OfficeHours:ProbablePrime:2023-03-28
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It is the top of the hour so go ahead and get started. Welcome to Office Hours, the half hour segment where I answer your questions about Nias.
Please drop your questions in the Office Hours text chat and I'll get to them in the order that they appear.
If you don't know why you're here or you're hearing a voice and you don't know why it's because you clicked an announcement that appeared and you've now joined the Office Hours meeting stage.
Please stay, ask questions about Nias, I'll answer them in the order that they appear.
We have a question. Ray! Lex asks
What do you think would be a good world permission setup and access level be for users who, for someone who wants to create something
but doesn't mind visitors watching but also gets distracted easily?
I've been thinking about this a lot and like
I built a few things as well when I was trying to do it a while ago.
Think about limiting
limiting stuff by both the permission system. So the permission system by just setting them to spectator
they won't be able to spawn anything. Loads of people will literally lose their minds if they can't spawn stuff.
That's more sort of function of them than you though, because if you've ever played other VR platforms
you can't spawn stuff in those platforms. So just sit still and don't squirm about that one.
The next level you can do is some form of like notification when they join the world like hey, I'm building like don't distract me.
But I've also been experimenting with like red velvet ropes if that makes sense.
I didn't do it in that way. I think I did it with like just like a like a sphere or a cylinder mesh.
Where it's like hey, don't like don't cross this line, right? I made it so like they were still with an earshot.
They could still talk to me, but it's like don't like don't get up in my space, you know.
But more than like personal space where you know, they're like, you know in your personal space. It's more like workshop space.
Almost felt like a museum. That wasn't that effective, but it did prevent the amazing problem.
Which is people who like to enter this thing that you're building go right inside it. Their entire
avatar, like put their butt square in your logics and then go FK or spawn a whisper bubble.
They've just got like no concept of what's behind them. Which means like that's like another good thing like for everyone who's playing.
Be aware of your surroundings. So as an example here,
many of you I hope have some form of drink near you. It might be in a cup or a can or a bottle or whatever it is.
You know where that is and you have knowledge about where that is.
So you're not gonna just like, you know, flail your arms around or whatever and knock it over.
The same thing needs to happen in VR.
Like if you're standing in an area, be aware of what's behind you to the left of you to the right of you. The amount of
times I just get like
unsolicited like butts in my face because people just aren't aware of their surroundings about where people are is just amazing.
Like, you know, if VR has this gigantic field of view,
use it.
Situational and positional awareness of things. Don't knock over that cup. Don't go AFK inside someone's logics.
I'll just kick you these days because like you clearly don't understand boundaries or anything like that.
If you go AFK inside my logics.
Beyond that another thing I've considered doing but I don't know if people would be up for or joining is
similar to the prime exhibition thing is making it so spectators can't spawn their own avatar and so spectators are muted. At that point
it sort of becomes stuffy though and you sort of turns into sort of like a performance piece
where it's like welcome to the theater.
Prime is at the center of the theater on stage playing the violin. You're expected to be quiet whilst this happens.
So I don't really know if that actually works.
I think I had to do that once because I was just like, you know, people just get it.
Once people understand it, they get kind of like good at it. I've had lots of experience with people sort of
have been watching me build stuff for a bit and then other people come in and the new people that come in kind of sort
of get wrangled by the old people. It's like hey, you know come over here, Prime's building, we can chat over here, right?
They're over in the corner like enjoying memes and stuff and still engaging conversation with me
but they're kind of self wrangling themselves into a corner. Honestly though
I think one of the bigger things you can do is expose people to that being a problem.
I noticed a lot of people hide in private worlds, which is absolutely fine.
But if the reason that you're hiding in a private world is because you can't set boundaries with people that enter your world
then perhaps try setting boundaries in your open world, right?
There is a problem in
the furry community in general where confrontation of any kind is avoided
and I actually want to change that. Like I had an idea,
I probably won't do it particularly whilst this, you know, messy announcements channel is in place, of
doing like a Neos debate club. Like the reason why they do debate clubs at like high schools, etc. is to get people
used to the idea that having differing opinions is okay and
having healthy discussions about those differing opinions is also okay.
A good example I give to people is your favorite color is not my favorite color and that's fine.
No one needs to be angry about it. No one needs to be upset about it.
But it just seems like particularly with the furry community when there is any disagreement whatsoever
it turns into like a gigantic deal that can lead to sort of like I'll cancel you on Twitter proportions over just like silly things.
