It’s a party! release - March 20, 2018

Announcements & Reminders

• Terrain removal - As part of the performance optimization effort, we have decided to pull the Terrain system from Sansar.
  • In this release, terrain in scenes will remain intact, but creating, editing and uploading will be disabled. Additionally, terrain heightmaps can no longer be uploaded and listed in Sansar. You can find more information here. 
  • We will no longer support the entire terrain system at the end of April. We recommend replacing all existing terrain created using Sansar's terrain system or through uploaded heightmaps before then. After the end of April, all terrain items that are still in scenes will be replaced by a placeholder asset.
  • All terrain items in the Store that have been created using a terrain heightmap should also be removed from the Store as soon as possible.

New Features

Client

• Events creation - Introducing the all new Events app in Sansar, where you can create your own events and find upcoming events in Sansar. Define your own events' location, name, description, date, start time and duration! Learn more here.
• Ability to update a script in the Store - If you create and sell scripts, you can now update scripts that you've listed in the store! Find out how here.
• Larger script files up to 1MB C# - We've increased the file size of C# script files, which can now be up to 1MB.
• Avatar inventory improvements 
  • Visible item names - We've heard your pleas! We're finally surfacing clothing and accessory names in the avatar customization inventory. 
  • Right-click menu - To address another request, we've replaced the small green triangle at the corner of clothing and accessories item. Right-click on accessories and clothing items to discover action items that apply to that item.
• Diagnostic tool updates - We've added some additional tools to diagnose experiences and scenes. Read more about it here:
  • Wireframe - Outlines all visible triangles in a scene to help you identify geometry that can be simplified in order to reduce primitive count and triangle density.
  • Lighting Complexity - Provides information regarding the number of lights illuminating the same area in the scene.
  • Triangle Density mode - Screen space - This Triangle density mode calculates triangle density per pixel. 
  • Triangle Density mode - World space - This Triangle density mode calculates triangle density relative to the size of the world.
• Voice cone emitters - Voices will travel much further from the avatar in the direction the avatar faces. On the flip side, voice will travel less from behind an avatar.
• Avatar emotes - Some new emotes to enhance your avatar experience: /point and /raisehand. See our list of emotes here.
• Trigger emote animations simultaneously - Trigger emotes to work at the same time! Trigger /point, /raisehand, or /clap while dancing, running or walking.
• Performance optimizations - major update with improvements to performance, including texture compression upon scene loading. 

 Documentation

New Articles

• Events guidelines 

Updated Articles

• Avatar emotes
• Upcoming events in Sansar
• Selling items in the Sansar Store
• Diagnostics toolbar
• Working with terrain

Note: For updates on the Script API documentation, see Script API updates.

Known Issues

Resolved known issues from previous releases

• Opening the Debug Console may disable interaction with other modals with buttons. This may prevent any interaction with any other modals, even if the Debug Console has been closed.
• If the 'Licensing and partners' modal is open a second time, the modal cannot be dismissed.
• Pressing spacebar in the lookbook does not trigger cloth simulation mode after saving customized changes while in cloth simulation mode.
• Complex MD clothing items explode briefly when entering cloth simulation mode.
• Potential crash when reading old data from local user cache. Workaround is to delete folder %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\LindenLab\SansarClient\
• The color picker gets cut off screen when using screen resolutions lower than 1920x1080.
• Occasionally, the lookbook may appear to have no directional lights, causing the lookbook to look dark.
• Duplicating a group of assets only highlights one of the selected objects in the Scene Objects panel.
• The avatar ID tool will not appear when hovering the mouse cursor over an avatar after a user toggles out of VR mode.
• 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).
• The message that appears while listing items does not display the selected item's name in the confirmation box.
• Occasionally, some avatars are missing their bodies, leaving only the head behind.
• Fixed bug where PlayStream wouldn’t play if executed at init() or prior to a user joining the scene.

