First phase of Input Binding system finished, community highlights

Hello everyone and welcome to another of our weekly updates!

This  week we have some exciting news on the progress on the desktop mode.  One of the major pre-requisites, the first phase of an input binding  system, has been completed, finishing a large rework of Neos' internals  in order to support new functionality. There's still lots of work to do  before the desktop mode is in usable state, but with the new system it  was already quick to add locomotion support, with more to come.

We  also have another important change to our guidelines, to reduce some  vagueness and anxiety it has caused. You can read more details below, on  what we changed and why.

There are also many awesome community  highlights, including a 3D snake game, some beautiful worlds and even a  snowboarding mechanic in Neos. We showed off some of our own progress on  the MTC Streaming & Recording room on our latest livestream.

Important update to the guidelines

Veer,  our chief of moderation, has made an important change to our guidelines  based on feedback we have received from you, the community and  discussion with the moderation team. Specifically we have removed this  guideline: “ii. Publicly display fetishes or lifestyles in a blatant  manner that may make others uncomfortable.”

While our original  goal was to ensure that users will avoid using avatars and tools in  public that tend to make a lot of people uncomfortable, we have found  that this statement ended up being too vague and caused some anxiety  over what constitutes as fetish/lifestyle and what does not.

Because  we want Neos to be an open and tolerant space where people can freely  express themselves, we have decided to remove this particular guideline  as it was too subjective. Note that actual adult content is still not  allowed in public, but other than that we don’t want the guidelines to  be too strict or unclear.

To deal with people becoming  uncomfortable around particular people and/or avatars, we’d like to  direct users to use self-moderation tools instead, whether that involves  politely asking them to change their avatar or banning them from your  own sessions. We can also prioritize avatar blocking features and  similar solutions to expand the set of tools available to everyone to  make their experience more comfortable.

You can read the latest guidelines here.

MTC Streaming & Recording room showcase livestream, pizza

If  you missed our regular Friday livestream, you can check out the  recording below. We have showcased some work in progress on the upcoming  MTC Streaming & Recording room, which will teach users how to use  Neos' built in streamer camera functions as well as provide a place to  host events and record with a pre-built green screen.

Nexulan has also let the chat pick ingredients for his pizza order for some hilarity, thanks to generous Twitch sub gifts!

https://youtu.be/E8GYYL-KUfA

First phase of new Input Binding system complete

After  some long major reworking of Neos’ input handling internals, we have  released the first phase of our new Input Binding system! Originally  Neos’ input handling code has grown organically over the years and had a  lot of hardcoded rules and checks for specific controllers and  combinations of input methods.

This has made it harder over time  to add support for new VR controllers, but especially other input  methods, like keyboard & mouse or gamepads for the desktop. We’ve  also had requests for being able to customize the controls and add more  different input devices over past years.

To solve this problem,  we have designed a proper Input Binding system that replaces the  hardcoded rules with a generalized system, while at the same time  providing more flexibility and makes it easier to add support for new  devices.

Input Groups & Actions

The  new system is based on a concept of “Input Groups”. Anything in Neos  that needs to receive inputs defines one or more input groups, each with  a list of actions (boolean, analog, 2D and 3D) that it receives.

These  groups are then registered with the input binding system, which fill  search and match bindings for those actions and handle sorting and  blocking of inputs based on the priority of each group.

This way,  if a particular input source (controller Trigger button for example) is  used by a higher priority input, it will naturally block for any other  inputs that might want to use it, rather than those blocking rules  having to be hardcoded. This way the system adapts to customized  controller bindings too.

Thanks to the new system, we could  greatly simplify the code of common interactions, tools, locomotion  system, avatar anchors and other inputs, removing all the old  controller-specific code and replacing it with a more unified system,  that is easier to extend and build upon, effectively serving as an  abstraction layer between input devices, ensuring that any Neos  behaviors don’t need to worry about any specific input devices.

The  rework of Neos’ input internals has taken a while and currently only  provides small improvements in behavior. For example we have fixed  handling of dead zones and movement exponent curve, which was computed  incorrectly. Thanks to this you should now have better control when  moving in Neos, but you might also need to tweak your deadzone and  movement exponent settings a bit if they become too sensitive.