It's like just like recognize that not everyone is out to be a vicious attacker at you.
Some are of course, but let them prove to you that that's what they're there to do.
Don't assume that that's what they're there to do. I met this person in in Viaca over the weekend and
they were saying something along the lines of like there were lots of
Brazilian population were in the world and he was actually, you know, trying to learn the language.
We had another Brazilian who was translating for us. It was quite a good conversation.
But this person who was learning it
or sort of lamenting about like how it was easier for people to learn languages when they're younger
and you know, I piped up and said, you know, you're absolutely right. Here's why etc.
And then I said but you're doing a good job
like, you know, because I could recognize that they were doing a good job.
But for some reason they they took that as like a personal attack. I was like, yeah, it is gonna be harder for you.
But you are doing a good job. I was basically complimenting them on the fact that they were doing a good job.
But they were like, oh, hang on a minute. Like I told you you were doing a good job and explained why it's harder.
That's that's all I did.
And it was okay if like that was the only time it happened, but like pretty much everything I said to them
they treated it as like an attack and I'm just like hey just like chill out, please. So yeah set boundaries.
There's nothing wrong with saying like hey, can you move backwards a bit?
If they can't see on Twitter over that then they weren't worth speaking to in the first place.
Moving onwards to Fance conversation. Question even.
Fance says, is there a method
stroke app to clean the assets folder and see the dependencies and links in the hierarchy explicitly?
I've tried to use the asset tool in the us, but it deleted objects that I want to keep in my entire tavern.
So I'm having trust issues of that tool. It depends how you're using it.
I know of one user who will remain unnamed because it was a really unfortunate thing.
They put their entire world inside the assets folder in the slot hierarchy and it deleted itself because that's what the asset folder is meant to do.
So don't do that.
I've seen one person that does that so I presume other people might be accidentally doing that. And then the thing there is to understand
what is going on there with that asset folder. By default in the session settings page
you've got the clean up unused assets checked on. That should always be checked on.
There's no reason to have it not checked on. That will be cleaning up unused assets.
Like so you shouldn't need to do anything there.
The problem that you might have though is where the
Neo system thinks the assets are still being used and won't remove them from that folder.
I honestly wouldn't worry about it
but if you are going to worry about it
make sure that you close the world and reopen it. Because just closing the world and reopening it will like clear out a lot.
Like for example, if someone comes into your world spawns out a bunch of shit, like it's gonna be in the assets folder for a while.
But if you close the world and reopen it to continue working on it, that asset folder will be cleaned up.
Additionally remember things such as the pink trashcan is the best thing for handling those assets. Beyond that
I'd have to take a look at exactly what you're doing in that world because there might be some issues there.
But provided the automatically clean up checkbox is enabled, you shouldn't have to use that tool there.
That tool should be entirely safe. It just you just you have to figure out what you're doing.
Lex jumping around because Lex says I know one reason to turn off that checkbox.
Model plan emotions in a model only the first one gets set up and it will delete the rest since they're not referenced.
You can prevent that by putting a component called an asset provider or asset loader.
I think it's one of those. The asset provider or asset loader will keep the asset loaded in the world and prevent it from being
chunked up.
So try that. I don't remember if it's loader or provider though, so try both.
You shouldn't usually need to do that because I don't know if it's like this in the hierarchy tree, but
the like static mesh and
animation you do to add like those sorts of components they might inherit the behavior from the asset loader component.
So don't like go adding them for everything.
You only need to add it in the particular case where you're sort of swapping out the references to multiple animations.
If you search for asset load or asset provider in this discord, I think you'll even find a lovely
fruit something about them. I'll still wait for another question. I'm gonna cut this loose thread out of my clothing. There we go.
Vacuum. I'm gonna do that immediately following this. I'm gonna vacuum.
Okay, we have another question. Does slot order affect the order in which a world is loaded and if so, how strictly?
I don't know, but I wouldn't want you
doing it that way. I don't think it does.
Biggest thing you can do for world loading is make sure that you watch the very very very first tutorial
I ever made and set your floor collider up correctly.
So many people don't do that or they put like a
cylinder procedural mesh in the floor because they don't understand how the floor stuff works.
So they're just like, well if the world doesn't load you'll land on the cylinder and I'm like, oh you could just make it
so I hover in the air until the floor loads and they're like how?
