The Discovery Release - October 4, 2017

Announcements & Reminders

• New Guidelines
  • A revision to the Store Listing Guidelines has been published effective October 2, 2017.
    • New terminology changes
      • Changed “Item Name/Listing Content” to “Item Name”
      • Changed “Title” to “Listing Title”
    • Reduced the description character limit to 10,000.
    • Reduced selling price limit to S$1,000,000 maximum.
    • Allow links to non-Sansar pages, provided they are tutorials or documentation for scripts.
    • Revamped the image guidelines and additional notes sections.
    • Added a prohibited behavior section.
  • The newly published Banner guidelines provides information on how you can make use of the new banner feature. 
• Don't forget to check out our upcoming creation contests! Read more about it here. 

New Features

Client

• Discover experiences on the Atlas - Discover virtual experiences more easily with the latest improvements on the Atlas. Browse the new featured tab to see a selection of our editorial team's favorites, or find experiences easily by using our new search function.
• Object interactions in desktop mode - One of the most requested features is finally here! You can now grab and throw objects in desktop mode. See Sansar controls or Quick start: Exploring in Sansar to find out how. 
• User settings - Define your preferences on notifications and sounds with the first release of the user settings feature.
• Scripting - Cleaned up script APIs and unified naming for C# enums.
• Audio
  • New uploadable audio types - Sansar now supports audio files using the following extensions: MP3, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis and more!
  • Audio Occlusion - Previously sounds were only occluded in scenes with baked reverb. Now they will be occluded in all scenes. Additionally, low frequencies will now "bleed" through walls and objects.
  • UI Sounds - Many UI sounds have been improved for quality.
• Reporting Updates - New defined list of reporting options on the Report Abuse tool. 

Web

• New Atlas on the website
  
  • Check out the brand new Atlas design that offers better browsing in the Store. Discover what's hot and new from experience creators and Sansar Studios thorough the new Featured, All, and Sansar Studios tabs.
• Store item sorting
  
  • You can now sort items on the Store landing page.
• Building communities
  • Follow us - Follow our social media pages easily via the new footer on the website!
  • Discord Integration - Last month, we rolled out Sansar's official Discord community. Join the Sansar community on Discord.

Documentation

New Articles

• Adding a credit card to your account
• Applying collision meshes
• Best practices: Avoiding entanglement
• Importing Paint 3D content in Sansar
• Quick start: Exploring in Sansar
• Sansar Discord FAQ
• The screenshot app
• Settings
• Store Banner Guidelines
• Store Listing Guidelines

Updated Articles

• 3D model export and setup tips using popular 3D tools
• Adding information about your experience
• The Atlas App
• Creating an experience
• Game controller buttons
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Linking a scene to an experience
• Managing your scenes and experiences
• Renaming a scene
• Reporting abuse
• Sansar audio FAQ
• Script API documentation
  • Quaternion
  • Vector
  • CollisionEventPhase
  • CollisionEventType
  • PlayStatus
• Sharing your experiences
• Streaming web audio
• Uploading items in Sansar
• Working with audio

Known Issues

Resolved known issues from previous releases

• General
  
  • The more options button has to be clicked twice to open it.
  • At times, users' online statuses are not reflected properly in the People app.
• Upload tool
  
  • Some collision meshes may be corrupted during the upload process. This sometimes happens with collision meshes with high tris counts.
• Terrain
  
  • Terrain shapes can appear out of place if the scene is built before the physics engine has had the time to recalculate changes made. As a workaround, return to Edit Mode and make a small change to each affected chunk so that the chunks will be recalculated properly.
  • The terrain fill bucket is not filling all chunks of the terrain at once. Instead, it only fills the terrain in odd, small patches.
  • Sliders on the terrain tool do not snap the selection dot to the selected position.
• Scripts
  • Weird behavior with the Sansar.Vector parameter. Read more.
• VR mode
  
  • Avatars slightly move back when toggling between first and third person modes.
  • Avatars' head tilting may cause the avatar to wander and may cause the head to spin.
  • While using the Oculus Rift, the teleportation beam exhibits odd behavior where canceling using different hand triggers.
• Edit mode
  • The Chat window in Edit mode is truncated in the default window view.

