Welcome to office. Hours of prime.
If you've got questions for me about news,
you can go ahead and drop them in the office hours.
Text chat. There's a thread directly for questions of this particular session.
Please drop them in there. It's a couple of the channels about this one.
When we get started with any questions that we do find,
give me a second whilst I cough.
Yay!
Right. Cool. Let's get started with questions.
Now I'm done having a coughing fit off mic. Yay!
Uh, I will answer your question and say
Don't worry about it. Um,
Jack, I asked How are you feeling today? Yeah, I'm better. I still got a cough.
Um, my doctor prescribed some stronger cough medication,
but it hasn't kicked in yet.
I did take it, like a short while ago,
Um,
regular over the counter cough medicine I can't take with this cough medicine.
So it pretty much, like, rules out everything else or whatever.
It's stronger.
Uh, anyway, um, moving on to the next question. Our names,
Katz says, What is resonating? I heard from another server.
There's a lot of drama happening related to that in this server,
but I haven't even able to keep track of it
all right. Resonate is a trademark owned by yellow do
studios. That's all I can say right now.
Please go ahead and take a look at the Resonate Speculation thread,
which is linked by Jackal Girl in the text chat.
Uh, you can check out the pins there for some stuff that people have found.
That is not a confirmation of anything that's there.
And 100% of that thread is speculation, Which is why, when it's called drama,
I get kind of really annoyed, like let people speculate.
And when people speculate, don't be mad at them For that they're speculating.
But understand that it's speculation,
you know, like
it's drama just it fills me with,
like unhappiness when people call it drama like it's just it's speculation.
It's silly speculation.
But like it's speculation, let it happen to criticise.
Can I speculate on the speculating of others speculating on stuff? Absolutely.
You can speculate as much as you want.
One of the big things that distinguishes us from other similar communities is that
we don't ban people for um opinions or or or statements
that are negative or disparaging or of us or other platforms.
We allow all talks about all platforms, wherever they might be,
although if it's not about news, it should go off topic.
And if it's about, um, your speculation to do Yo
dog man studios or Resonate,
please drop it in the we we we were we were we
Please drop it in the Yellow Dog Man Studios Stroke Resonate speculation.
Thread
keeps it all organised.
If you're talking about the unity terms of service change to do all of that,
please drop that in the thread for that.
I'm tired of reading about that.
Um, like it's in every channel in our discord, and it should be in that thread.
I've now muted that thread. No offence to anyone. It's like
five people a day DMB and then like
So what does the T OS change mean for
news? And I'm like, hm,
nothing, seeing as we don't make enough money for it to matter.
So I have a large question here from wire who I will go ahead and read out. So wire says,
uh,
so there's a crash that happens on headless when someone
without edit perms picks up someone that has perms,
Uh, that has a dead tip.
I was originally told the crash was because the game tries
to equip unequipped the tip from the person without perms,
but they don't actually have the tip equipped, so it freaks out and dies.
Recently, someone else claimed it crashes on purpose.
The game sees someone with a tip that they shouldn't have one,
and it's a safety mechanism.
It crashing is never a safety mechanism.
Um,
the worst that happens in terms of safety is that
we will self-destruct a component that doesn't cause a crash.
That's again speculation. That's silly.
If you're having a crash,
you should open up a github issue related to that crash and then post a log file there.
That's literally the only way we can resolve it.
Speculating that it's a safety mechanism doesn't help. Um, even if it was,
it would be the worst safety mechanism that's ever come up with.
That's the equivalent of of like, you know
Oh, yeah, I'm I'm Boeing, I make planes.
And if the plane gets hijacked, it explodes itself,
like just automatically.
That's a safety mechanism
like there's always, um,
there's always like a a debate and sort of computing and also sort of ethics about,
like,
how much control a computer should have over a situation that it unexpectedly has.
Um, and there's always, like human element in there.
Like as an example, um, all of the nuclear silos,
the nuclear missile silos around the world.
Um, I don't know about around the world.
Actually, I know American ones quite well because of a documentary. I watched,
um,
they have people in them 24 7 and their seats are
on rails so they don't have to stand up and,
like the seats register that they're sat in them.
And the, um, logic there is that they they need to have butts in the seats
24 7, 365 days a year,
just in case something happens and the president and
the Joint Chiefs probably need to authorise a launch.
Um,
and then there's a bunch of procedures there because they added a human element in
They could have easily added a computer system in,
but I would probably be dead by now.
That's a good way of saying it, But detective for national security,
I'll try to get a page of it, Um, a picture even.
Um, this is a risky Google search of the day the US nuclear missile silo
deter.
Um,
they're called minute men that
they're called minute men.
This is probably an old one. For example, it's probably a museum one.
But you see, like the whole chair is on a track so it can slide.
That looks ancient. That chair looks like it would like be really uncomfortable.
Oh, and if you ever want to feel, uh, very small in the world, not small,
small is the wrong word.
If you want to feel like the world is going completely insane
there are a few companies now that are dedicated
to building underground nuclear safe bunkers for rich people.
Um,
and you can add things like a swimming
pool for an extra billion dollars or something.
So there is a, um
it has been a thing for a long time, but like you know, some people aren't aware of it.
Like some people.
Um, when they think of billionaires, they think of suits, mansions, fast cars,
et cetera.