And I'm like, it's only the first tutorial I ever ever recorded.
That says I guess I made a mistake setting up the world. I have a lot in that folder holders.
I don't know what you mean by holders.
Holders get spawned a lot when using red X, but they shouldn't occur in normal world operations.
So I really don't know what you're doing, but I think you're doing something wrong.
You shouldn't have anything inside the asset folder
that you've explicitly put there. If you have to go in there, you should question why you should go in there.
Like of course you can, I'm not saying you can't. I'm just saying like if you have to go in there
it means that you're into some pretty advanced stuff like regular
like world building shouldn't mean anyone to go in that folder or take a look at it.
Oh, yeah, there is there is like holder dash assets in there. Yeah. Yeah, just like
move everything outside of that folder that is stuff that you've added to the world yourself.
You shouldn't be putting stuff in there.
I'd love to sort of get some way to sort of separate it from the rest of the components and slots in the hierarchy
so it's more clear because now we've had two people that I know of that have made that mistake, but
nothing you make should go in there. As for seeing the links, no, there's no way to see the links there.
But like I said, you shouldn't need to go in there. Like it should be automatically taken care of.
The automatically clean up asset checkbox in the session settings should be doing everything for you.
As should when you restart the world, it should flush out all the sort of guns, lasers and avatars people spawn in.
Don't like don't go in there. If you're like hyper optimizing, which I know I know the Discord love,
they're like, oh my god, let's like avoid logics because it's bad. It's not bad.
Let's like mono pack because that makes it better. It really doesn't make it that much better.
Let's like, you know, discuss the intricacies between value driver and value copy and I'm like, oh my god,
just like I get it, but like relax a little bit.
Like there is such a thing as like too much optimization. The most complicated world
I've ever done is my virtual surgical planning world.
I haven't thought about optimization ever. It runs at 90 FPS when we're doing surgery.
So like I have never thought about optimizing it.
There's lots of stuff I could do but it runs at 90 FPS when there's three surgeons in there discussing a surgery.
So I don't really care.
All right, let's take a look. Specs asks, why is it sometimes I can't use fly locomotion if I haven't walked or initialized the floor yet?
Yeah, that's just like fly locomotion is physical locomotion. So it's probably still waiting for the floor collider to be there.
I've also experienced the thing where like you have to walk on it once before you can fly.
That might be a bug in the fly locomotion preset.
But we'd have to look look into that one.
It might just be because like the physical locomotion was like just slightly
gently hammered to make the fly locomotion.
So maybe that's the problem. Shadow says, I'm curious just how some worlds have dedicated loading zones that always load first.
Give me an example and we can go take a look at it. We can load into it and inspect a bunch of stuff.
Simple things tend to load faster though.
So like text and just like a standard material that just has a color on it. That doesn't need to load texture files.
So sometimes that would just load faster just because it's simple.
So that might be what they're doing. I'll have to see what they're doing.
There is the possibility that there is some sort of mod that allows you to sort of interface in that system or somehow
I don't know. There's nothing I can think of the top of my head.
I can like go look there now, but I will run out of time quickly if I just went and did that.
All right, I'm Aaron has a question.
Do you think it'd be good idea for the future for Neos to officially make versions of user-created systems such as world cleanup systems or
world coloring systems?
Yes.
Something which is like always been part of Neos's philosophy is
allowing you to customize everything whilst also providing sort of sane defaults. Good example being the avatar system.
It's called the common avatar system because you can make other avatar systems.
I've yet to see anyone that actually does this. Closest would be the any land folks who do it in a good way.
But I think it's wrong. I think Frix intended you to do it slightly differently, but like hey, it doesn't matter.
There are ways to avoid using the common avatar system to make avatars that Frix has talked about before but hasn't really explained.
But the point is we would probably provide some sort of automated system to do it in the future.
But that would be sort of an optional system that maybe would would enable on new worlds by default just to give new users or
new world creators a good thing. Maybe there'll be a panel or configuration dialogue to turn it off if you want to use your own one.
But we're never going to prevent
the community from making their own.
Particularly if they think their own is better in some way for some feature.
But yeah, it would be good idea to have good sane defaults. I want a good sane default for culling.
Audio zones, I want to fix up that. It's wrong. I don't know what's wrong about it, but it's wrong right now.
I shouldn't be able to hear someone from like
miles away on the map, but doesn't make any sense.
World cleanup is a difficult one.
