OK, so it's 4 p.m. That means it's time for office hours with prime.
So drop your questions in the office hours text chat,
and we will get them answered in turn,
Uh, reminder for, uh, this week, uh, we are recording this,
and it will be uploaded to sounder, which will then transcribe it.
Still working with how that will work.
Um, I had feedback last week to the developers of the application.
Um, their transcription editor is a bit weird, but, uh, they are working on it.
Once that's fixed.
I should be able to download that transcription as a VST file,
which is a lot easier to format than the current presentation on sounder.
But, uh, hey, we're working on it.
The idea is just to, like, automate as much as possible.
Um, because automation is cool.
I've noticed that it gets, uh,
me. When I mispronounce stuff, it gets them completely wrong.
So I got to, like, concentrate on pronouncing stuff appropriately,
so I don't see any questions in the office hours text chat,
So please drop them in if you have questions.
If not, I'm just going to sit here and, uh,
make funny noises occasionally
of a particular note this week. Uh, it was a small change to my,
uh, um, modern plug-in policy. Uh, the only change.
There was just a small clarification on the sort of github
reporting. It's not a requirement. It's just a request. Like, if you would like,
uh, you can drop your git hub.
Uh, drop your links on github to the mods that solve a problem.
Uh, we do encourage it, though If we don't know that your mod is solving a problem,
then we can't fix it.
Uh, ideally, if your mod is solving a problem which lots of users face,
I'd love to actually include it in Neo's actuality.
Uh, a good example there being the inspector alignment fix. Um, so I think it was a
that made that one originally as a mod.
I then implemented it into neos actual, and we got it fixed up,
so it was good to see.
So Moni is speaking about the
troller mod that disables tank controls.
That is a perfect example of something that we will go into the new settings panel.
For those unaware on our road map is the settings panel
we'll be reworking the settings panel such that we can fit
unlimited settings. You know, they, like unlimited power gift.
Just imagine it of, like
face. And if someone would like actually edit this, I will love you forever.
I want ru's
face on, um
on what's his face off?
Forgotten his name? Palpatine. Emperor Palpatine?
Yeah.
His face on Emperor power to be changed the lighting to to to
yellow and then unlimited settings That would be the new settings panel.
And, uh, the new settings panel will allow, you know, just unlimited settings.
And at that point, it'll basically be like,
What do you want a setting for cool. It's implemented now.
It won't be fast, depending on what it is.
We still have to write code for that setting.
But the idea is that we can, um
we can make settings for that and and sort of do them.
There are a couple of things which, like the modern community know,
are just booleans.
And they're like, Why can't you just put a check box on the setting screen?
If you look at the setting screen, we're out of room.
We're just out of room.
We can like shoehorn new settings in, but like we're just taking the stance.
Hey, let's redo the settings thing because, like, remember, all work takes time,
and we don't want to do work that we can undo or have to undo.
And the settings panel is something we have to undo. So,
tap dancing, I guess.
I see any other questions.
So I'm going to sit here and look at all the emails that are coming in, Um, for me,
because I'm having a busy week this week,
we have a question. I'm so happy we have a question. Keep them coming.
Um, so specs asks, Speaking of mods,
I currently use a mod that makes my inspector match my user colour
very handy for organising when there's a bunch of people building together
any thoughts on places where user colour may be useful in general,
Um, I'd like to see it
as many places as it makes sense. We could use it on other panels like logic panels.
We could use it on, um,
just sort of all sorts of things.
Uh, for those who are unaware,
the user colour is a facet which is available nearest essentials,
which changes a cloud variable which is sort of like your
selected colour.
I wouldn't say favourite colour,
but lots of people do make it their favourite colour.
Um, the new default headset and hands avatar will then use that colour, uh,
for the sort of colour of the of the headset and hands so you can customise it
and, uh,
you can tie into it.
It's a cloud variable that anyone can read So anyone can
take a look at that and sort of be like,
cool.