Known issues for this release

• An event listing will disappear from the Events app if the experience associated with it is deleted. In addition, this does not pull the data entirely and the time slot of the missing event will still be "taken", preventing the creation of a new event under the time slot. To fix this issue, you may request for assistance from the support team.
• The Events app does not refresh data when you switch between tabs. To refresh data, you will have to exit the events app and open it again.
• There is no reminder that only the event creator can visit an event that will be located in an experience that has access set to "Only Me"
• Avatars appear to have slouching shoulders after calibrating height in VR.
• Avatars drift slowly across the scene even without user input.
• Avatars do not run at full speed when using the simple controls. This applies to the Oculus touch controllers and the standard gamepad.
• Avatars have IK issues in the elbows and arms while rotating the Touch controllers or Vive wands.
• In VR, avatar wrists twist around like "candy wrapping" when turning the hands inward and outward using the touch controls.
• The screen will flicker violently in desktop mode when wearing the headset while existing the lookbook app. This does not affect what is visible in the HMD lenses.
• The text field of the chat app may be off-screen when loading Sansar in screens with a 1920x1080 resoulution. To fix this, you must manually drag and move the chat app so that the text input box is visible on screen.
• Attempting to upload an normal map to an object that has no default roughness will result in an error that does not specify what required texture file is missing.
• The client crashes when a user is kicked out of Sansar by admins.
• Occasionally, media streams will not play on media streams when testing using the audio/video preview button.
• At times, uploading the same clothing item to two separate menus can potentially cause a crash. 

Known issues from previous releases

•  General
  • The client stalls and takes a while to transition into the loading screen after clicking "Visit Now" from edit mode.
  • Favoriting/unfavoriting an experience from the web Atlas will break the favoriting/unfavoriting button in the client. As a workaround, we suggest closing the Atlas panel in the client and reload the data.
  • At slow internet connections, the lack of response from the loading bar may look like Sansar is not active.
  • 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.
  • Attempting to open the Atlas after exiting VR mode in edit mode can cause Sansar to crash.
  • The My Experiences app does not automatically refresh to show the updated image of an experience. To see the changes, close and re-open the My Experiences app.
  • Experience titles that exceed 25 characters get cut off in the experience details page.
  • At times, Avatar IDs display incorrectly and shows a long string of text and numbers. When this happens, try closing and re-opening the People app to see the correct Avatar ID.
• Chat and people apps
  • Closing the chat app also closes the people app when both apps are open.
  • The People app button no longer highlights when users receive friend requests. However, friend requests still come in successfully.
• Avatars & the avatar app
  
  • The male avatar's right thumbnail texture is not properly lined up with the thumb.
  • The avatar head may appear broken when the avatar is looking around in VR mode.
  • The avatar continues to move forward for a few steps even after the controls for running has been let go.
  • Using avatar emotes in an experience causes avatars to stop performing idle animations.
  • Avatars spin and face the opposite direction when activating and deactivating the teleport beam without teleporting.
  • Avatars fall unnaturally in experiences with low gravity.
  • Avatar heads' rotation and tilt no longer have any limitations set. 
  • Male avatars' right hand shakes when the right VR controller is rotated at certain angles.
  • In VR, shoulders will clip through MD clothing as the avatar walks and moves their arms around.
  • If an accessory is deleted from the inventory of a specific avatar, it will still appear on any other avatar's appearance if that avatar is still wearing the accessory at the time of deleting.
  • Occasionally, some avatars get caught on some objects as the objects are pushed away from them.
  • The avatar head can only be moved in a limited range.
  • The 1st person desktop camera may shake when visiting an experience. This is most notable when looking straight down.
  • Switching your avatar between genders may cause the avatar's mouth to not move in accordance with the vocal sounds you create.
  • At times, objects grabbed in VR appear offset and do not track the user's hands.
  • Sansar will occasionally crash if the user goes in and out of the avatar customization app and saves changes to an avatar.
  • 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.
  • The female avatar's nose will tear up when the nose slider is set to the maximum value.
  • 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.
  • MD clothing items created using the male body shape on female avatars causes the clothing item to conform to the male avatar's body shape, instead of the female one. This causes those clothing items to float above the female avatar, instead of naturally laying on the female avatar's body.
• Items & the upload tool
  