Because while yeah, we could totally add that as a native system that also is again a social thing.
People need to be told and taught that that is a problem that they are making MS.
Another good one is gestures. Like I just I hate hand-based gestures with a passion.
And you can't convince me elsewhere.
I use my hands a lot when talking anyway.
And so I don't have time for them to be in particular hand shapes to make me smile or whatever.
That's just it just it's it's not the way that it's meant to be done. The face tracker would be closer to all the way
it's meant to be done.
But like it's not meant to be hand driven.
Like there are some people that for example like if their hand is closed their eyes are closed.
I'm just like what if you're holding something? Doesn't make any sense to me.
But having said that we may want to add a
standard system for that that's really easy to use. I'm thinking like you know select the gesture point, select the thing you want to do, done.
I know that there are tons of community-made systems that do that.
But they always have a point where you can see that they're not native.
Like what was one actually in the in the MMC this year, and it was like almost perfect
but didn't work with my avatar for some reason.
And also you know requires a lot of haggy stuff behind the scene to sort of find an open inspector.
It's just like it shouldn't be complicated.
So again making that system will be good. Again of course allowing for people to make their own.
I'm happy so I have to do thumbs up or I'm not happy.
Oh, I want to be sad so I have to like you know do the American Sign Language sign for like
poo poo poo poo, and then my like face turns into like a sad face. Like it just it
There's this TV show called The Magicians
which is a magic show and well that makes it sound like you know pulling rabbits out of a hat.
It's a show about magic. It's really good, but
they have a very particular way of doing magic which is
incredibly hand-based and
I always think whatever like I see people in VRChat are like yeah, that that looks like exactly what you're doing with your hands
just to make yourself smile.
I'm just looking at the gifts available for the show because I don't want any spoilers because there are so many like
You know some shows have like really big spoilers like you know season 12 this person dies season 13 this person like
commits mass murder or whatever like Magicians has got like five or so of that like level of spoiler per season
so like it's very difficult.
Okay, here's the here's the closest gift. I don't even remember the context of this one
but like it's just like it's so over the top and
all he gets is a glowy bracelet, and I don't remember what the glowy bracelet does.
No
I'd have to look at the the timing
but Magicians is based on a book series that describes these hand movements quite well as far as I remember.
It's Dr. Strange is always weird because they
they just summon like orange circles.
It's all they do and then that's what you don't like you see in the films you see all of the sort of acolytes
I guess they're all just like summoning orange circles and then Dr. Strange and
the other guy the Asian guy he like they're the only ones that get to do like what looks like any
anything that isn't an orange circle.
Moving on to actual questions.
It's a really good show guys you should you should watch it if anyone does watch it when you're done
there's like five seasons so come back after five seasons. Let me know you'll be glad.
There's a musical episode per season as well, and it always makes sense it doesn't feel forced.
Anyway back to questions.
Ered says if you were to make a gesture system how would you personally have users interact with it? Would it be a component that drives blend chips or would it be a logic system?
It it would not be obvious to the user that they are
doing anything technical and that's the big challenge.
If you think about things like actually here's a good example
an installer for an application on your computer when you install an application on your computer
you're just going next next next on a wizard right maybe you select which folder or hard drive it goes to or what parts of the
software you want, but you're not doing anything really technical there
you're just making choices, and then you're hitting next. You can install applications another way
which is downloading a zip unzipping it and then run the EXE that happens a lot with more
open source based applications because they don't have the
will or in some cases the money to make a standard installer application
and then that's you know more technical and then you get the amazingly technical thing
which is trying to install nvidia drivers on Linux like right now gesture systems without
things that made like the MMC one I mentioned they feel like trying to install nvidia graphics card drivers on Linux
with the systems they feel like you know downloading and extracting a zip archive
but what I want is just like the installation wizard you know where it's like ah
you know welcome to the avatar setup
what do you want to do and then like oh I want it to serve my like thumbs up like I do the like closed eyes
and my eyes are smiley and my face is smiley and like you know
candy
candy cane falls out my ears great cool. We'll set that up for you without any technicalities
I don't really know what that looks like blend shapes are totally easy
And the other thing is like with a Neos built one we could handle the multiple blend shapes driving problem
Which is like one of the like major
major like bottlenecks I see in people's brains when it comes to gestures they can't they can't
make the sort of
intuition about how to do that
Whereas we could just handle that right they would they would maybe select their gestures
And then we would just behind the scenes we would do it however we wanted to do it drive nose components
Whatever you want. Shadow says speaking of ease of use do you think a GPT
4 powered knee assistant could be possible in the future. Yeah sure I mean it'll probably be a plug-in right now
and the reason is because
You guys integrating it perfectly fine us integrating it we're gonna have to pay
Open air money the other thing is like AI is growing exponentially
But I want to make sure that enough people understand
What's actually happening which is all GPT 4 does is it predicts the most likely next character in a response?