I want my, uh,
inspector to be that colour.
Uh, the important thing, though,
with colours being I'm slightly colour blind is that you don't use it as the single,
uh, like descriptor of, Of who?
Something is like if if
inspectors have the concept of being owned,
then maybe put their user name in the title bar or something like that,
um, we don't want to just say like, cool.
Uh, stop prime. That's a red inspector that belongs to the specs.
You can't touch that inspector like I. I don't like maybe I don't know.
It's red like you know, it should be clear.
It's good for organisation.
It also lets me sort of identify that one person who has
an inspector 2 ft to the left for the exact same object,
but opens up another one anyway because, you know,
they like that one. Better
I do that all the time or everyone does. They're like, cool.
I know there's one over here, but I need one over here and
yeah,
it's fun.
There are some times where I have to, like,
stop when I'm building and I close all my
inspectors down and then I become really just,
like, descriptive about them.
I'm like, OK, I need one for this.
I need one for that because otherwise I'm just juggling them around,
and it's just it gets chaotic.
Like when I was doing the M MC voting system again this year,
I just sufficiently needed three different locations,
but kept using, like
the, you know, location one for location three and swapping it around.
And so I just had to stop close all the inspectors and say like, OK,
this is the location one Inspector, this is the location two, inspector,
and this is the location three.
Inspector,
I could make copies of those by grabbing the top of the inspector.
Um, the slot and then, uh, primary triggering, and that would make a copy of it.
Fantastic.
But, um,
the important thing being that those three always
existed so I could quickly refer to them.
I guess that's maybe a sort of a signaler that, uh,
inspector based shortcuts for recession might be a good feature. But hey,
road map. New inspectors,
uh, tap dancing monkey
cuso
here has a great question.
Uh, Sassi
asks. I'll toss one out there to fill the silence.
I haven't had a lot of good neos spaces, guides or tutorials on logics.
Nodes on maths related to transforms vectors, Cartesian coordinates,
3D space et cetera.
In neos.
Is there a good starting point you could recommend For those of us
who have forgotten what we learned in trigger don't do game development.
It's
a game job.
Uh, I don't know,
but I'd actually recommend you look at the
problem from a game development point of view.
Uh, for example, instead of worrying like, um,
that you here's one that I came across in making a game many years ago was I needed a,
um,
a two D missile shot from a spaceship
to angle itself towards the player spaceship and,
you know, crash into it.
There's actually a lot of maths in that
and instead of, you know, learning trigonometry from the sort of, you know, uh
oh,
so
let's do 50 exercises based on. So,
um, I just Googled
that exact problem and got the mathematics for it,
and I learned the mathematics for it in a sort of reverse point of view.
Like I, I learned the solution
using the problem.
And then, by learning the solution, I learned the generic math concept there.
You're looking for a 10 2 if you want to do that,
um,
something to do with, like, the rotation compared to the like, blah, blah, blah.
I also really want to re
learn trigonometry,
um,
using, uh, tau,
which is two times pi,
Uh, rather than pi, because pie is kind of silly. Um, if you learn it using tau,
it's a lot easier.
I also want to learn, um, trigonometry using radiant rather than degrees,
because I hear it's a lot easier to work with Radiant,
Uh, for those sort of
I wanna say fixed in your ways, I don't mean it negatively.
I just mean like this is how education teaches you it. So it's it's understandable,
Um, doing rotational maths using degrees is actually harder than it needs to be.
Uh, doing it in radiant is apparently easier.
And the reason behind that is that, uh,
radiant are a float based sort of arithmetic system, whereas degrees are like,
Well, 3 60 is
I got to go back to zero,
or it's like, radiance. You can just keep going and stuff like that. So
it makes some of the maths easier, but it is sort of like a
rip out your existing knowledge and put in new knowledge to learn it. You can't, um
you have to just sort of, like, forget what? You know, I guess a little bit
in my, uh, public folder in utilities or tools.