  • If temporary files for Sansar are partially deleted, all future imports through the asset importer fails. However, if all contents in the temporary folder are deleted, it doesn't affect future imports of the files.
  • Exporting assets with Y up from Z up native programs does not convert to Z up when entering Sansar.
  • Some objects may fail to upload indefinitely when the import cache is lost or corrupted unless the user deletes the whole import cache.
  • Sansar crash can be caused by deleting a portion of the cache and then upload an asset that relied on that piece of cache that was deleted. Or, caused by uploading the same asset numerous times before the others uploads have finished.
  • PC network drives fail to appear on the file explorer when uploading a file using the upload 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.
  • Some textures appear posterized after uploading them to Sansar.
  • Multi-part objects cannot currently be paired with a collision volume, which means they cannot be made dynamic or collide with other objects.
• Edit Mode:
  
  • The user input value on a Volume RBOD component's scale in the scene objects heirarchy changes in relation to the user input value assigned on the object's top-level scale. The Volume RBOD component's scale becomes auto-computed and multipled times the user input value in the object's top-level scale.
  • When 'surface snap' is enabled in edit mode, grabbing objects while editing in VR becomes difficult.
  • Switching to VR while building a scene makes the 'building' indicator vanish and stay hidden until the build process is completed.
  • Script properties revert back to default values when uploading a script while the properties panel is open.
  • Some dynamic objects will appear to spring back and forth on screen when held by an avatar.
  • Occasionally, dynamic objects do not collide with other objects and may temporarily fall through them for a few seconds, before snapping back to the other objects' surface.
  • Occasionally, some dynamic objects may jump away beyond the expected force from the avatar when colliding with them.
  • When undo (ctrl+undo) is used to remove directional lights in a scene, it causes an error and prevents a user from adding another directional light into the scene.
  • Clearing debug messages from the script debug console will reappear and stack on each other every time the script console is opened.
  • Sansar crashes if an asset with a really high-resolution texture is added to a scene from the inventory.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • A scale gizmo appears on light components even though light cannot be scaled.
  • Light objects can be scaled after a volume component has been added to it even though light cannot be scaled.
  • Animated objects have an "IsDynamic" properties option, which doesn't do anything.
  • Crash upon saving a scene.
• Materials editor
  • Non uniform repeating textures do not repeat with the designated values (Ex:2x5) and when used will only repeat the lowest value (Ex: 2x5 = results in a 2x2 repeat).
  • The material editor will appear to open then close if an unsupported object type is set as a .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:
  • Dynamic objects appears offset from the hand you picked them up with. Additionally, tossing and catching dynamic objects may exacerbate the issue and make the objects float a few inches away from the avatar hands.
  • Teleporting using a teleport script into an enclosed space from an unenclosed space causes collision culling of the room and it's contents.
  • Sansar App briefly stalls (150ms per avatar) when other avatars join the experience.
  • At times, some lights do not bounce diffuse colors correctly. Bounced light may not show against the ground or walls.
  • Some emissives in Origin Cinema 360 aren't emitting light after Global Illumination upgrade.
  • 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.
  • At times, crashes may be experienced when switching between experiences.
  • Black patches may appear over objects in a scene while visiting experience.
• People app
  
  • Message and Mute options are available when searching for the currently logged in user in the People app
  • People App button fails to highlight when users receive friend requests.
• VR mode
  
  • Toggling from the first person to the third person in VR mode may cause the avatar to shift to the left or right of its original position.
  • VR selection reticle intermittently persists on screen after exiting VR mode
  • VR UI text unexpectedly changes position when moving panels around.
  • In VR, avatars' head does not match the user's head tilt and is slightly off.
  • In VR, male avatars using VR controllers appear to lean towards the left side when the controllers are active.