And it looks really good
But like it does make errors and I worry that like a lot of people are going like it looks cool because it works 90%
Of the time, but like it's really bad in some cases. It's almost like remember that thing at school where
You know you were told you couldn't use Wikipedia for your research. It's like oh, okay
Why it's like oh because Wikipedia doesn't validate its sources it does and it did at the time that you're in school, but
It's the crew of doing that and Wikipedia does not validate its sources, right?
It doesn't validate its sources because in some cases it doesn't understand its sources right its sources
Just oh, it's a 80% chance that an E occurs after this character
I will put an either even if it makes no sense. It just happens to make sense a lot of the time
I also don't know how it would handle
Continually to being updated right so the problem is right now. I don't know V for as I'm a little too V for was enough
But I knew that V3 was up to sort of the end of 2021 so it's already two years out of date
We need to get to a point where we can feed new information into it like it needs
Let's say there's a new update to Neos it has a new component and new logics node
We need to know about that and so we'd probably need like sub brains
I think is the term where we're able to update its knowledge based on the Neos update notes based on new documentation
Right now that would require probably like additional training or retraining. I don't know how that would work thought Bing was a different model
oh well
It's something that like I probably should have got into if I wasn't in like Neos
Sometimes I'm just like if Neos didn't exist like would I have more or less
money fun fame happiness
Excitement with my day, and I don't I don't know at this point. You know I was really into motor sports
I hate motor sport racing, but I was into the technical parts of it. I would never get on a motorcycle
You couldn't pay me a million dollars to get on a motorcycle
But I was into the sport racing as a technical thing because that was my job, and it was really fun
Then that died and I found mixer, and it was like cool. I'm into video game streaming
I guess and then it was like yeah, but I'm on my own in my bedroom
Living room, and it was like cool. I'll put on this VR headset
I bought and it was VRChat VRChat VRChat, and it's like oh Neos is cool. Yeah, Prime doesn't even ride a scooter
I have one of those like electric scooters. I'm just terrified of it
I used to own a one-wheel if anyone knows the one-wheel yeah, you probably understand why I sold it
Those things are just scary I used to be quite proficient at riding it
But I felt like I was gonna die whilst riding it so I I saw that here we go
Here's a gif of a man riding a one-wheel so it's self balancing via
like Sentra what's from a call it force and
You lean forward to go faster lean back to go slower
If you push it too far by leaning forwards too much or going at too high a speed it will
Adjust its velocity to tell you you're going too fast by
the result you get there is it will tip backwards and that's saying bro slow down and
90% of one-wheel users ignore that and they push even faster and
Then it just cuts out because it can't keep you balanced anymore
And then you face plant onto the floor, and it's like the number one complaint with those things
But it's mentioned in the safety manual, but no one reads it so you know there. We go. I was riding it
Let's just say like one quarter of that speed it has like modes in the app
But you can set it on and they're all called like really like space age things like Sequoia and stuff like that
But basically it's like baby a little bit less of a baby, and I want to break my face
It's like the last mode. I don't know what it's actually called, but it's pretty much that yeah, I sold it
I sold it for like pretty much
The same I bought it from as well, which is amazing and when I gave it to the person
I was like you know this will like kill you if you're not careful right and he's like yeah
I've got one of the small ones. I think they're called pints
I just wanted to upgrade to the big one and I'm like okay
Just don't kill yourself then he gave me the money and I kind of just left knowing he might accidentally kill himself
But there we go
I don't recommend them the whole idea was to get that and then one wheel to the officer back, but then you know I
Scary anyway that we are at half past
I'm gonna go ahead and leave off here if you have any additional questions people in the questions that help Channel
DM me or whatever you'd like oh and one final note make tickets like if you have a moderation issue make tickets
I got a few DMS this week, and it's just like make a ticket. It's moderation make a ticket
I'm probably asleep or eating cheese. I will speak to you again later