I don't remember which there is a, uh, three dimensional co, not cone.
Which maps, um,
the colour values of R GB onto a cylinder. Not R GB
R GB. No, no huge saturation of value. Yeah.
Um,
because I was trying to explain the concept
of how how colour is a three dimensional number
and someone didn't understand that.
So I made it into a cone but I couldn't get the maths right,
and I was using degrees and earth.
Mark came in
and he just converted all the maps to using radiant, and it was like half the nodes.
I don't know why. Like every time I look at it, I'm like, that makes sense.
And then I pack it, and I forget instantly.
There's a number of things in that in life that are like, exactly like that,
like someone will explain it to me and then I'll just instantly forget it.
The one that comes to mind is like the difference between in military,
between an enlisted officer and a commissioned officer.
I still don't quite understand that. And don't explain it to me.
I'll forget instantly. It's just a plague of my life.
Every time it becomes important for a conversation, I'll re-look it up,
Um,
another one being voltage.
I don't understand what voltage is in a circuit, and again don't explain it to me.
I'll forget
I would have had a lot better time learning electronics if I just accepted
that voltage was a thing, and I didn't question what it was.
Same goes of languages as well.
Like I had a lot of struggle struggle, learning languages because I'm like, Well,
why does, like, you know, French, German, et cetera.
Why does each word need a gender? Why does it have a gender?
Who decides what the gender of it is?
Um, if I just accepted, it did.
Like sometimes in education there is, like,
a warranted part of just accepting that you were given this knowledge because
you need to learn it.
Not in maths, though. Screw maths. Like I learned maths so much easier in 3D.
I've actually considered doing this.
I know that, um, Tom Fox is trying to do it and looking at tools to help them do it.
Uh, teach and tutor using me
to describe sort of mathematical constructs and stuff.
But I was wondering, like
if I could branch out my neo tutorials to just like, pure mathematic tutorials like
Lesson one Pythagoras theorem with prime And like, it would be in
neos
and look like a neo tutorial. But it would actually be learning like core math and
therefore, like someone who might not be interested in neos itself,
would still learn, like core math from that tutorial,
like as an example, I was never given. Um
I was never given, like this picture when Pythagorus was explained to me
and so I didn't understand what squaring a number meant.
But here it's quite easy to see right you get
when you square that number,
you get the area of that square. So the area of square a
plus, the area of square B is the area of
square C, and you're just like, Oh, that makes a lot more sense.
And you can actually do that with, um,
like squares.
If you've got like a a unit square, sometimes the angles get funky, but you can, like,
fill it up.
Um, at a museum, there's a demonstration of pythagorus which uses water.
Um, so you have a triangle one way up, which is the A and B side,
and it's got two chambers full of water,
and they fill up to show the area of chamber A and chamber B of water. And then you spin
the triangle sort of upside down,
and it drains the water from chamber A and chamber B
into chamber C, and it fills up to the fill line in chamber C
and again that was like,
Oh,
that's like That's how pythagorus
works cool.
And you could totally animate that in VR
like, because that's not even mathematics at that point. That's just like,
you know, if you had the containers
you could get, like,
you know,
a cup. And, like explain pythagorus using a cup of water and a box.
Yeah, here it is. Um, it's not the same
as in the museum. It looks like a homemade one, but it it's like identical,
Speck says.
I've heard that sometimes you just have to learn
something in the simple but slightly wrong way before
you have the knowledge and understanding to actually learn
it in the right and fully defined way,
which can be annoying.
But you, uh,
which can be annoying when you want to say,
teach someone how to do something in near the best way?
Uh,
but it might be too difficult to understand
without having soaked in ears long enough.
That is a good description of the problem. I continually see
which is when someone in this discord asks about a question,
and they're trying to do it in logics like they're trying to
change a Boolean using logics and someone goes, Just use
toggle.
Just use
toggle to they They're trying to learn logics here.