Known issues for this release

• General
  
  • Crashes may happen while using Sansar from time to time. Remember to save your work often in case something unexpected happens.
  • There is a chance that the server may crash when multiple users connect to a given server instance.
  • The client briefly flashes as more experiences are loaded when a user scrolls the all tab of the Atlas.
  • The right arrow on the experience details page in the Atlas only scrolls to the last loaded experience on the Atlas and fails to scroll through all experiences on the Atlas.
  • Accepting a friend request adds yourself to your friends list.
  • The camera's pivot point will tilt from the ground rather than the camera's current location if freecam mode was activated while in 1st person mode.
  • Using the spacebar when using F2 to recaliberate the HMD may disable the function. In order to calibrate again, you need to use the App Launcher button using VR controllers or a gamepad and use the VR UI buttons to trigger calibration. After that, F2 will work again unless the spacebar is used again.
  • During the avatar naming process, the ghost text doesn't disappear and the 'next' button fails if the user uses the tab button after entering an Avatar Name.
  • The sound effects in edit mode still plays even when UI sound effects is turned off on the user settings panel. (Update: Fixed with Release Update deployed on October 5, 2017)
• Avatar & customization
  
  • In VR, avatar arms may bind together towards the avatar's center and/or rapidly move back and forth between the avatar's center and the controller's position (Oculus Touch controllers only).
  • In VR, turning the avatar before walking forward while in 1st person mode will cause the avatar to strafe, instead of walking forward in the new direction.
  • The avatar's arms may not turn with the body when the user turns around to look over their shoulder.
  • When the user toggles into VR mode the first time, the avatar's arms will clip into the avatar's body.
  • The avatar frame slightly rotates as the user pivots in 3rd person camera mode.
  • Sansar may crash when launching the avatar customization app.
  • The female avatar's nose will tear up when the nose slider is set to the maximum value.
• Items & the upload tool
  
  • If an animated object is uploaded with a collision mesh, the animated collision mesh will stay stationary and do not animate with the object.
  • Deleting an accessory that has been uploaded to multiple accessories categories can cause the accessory to stay attached to the avatar even after it has been deleted.
• Terrain
  
  • The terrain will appear separated at the seam when using the terrain sculpting tool over a chunk seam.
  • Terrain sound crackles when the brush tool is used across the terrain at a fast speed.
  • When a terrain texture is being painted or erased over an older terrain texture, the terrain will occasionally flicker between the old and new texture.
  • The terrain flatten tool is currently not affected by the hardness value of the brush.
  • The terrain hardness brush is not affected by brush size values.
  • Spamming the terrain chunk values up and down will cause Sansar to crash.
  • The yellow grid lines over the terrain can appear very large when sculpted over.
  • Terrain tools may be temporarily unresponsive while sculpting a terrain.
  • The terrain brush may appear disconnected from the mouse cursor if there are major changes in the terrain location.
  • When the user attempts to paint the terrain with the remove tool, all applied textures are erased at full hardness, exposing the default palette texture.
  • When the user attempts to smoothen terrain textures with the soften tool, all applied textures are erased at full hardness under the soften brush, exposing the default palette texture.
• Edit mode
  • The system memory will gradually rise as the terrain is being sculpted and painted due to an unlimited undo/redo history for terrain.
• Visit mode
  • Dynamic animated objects are not triggering collision dependent scripts.
  • Avatars will rotate 90° from the direction of the spawn point as soon as they spawn into an experience. 
  • At times, some lights do not bounce diffuse colors correctly. Bounced light may not show against the ground or walls.

Known issues from previous releases

• General:
  
  • Attempting to open the Atlas after exiting VR mode in edit mode can cause Sansar to crash.
  • Rejected friend requests may reappear on the friend request list in some occasions.
  • Sansar will occasionally crash if the user goes in and out of the avatar customization app and saves changes to an avatar.
• Avatar & customization:
  • The new Arm IK feature is still being polished. Some bugs may trigger on the Avatar’s arms when it is enabled. For example, it's possible to get your avatar's arms to clip into its torso.
  • Avatars may take a quick step if a controller is used to navigate the avatar slowly through the experience.
  • Male avatars forward left strafe is not smooth while in first person camera mode. The avatar will appear to wobble left and right as they walk.
  • The same file can be uploaded to multiple categories in the Accessories sub-menu. This may lead to some odd results while customizing your Avatar.
  • Using undo after switching between accessories, and then deleting the previously applied accessory will re-apply the deleted accessory to the avatar, resulting in multiple attachment points.
• Uploader tool
  
