quick menu. This is because with the menu, I can point and click on specific stuff, which, in-vr, is tied to hand dexterity only.
Given it’s frequency, I’d strongly prefer mirror (and mirror options, esp pickup enable/disable) to be on the quick menu instead. Something like a tools wing would be fantastic. Thanks!

1 Like
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Would be nice if the chat bubble over the heads wasn’t just a black box. But instead a nicer custom design for messages.

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interesting new stuff. :thinking: Nice :+1:

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Are there any plans to add an option for the old rendering for the cutout personal mirror.
Transparent and cutout materials appear transparent or invisible in the personal mirror when using cutout. In the first implementation we didn’t have these issues. A toggle would be nice so people can just swich if they want to.

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Sounds good mate. No honest rush on this one, as it’s more of a mild annoyance.

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is there a plan to make the Face Mirror more adjustable?
i have some avatars where the Face Mirror Camera is so near that half of the face is missing and i cant see my Face expressions.