So can we please boole and latch just for now and then maybe suggest Hey,
if you'd like I learn a way to do this about logics
toggle
starting with just like,
you know Stop what you're doing. Throw it all out.
It's wrong use, but un toggle not not a good way to learn.
Uh, Grinch says would be great to have
there There.
There would be great to have text description of each
item and logics browser and some sort of hint.
Um, that is on the road map for our U. I
work. You can check out our road maps on the gab
much, much,
much more in game documentation is is planned on that
road map that's actually meant to be what I'm doing.
But I, I do a lot of other stuff.
There's a lot of actual mathematics that can be explained using geometry,
and I really do like that.
Um,
I don't remember what video it was. Actually, I do. I do. I do. It was a a
serum or something.
And they were explaining quadratic equations using squares and again I'm just like
maths Was never explained to me visually like this.
When I see a squared, I'm just like
ah,
uh, retros
voc
asks. I see some F PGA named DLL in neos files.
Are you seriously using real F PGA stuff inside? Neos?
Uh, that's an example. Plug in. I think the source is available somewhere.
It's very ancient. I don't know if it still works,
but it's an example Plug in, which was written by outsider uh,
for those who are like outsider does nothing.
They wrote that DLL.
They also, um, wrote a lot of the pass through, uh, outputs from the many No,
such as right.
You know, the on fail that comes out of right when it fails to write.
That's outsider.
You know, the delay that has, like, two impulses.
One, which is when the impulse started.
And one which is when the the delay completes. That's outsider.
Um, Anyway, the point being that is an old, uh, extension, uh, to
as a plug in,
it provides F PGA simulation via logics.
I don't know how it works or what it looks like. I've never used it, but
we're not doing real F PGA stuff. It's a simulated F PGA
for those who don't know, that's a fully programmable gate array, and it's like
cool, but
I
like it. It's really subjective for its use,
particularly in this. I mean, you can do like a lot of
not full field. Sorry, field programmable.
I'm now on the Wikipedia page.
It's basically for like, you know, when you need control over the actual silicone,
that's what What's doing?
The sort of you know, um, flow of your programme?
Um,
you can you can use an FPG.
You shouldn't need to use one in NEOS,
but there are a lot of cases where neo stuff exists to sort of teach other subjects,
at which point it's like, Sure, go for it.
Player Cody has a question player, Cody asks.
I was looking through a tutorial about making an image
indicates someone is looking at their belt menu inventory.
I was looking to see if a gift was possible,
but the other video regarding making a GIF in
was classified as outdated.
Um,
I was not sure if making a gift is possible, so
the the gift tutorial I have is like really a joke that I don't suggest doing. Um,
I just don't suggest using gifts. Um,
I understand that, like gifts are
prolific in sort of discord and stuff like that. But, like
most places don't even use gifts these days.
Like here, it's a, uh, I've just posted a gift in the chat.
It's a ferret that runs and then falls over. That's cute. Let's take a look at
it. It's usually an MP four or like
you know it. It's it's it's often not a GIF.
And the reason is that GIF is a really old format. It has kind of bad compression
and stuff like that. Uh, there's much more better, uh, fragments and things to use.
And so NS itself doesn't have GIF support. It's not because of that,
but it is one of the reasons why we haven't prioritised.
It is because there are other better formats available.
So you can't really use a GIF? Um
uh,
retro just said a P and G Yeah, a P and G might be a better thing. Um, animated Web P.
You can even do animated J pegs. I learn, um, MP Fours is like, Yeah,
uh zeo
says 3. 30 megabytes for a GIF where the MP four is cut in half by, like, 90. Yeah,
gifts are just like
there's a cultural problem about them. Right?
Uh, where you know, when you want a funny image, you use a GIF,
but like the format itself is
usually not suitable.
Uh, I do think eventually we'll have gift support, but right now, we don't
going on to speaking about ways of doing it. Uh, you can follow the out day tutorial.
You'll just have to sort of adapt to knowing it's not good.
