v1.2.4: Slide Locomotion, Smooth Camera, Section Audio Export

If you’ve ever wanted a different way to move around an EXA layout, the new “slide locomotion” mode might be for you! Rather than the jump+turn of EXA’s standard teleportation, the new sliding feature allows you to drift and turn smoothly. This is especially helpful for seated players, but is also very useful for gliding around smoothly while recording/streaming your EXA session. And to make your recording/streaming process even better, you can now toggle a “smooth camera” mode (with the “C” key). This camera improves the quality of your monitor’s video output (not the headset’s output), with smoothed motions and brighter colors. Note that this camera mode has a performance cost, so it’s best to use it while recording or performing for an audience. You can now export entire sections to WAV audio files. Previously, audio export was limited to individual loops. See the notes below for details about the duration of a section’s exported audio file. This release also includes several performance optimizations, a more efficient “loop duration” menu, a new option for automatic loop quantization, and many fixes. Thank you to the EXA community for the feedback and ideas! Please watch/share the new update video below, and read through this page to learn more. --- UPDATE VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f46Zy-fbvc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f46Zy-fbvc) SHARE! Twitter: Release Announcement /"Circle Motion" Music Video Reddit: Release Announcement /"Circle Motion" Music Video SLIDE LOCOMOTION

• To enable the “Slide Locomotion” feature, use the “Application > Interaction > Slide Locomotion” checkbox. When “slide” is enabled, the standard teleportation system becomes disabled -- only one of these modes can be active at a time.

• Once slide locomotion mode is enabled, trigger the locomotion mode by holding down the same controller button that you use for standard teleportation. The handle graphics in EXA show an icon on the correct button to remind you. For the Vive controllers, press the top quarter of either thumbpad. For Oculus Touch, press either upper button (Y or B).

• To slide, press the controller’s locomotion/teleportation button. The initial handle position, upon button press, becomes the center point of the slide interaction. Keeping the button held down, move the controller left/right/forward/back to begin sliding your position. To turn, keep the handle laying mostly flat (i.e. pointing ahead of you), and twist it (like a doorknob or steering wheel) to the left or right.

• Increase the sliding speed by moving the handle further from the center point of the slide interaction. Increase the turning speed by twisting the handle further from its baseline rotation.

• For greater comfort, the headset displays a “tunnel vision” effect while turning with the slide locomotion feature. Nevertheless, this feature may still be uncomfortable for motion-sensitive players – if so, the standard teleportation system is recommended.

• The slide interaction interface is currently two simple meters. The twist meter appears immediately, and fills up based on the turn speed (left or right). The movement meter grows larger as the handle moves away from the center, fills up based on the motion speed, and its arrow shape points in the direction of motion.

SMOOTH CAMERA

• When enabled, the new “smooth camera” affects the visual output that appears on your desktop/monitor -- it does not change the visual output within the headset.

• Toggle between the “original camera” and “smooth camera” using the “C” key on the keyboard.

• The smooth camera follows the headset very closely, introducing a slight lag in order to smooth out the positional/rotational jitter of the headset.

• The smooth camera has a slightly larger field-of-view and adds some visual filters to improve the quality of display.

• Important note: the smooth camera mode does have an impact on EXA’s overall performance, as it requires the app to perform additional rendering. You can reduce this performance impact by reducing the “Application > Visual > VR Pixels” slider value, which causes less rendering work to be done for your headset’s display.

• In general, use the “smooth camera” while recording videos, streaming your session, or playing for an audience. Otherwise, use the original camera mode to avoid unnecessary performance burdens.

SECTION AUDIO EXPORT

• Added the ability to export an entire section (a collection of organized loops) to a WAV audio file.

• Exporting a section is just like exporting a loop. Use the “Sections > Selection > Export Audio” menu to begin the export process. A progress bar fills to 100% as the export process completes.

• Because a section contains loops that can repeat forever, the section exporter must pick a maximum duration. The exporter calculates a duration that includes all repetitions of non-infinite loops and at least two repetitions of any infinite loop. The best way to extend the duration of your section export is to apply non-infinite repetition to at least one of the section’s loops (via the “Loops > Within Section” menu), and increase the repetition count until it reaches/exceeds the desired duration.

• Like the loop export, you can select multiple sections and export them all with a single button press. The export process completes each section one at a time, showing the progress along the way.

• The section and loop export processes are independent from each other, making it possible to have both types of exports processing simultaneously.

OPTIMIZATION

• Replaced the geometry-based loop/section grids with texture-based grids. These textures update line thicknesses to accommodate changes to beats per measure and/or number of note-rows within a loop.

• Addressed performance bottlenecks found in 1000+ ringer scenarios. These improvements involved reduction in unnecessary work, sharing a single material across all ringers, and adding some parallel-processing to speed through calculations.

• Improved performance when many robot/avatar performers are active by parallel-processing the “cursor tail” path/mesh calculations.

OTHER

• Improved the “Loops > Duration” menu, adding buttons that allow for jumping by 10 or 100 beats. This should speed up the menu usage for loops that require large changes to duration.

• Disabled automatic quantization (to sixteenth beats) as the default loop behavior. This feature was intended to help “clean up” recordings (quantization aligns the loop’s notes to the beat), however, this benefit has been more than offset by the trouble/confusion it causes new players. Quantization can negatively impact various types of recordings, including guitar/harp style strumming and free-form recordings that aren’t meant to align to the metronome beats. Note that the “Loops > Levels > Quantize” slider is still available for changing the quantization after recording is complete.

• Added the “Application > Audio > Auto Loop Quantize” slider to adjust the default loop behavior. Quantization works best for percussive performances (with the “strike” tool) where each note is meant to align nicely with the metronome beats. With this new slider, EXA players can choose to enable automatic quantization for certain performances or scenarios, and then disable it for others.

• Improved the save/load layout system, notably for handling large layout files. In the loading menu, a progress percentage appears while loading/parsing the raw layout file. Once the “Load Layout” button is selected, another progress percentage appears while EXA is building the new layout items. In the saving menu, when the “Save Layout” button is selected, progress appears in two parts: a percentage while EXA collects the layout data, and an increasing file-size while that data is being converted/saved to a file. To avoid save/load conflicts, and to ensure saving completes correctly, the entire “Layout” menu is disabled during the save process.

• Updated graphics and screenshots (for Steam and in-app) to use EXA’s new visual style, which shows the music-viz background and a robot/avatar performer.

FIXES

• Fixed issue causing an app crash if the “loop duration” menu was used in a specific way. The menu now resets the offset values to zero to when the loop selection changes, which avoids the failure scenario (where some stale offset values could lead to a loop with a zero-or-less duration).

• Fixed issue causing the loop recorder interface to become hidden after a loop or section clone action (reappearing after saving/reloading the layout).

• Fixed issue causing the Soundfont loader to fail for Soundfonts that provide invalid sample-data boundary information. Now, when this occurs, the Soundfont will load successfully, and EXA will consider any of those invalid samples to be unavailable.

• Fixed issue causing a loop's sustained prox/bow notes to never stop after switching directly between "looped" and "one-time" playback modes.