Thanks  to the rework we also discovered some serious performance bugs, which  have been fixed and have done general cleanup of related systems,  removing a lot of the cruft. While the surface benefits of the first  phase of this new system are relatively minor, the main improvements are  yet to come.

Locomotion in desktop mode & future additions

Thanks  to the flexibility and ease of use of the new Input Binding system, it  has taken us less than 5 minutes to add locomotion support to the new  desktop mode, giving users the ability to walk, fly and jump around.

While  the desktop mode isn’t in a fully usable state yet, having this new  input system implement is a major milestone towards its implementation.  With it finalized we can now continue adding more features and building  out necessary pieces to make the desktop mode properly usable, so stay  tuned, there’s a lot more to come now!

https://youtu.be/OxHy0_EZ04A

We’ll be also adding support for other input devices, like gamepads,  giving you more options on how to play Neos. Once the system stabilizes a  bit more internally, we’ll also start looking into exposing it for user  configuration, allowing you to customize the bindings. This will be  likely done through a configuration file first and UI later on.

Community Highlights by Turk

Hello  everyone! I hope everyone’s week went wonderfully! This week has been a  little exciting as stuff has been a bit busy amongst the Neos  community. New things have appeared through the creative void that is  the Metaverse that is Neos. So let us shine a light on some of the  things people have been making!

3D Snake by Joe Sylva & Napo

Showcased  at the Metaverse Meetup we have 3D Snake! With a Maximum of 8 players  you can grab your own snake and proceed to enjoy some VR quality fun as  you twist, turn, pull, and push your hand all around to get that snake  into those tight nooks and crannies. Be careful to not crash into  anything! Your snake will explode and then you’ll have to restart your  score all over again! (There’s also skins too! Instead of a Worm you can  use a Dragon!) Props to Joe Sylva and Napo for showing him the ropes!  This only took 2 weeks to make and the time shows!

Boolean Beach by Aetoriz

An  amazing map that took alot of our inspirations by storm! Enter this  gentle beach filled with multi tones of gray black and white. Watch as  all the trivialities of life fade into the dull and mundane. Jump and  climb over the beach’s cliffs and dunes. This map has some nice styling  and is definitely a sight to behold! It truly feels like you're in a  different place entirely. Props to you Aetoriz! Thanks for making the  map!

Donut Dimension by QueenHidi

A  wonderful idea to instill the spirit of the donut into everyone. The  “Donut Tutorial” as called by many wanting to get into 3d Modeling made  by the BlenderGuru. Shows as a nice world to showcase the example of  everyone's donut! Thanks to everyone who contributed a Donut and Thanks  Hidi for making a neat interesting map!

256fes Room by Danyy59

The  256fes challenge is back in season! People in Neos have been coming  together to try and make assets with only 256 triangles! Now you might  ask, why do that in this modern day and age? Well of course limitation  breeds creativity! There have been all kinds of things made like  avatars, maps, or even toys and tools! If you want to partake in the  256fes challenge just get into Blender and make something with only 256  triangles :) Thanks Danny for sharing your passion and showing us other  parts of the modeling community!

Delvr Community One Shot by Chris and Tomo

The  boys over at DelVR have some cool things to show us with the new DnD  system being used live and with a community behind it. They had their  first community oneshot and it seems pretty packed! Check out part 1 of  their vod to see how it went down. Thanks Chris & Tomato!

https://youtu.be/K-TJp4L19pk

VR Snowboarding by orange

Thought  the vehicle craze was over yet? Guess not! We had Geese, we had cars,  now we have snowboards! As the Japanese Community in Neos was  participating in a VR Snow Festival, all kinds of snow toys and maps are  being made! Anyone feeling for some SSX Tricky in VR? While not  released yet this got a lot of interest on twitter, so I figured it was  appropriate to showcase the cool and new things users are cooking up in  Neos!


https://twitter.com/i/status/1362339826003943427

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That's  all for this week, we hope you had a great one and we're excited to  bring you more progress on the desktop mode now with one of the major  pre-requisites implemented, as well as clean up some other features,  tweaks and bugfixes in the queue over the next weeks, so stay tuned!

And  as usual, big thanks to our community for supporting this platform and  allowing us to improve it every day. See you next week!