Uh, the two ways of doing it are to, uh,
stack the GIF frames on top of each other
and go through them with their bullying switcher.
You don't do that. That's terrible.
Uh, the other thing you can do is turn that GIF into a spreadsheet.
Uh, that happens a lot for, uh, badges. If you want to use animated badge.
Using a spreadsheet is a really good way of doing that.
Um, you turn the GIF frames into a sort of, uh,
grid of spreadsheets, and then you iterate through them using UV Atlas animator.
I have a tutorial on both of those,
um,
you can find on my channel Just search for UV Atlas animator,
But, uh, gives a kind of light
that,
but hopefully we'll get them Monday.
Shadow also asks about MP NG Yep.
All the formats that aren't gif are, um,
probably gonna overtake GIF completely at some point.
Uh, N
doesn't support a PNG either.
Um,
like, just
do the spreadsheet method, Do the building switcher method or use a video
or And, uh, this comes up a lot in the sort of material world.
Create mathematics or some sort of animation that
matches what you want.
Like some people that wanted, uh,
it actually happened a lot.
Which is why there's a rainbow shader tutorial on
my on my channel which is named Rainbow shader.
Because someone kept coming in and they were like, I want a rainbow shader.
I want my shoes to be rainbow shader
And I said, Well, if you if you change what you're asking,
we can get you a rainbow shader and they're like, No,
I need a rainbow shader And that's why I put
it into the search terms for that video Rainbow Shader
It's a material where we animate the colour property, and it
turns rainbow.
There's also that one. A bit of it's in the
essential materials now,
which does like exactly what all the rainbow shade is for the chat,
uh, using an image that scrolls.
Oh, I missed a question. I'm I'm terribly sorry. I'll jump up to that. Um,
retro asks.
Speaking of DLL, since DLL S are windows only,
how will there be extensions on other platforms?
We use wine.
Uh, and then spec has answered it,
Um, which is Yeah, uh
dot net And things like that can run it.
Additionally, um, on other platforms such as Linux, we use mono.
Um, if you run
neos using the correct, uh, like flags, you can load in the DLL S.
And it it doesn't It doesn't matter.
Like the Neo
will take care of loading the DLL. It doesn't like
E windows.
Linux support is something we want to improve.
We actually want N OS to be on any platform as possible.
Um, Mac included, Like basically like we want neos running on us.
Whatever we can like phones. Yes,
uh,
you know what? Whatever. Basically, what? Whatever we can whenever we can,
um
check the road map.
Uh, retro.
That's a question that is better served for, uh, Microsoft folks of of which I am one.
But
it's better served for Microsoft Folks that aren't in this discord.
Um, they're asking about dot net, um, and
a running climate tree data to Microsoft.
I don't know.
Um,
ask Microsoft.
Uh, we have the question here from, uh, crusher. Who asks,
uh,
are there plans to have a nearest format of sorts
so items and avatars can be exported with the functionality?
Yes. Check the road map. The, uh, tentative name of that is dot near package. Um,
but, uh, we are looking at the ways of doing that. So we don't confuse the world
like I would hate to do that. And then people suddenly realise like, Oh,
NS has unity package support. It's like No, no, no.
Like the complete opposite of that.
It's just a tentative name. Mr Mr Electron.
We have tentative names for a lot of things
you'll see written sometimes references to to Gen. X Gene X.
I'm like, Is this like DNA editing in here? What's going on
and fruits is like, Oh, that's a
generation X like, and it's for generation code. So it's things like, uh,
you know, more, uh, procedural measures. More,
uh, deformed Tora stuff like that.
But a lot of genex got merged into sort of procedural mesh framework. Um,
but it would probably include
terrain, defamation, et cetera.
There's also business,
which was meant to have sort of more of the like, business logic stuff in,
But again, that kind of went into, like,
pro and stuff like that.
Uh, there are, like, a
lot of holdovers from, uh,
just workflow not being updated for a bit that we need to work on.
