Biolum VR Beta 0.6 is there!

Biolum VR (0.6.3220.0fa6499) Release Notes

In this Update we concentrated mostly on increasing performance. In the last build we saw huge hiccups and were having big frame drops throughout the experience. For the long term we needed to swap to a higher Engine Version as well. With that, we can better answer technical issues to come.

Known Issues

• currently iterating on the best lightmap solutions, there might still be some issues

• currently adjusting timings and interaction in Sc6 Puzzle and Sc8 Puzzle, yet using a fallback version of both in this build

• we are aware of fish swarms sometimes swimming through geometry (Sc3, Sc8, Sc10)

• we are aware that the player get abruptly rotated (by 20°) in Sc12, while getting dragged by the Glimmung

Added

• with the swap to a newer engine, we are now using a newer input system, which allows us to respond better to different VR devices - so we upgraded to OpenXR, as OpenVR will be deprecated by VR runtimes like Oculus, SteamVR etc.

• we are now using Screen Spaced Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) as a post effect

• we added a new system to reduce the Vertex Count of assets within their lowest LoDs, saving up performance

Changed

• General: Upgraded to a newer Engine Version (from Unity 2019.4 to Unity 2020.3)

• AdjustedGeneralUpdated various external and internal packages to provide better long term service

• General: switched from the web-Gitlab to our inhouse Git, to provide better controllability

• Assets: Chrysaora jellyfish is now way more performant (shaderbased)

• Environment: each scene was filled with lots of chunk over the past development years. We cleaned that up, saving lots of vertices and objects, without changing the experience visually. Also increasing our flexibility to work on issues.

• AdjustedEnvironmentadjusted the vertex distribution in each scene. That means, we are trying to achieve a well balanced scene, where small objects have a low amount of vertices and big objects have a higher amount.
• AdjustedVegetationSlightly increased the count in Scenes 4, 5, 6, 7
• AdjustedVegetationSlightly reduced the count in Scenes 12 and 14 as it was necessary to provide performance

Fixed

• fixed every broken Scatter throughout the experience

• fixed an issue, when the Torchlight was rendered behind certain objects

Removed

• removed a feature, that was causing render issues (Tearing) in VR

• fully disabled reflection probes for now, as they were causing lots of lightmaps issues; can be reimplemented when everything else is fixed

• fully disabled the Biolum Control feature, as it was deprecated and nowhere (throughout the experience) used any longer

• fully disabled any island-based realtime custom lights, as they were pretty performance expensive and we were not using them with their initial use-case. Almost all custom lights are now used as bakelights, except for a few hero animations.

• fully disabled the GlimCall ShaderSubmodule as it was never used any longer and slowing down the experience