  • Animated objects lose their animation when uploaded with a collision mesh.
  • A majority of textures assigned to .obj files do not import into Sansar.
  • Multi-part objects cannot currently be paired with a collision volume, which means they cannot be made dynamic or collide with other objects.
  • Some textures appear posterized after uploading them to Sansar.
• Edit Mode:
  
  • When editing an animated object, the Scale property only affects the object's size and not the distance the object travels during its animation. This means that scaling an animated object can often lead to unexpected and undesirable results, so make sure to model to the appropriate scale in your 3D modeling tool.
  • If an animated object's static mesh component is moved from its original container in the scene objects panel, the object's animation will no longer play.
  • In desktop mode, trigger volumes show the gizmo and the mini-object toolbar, which acts as a visual indication that it is selected. However, in VR mode, the gizmo and the mini-object toolbar are missing, thereby showing no visual indicator that it is selected.
  • Notifications appears behind the properties panel when in Edit Mode.
  • The icon for 'Trigger Volumes' in the visibility menu has an opaque black background.
  • The inventory may show two selected items at the same time. This happens when there is a selected item in the inventory when uploading a new item. Only the newly selected item will be added if you drag and drop it to the scene.
  • Toggling the Scene Settings panel forces the tool drop down to close.
  • The undo button does not work when adding and removing components in an object.
  • Items obtained from the store are improperly scaled when drag and dropped into a Sansar experience.
  • If a ribbon panel drop down is active, and the scene objects panel is used, the drop down panel will appear behind the scene objects panel.
  • Objects can be scaled beyond their maximum set limits.
  • Some store objects that rely on the emissive.exr texture to be used as their diffuse color are being tinted by the empty diffuse attribute, making the object appear dark and dull.
  • The sound effect for manipulating the gizmo handles have a noticeable lag. This may make it seem like the gizmo is slow in response to your mouse clicks.
  • Reloading a scene after deleting an object will cause the Scene Objects panel to reorder.
  • Setting Sky Distance with the slider is difficult for lower values.
  • Additional containers (and its components) that have been added to objects do not move with the object while visiting an experience.
  • Sansar will crash if an fbx file contains 4+ vertices which are all stacked on each other.
• Materials editor:
  
  • Non uniform repeating textures do not repeat with the designated values (Ex:2x5) and when used will only repeat to the lowest value (Ex: 2x5 = results in a 2x2 repeat).
  • Sansar crashes if an object with a really high resolution texture is added to a scene from the inventory.
  • If the material editor is opened and saved followed by a custom name entered for the 'Item name in Inventory' field, the name will revert back to the default item name.
  • The material editor will appear to open then close if an unsupported object type is set as an .fbx file extension and loaded into the uploader.
  • When an object with more than 1 UV map is uploaded, only the first UV map will appear textured. All other UV maps will appear black.
• Media surfaces:
  
  • Media Surfaces continue to play for a few seconds after entering Edit Mode.
  • If a media surface source is set to a gif image, that image will become squashed into one of the corners of the surface. If tiling is used, the empty space will also tile along with the image.
• Visit mode:
  
  • Some dynamic objects do not appear to initialize their physics until they are moved in the experience. This is causing some physic based objects to appear to float in the air until an avatar bumps into them.
  • Some emissives in Origin Cinema 360 aren't emitting light after Global Illumination upgrade.
  • VR hand and teleport beams are still visible after switching to desktop mode.
  • At times, some lights do not bounce diffuse colors correctly. Bounced light may not show against the ground or walls.
  • Selecting a container or component in the scene objects panel may cause the panel's contents to shift.
  • The camera zooms in and out on the avatar when moving in 3rd person mode with a controller.
• VR Mode
  
  • Avatar arms may continuously rotate around the avatar as the avatar loads into the scene.
  • Avatars' head does not match the user's head tilt and is slightly off.
  • Avatars' head tilting appears to favor rotating at the bottom of the neck, rather than the top.
  • When VR mode is toggled off while using an Oculus Rift, the last experience frame becomes stuck in the headset.