Um, such, like, old projects don't exist or don't get copied over.
They aren't doing anything wrong. They just don't need to exist. So
shrug.
The naming convention for neo stuff is basically just like
who? Who who, like,
you know, the name of the DL is just needed for like, one second.
It doesn't really matter. So it's just like this way.
Got an X on the end,
Uh, has a question here, which is, uh, from
which is is NE planning on phasing out unity in the future?
We're looking to go to, um, our own approach, probably using some sort of, uh,
third party rendering solution, but something that we're in more control of.
Um,
Forge
and a bunch of other weird names are being looked at.
Check the thread, which is linked for more information.
So another question here from, uh,
retro,
who says I'm working on desktop functionalities of my VR chat avatar like head pats,
hugs, lay downs, play space height, third person camera, etcetera.
Will these things be in ne so I don't have to do that in neo send.
And will that be De Googled on,
uh, android phones, Linux and PSD Nursing a pattern here, Retro.
I appreciate the commitment to your privacy. Um,
all of those things exist and work regardless of desktop.
Um, so
we have systems that allow for head pats.
Um, they can count the number of head pats that you have,
uh, laying down. We have a pose system, I believe that can be used by desktop players.
Play space.
Height is controlled by various factors, but you don't usually need to edit that.
Please don't edit like
there are settings inside VR, which I wish people wouldn't fiddle with.
Like as an example here near
in its settings panel has the height.
It wants your height.
Like I don't care.
Like if you, you know, you think you're 6 ft tall and you're actually 5 ft two.
Put in 5 ft two
like that. That's that's what you're meant to put in there.
If you want to be bigger in the world or smaller in the world, use other mechanisms,
please.
There's things like default user scale, the scaling tools themselves, um,
scaling things by parenting, all sorts of stuff like that.
They're what you meant to you're meant to use.
Uh, as for third person camera, as Roy points out, Yep.
Uh, F I for third person camera.
If you want a feature in your desktop mode, ask if we have it. We usually do.
If we don't, it can go on the road map or in most cases,
can actually be built by the community.
As for our plans for phones and Linux and and
other platforms in the area,
uh, I don't foresee them requiring, um,
any Google stuff which is gonna launch on whatever platform we can
whenever we can.
Yeah, um,
that's the one that we get a lot. It even happens on VR chat.
So, as Link is saying, like people complain that tracking is wrong or like, you know,
full body tracking doesn't make sense.
And then I ask, Well, I asked this in VR chat as well.
I'm like, Well, what height did you enter in the height setting?
And they're like, Oh, I entered 8 ft. So I'm really big and I'm like, No, like,
especially for full body tracking.
It needs to know how tall you are,
so it knows how tall you are so it can do the mathematics about where your leg is,
not where your avatar leg is.
It's like a It's like a formula. You know, It's like, uh, you know,
you plus your tracking points
plus avatar settings
equals good full body tracking. But people are just like OK.
That means I'll edit what I am and it's like, No, you can't edit your height like you.
That's not how it works.
I see we're at time so fuzzy. If you have questions, go for it.
Otherwise, everyone else a electronics. If you're typing, go for it, go for it.
Otherwise, no more questions
like when I call people out when they're typing,
and then they immediately stop typing.
Yeah, I'll just ignore your question. Electronics
wearing shoes and full body tracking is always weird.
Shouldn't affect things that much, particularly because the trackers,
if you are wearing shoes,
um,
like it goes on top of your like the arch of your foot, which means that,
like the the heel step usually doesn't get included.
All right, that's all we've got.
If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask in the discord. Ping me.
Read the wiki, read the road map, etcetera.
Uh, let me know what I can help you with Spam me in D MS. And I'll speak to you
again next week. This will be up on sounder shortly.
Um, and I'll take a look at the transcript, which will probably be terrible,
but who knows?
We're experimenting with stuff. Jazz hands