But it's going beyond that. Now.
It's suits, mansions going to space, building an underground nuclear bunker,
Um, and having more money than an entire country
in some cases?
Uh, yeah, as far as I remember, the company, um,
kind of says better have a well stocked bar the company offers, like,
paid staff or something to be in your bunker.
I know there's that TV show. Doomsday preppers.
I think it's on Discovery Channel or TLC. It'll be one of those, um,
which goes over the people that are, you know, um, regular, uh, people doing it,
um,
lots of them have, maybe, like, built their own sort of stuff.
Or maybe they've sort of buried some containers in the desert somewhere.
But no, this company will build, like,
insanely good,
um, things for you if your money is there and you've got enough of it.
The one thing which I do agree with in the whole doomsday prepping thing is,
if you are worried about that entirely,
uh, make sure that you stockpile somewhere,
uh, something which has got good trade value. Because if if if stuff does hit the fan,
uh,
your dollars either won't work because they're in
your debit cards or your credit cards,
which just won't work or it's in cash and, uh, in the middle of a nuclear apocalypse.
No one cares about your silly paper,
but they might care if you've got some gold coins lying around.
So so think about that.
I know an old boss of mine has a bunch of silver that they bought for that purpose.
I myself have accidentally acquired a second supply of soil.
So I'm good.
I just have to sort of barricade my front door and
collect as much water as I need.
Water would always be a problem, though, because you need that to make.
So I mean, technically, you could eat the soil and powder by itself.
It wouldn't go down that well,
like the cinnamon challenge every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Mm.
Are there any any of those questions we've just been talking
about apocalypses for a bit or any sort of lighter,
lighter topics, et cetera.
Jacky asks any apocalypse experiences in neos
that you can recommend
there is actually an M MC world,
which was I can't remember if it's a power plant
control room or some other type of control room,
but there's like a fully modelled control room is one of the MC entries.
I don't think it had.
Oh, the earthquake simulation. That was it.
It didn't have, um,
really fine grain interactivity. As in you couldn't flip the dials, et cetera.
It wasn't simulating the equipment,
but it did give you the sort of experience someone in that
control room would have if you're interested in stuff like that.
Um, I know that there's the Chernobyl TV series, which people say is really good.
I haven't finished watching.
Yeah, I think I watched, like, half an episode, then forgot.
Um, but there's also one, about the Fukushima disaster.
And the reason why I found that one
more,
uh, impactful from my own perspective, was because it was it was newer, right?
Uh, Chernobyl happened a very long time ago. So,
um,
people knew a lot less about radioactivity there back then.
Um, but in in the the Fukushima documentary, at least, how it's it's expressed,
everything looks like it could have happened today.
Uh, and so it was a very good documentary series.
It's like a docudrama.
Highly recommended. Um,
it also shows one of the problems that
happens in disasters you can also see happening.
Um,
in things like the wildfires. Um, the Maui stuff, et cetera,
is that loads of people just don't want to take the blame for something.
So a lot of times in that documentary you'll hear
a conversation that is so uncommitted it's it's unnatural.
You know, someone will say to some research body or whatever in the documentary like
So, do you think that we should do the thing that might save us all?
And the personal answer with? Well,
given the data,
I will now represents the data because they don't want to say yes or
no because they don't want it on record that they made the decision.
They just want to try and avoid saying yes or no as much as possible. It's ridiculous.
You can read about that also in the Fukushima Wikipedia page,
where they talk a lot about how decisions were
delayed because of that sort of politics cultural thing.
Not wanting to take blame, et cetera. Very interesting documentaries,
Um, going back to to
questions rather than my own sort of parade through random, um, documentaries.
Uh, peach clover asks, uh,
what is the process of implementing a new feature from
a request when staff have decided to implement it,
or what is the process of choosing
a new feature?
Um, I believe in our near public, uh, github
page.
Um,
there is a a section called How Our features prioritised there.
So that's sort of how things are prioritised down there at the bottom.
Um,
um, as for how they are, uh, done,
usually we would do some sort of design for them.
Um, if, uh if that's a freak one that involve a lot of they use one note, um,
and a tablet to sort of draw stuff.
Um,
anyone that's sent one of their sort of drawing, uh,
screens where they've been planning a feature.
They're fantastic. They're just, like, insane.
Uh, and then we just go ahead and do it.
Um,
we do, in some cases,
need a little bit more process or or or structure and how we we go about things.
But as we're still small team engineering wise, even within the larger team,
um, it we can sort of get away with that,
provided everyone's on board with the design.
We can just do it.
Uh, square
is is there an experience where you can operate a nuclear power plant.
Not that I've experienced. You could technically,
um,
write logics to simulate a nuclear power plant and
make all the controls do what they need to do
it. It's not impossible to do.
There was actually, um,
I'll find the video whilst we're talking about other things.
There was,
um there's a couple of channels on on YouTube
where they just sort of interview people in via
and they interviewed someone who worked,
um, as an electrician,
Um, but on a nuclear power plant complex.
And they were tasked of doing some electrical work
in a room that hadn't been properly shielded.
And so they received something like a 30 year dose of radiation. They're fine.
There shouldn't be any long term effects. They did have some effects from it.
Um, but they can't work there anymore.
So, like they lost their job not because they were bad at their job, specifically,
if someone else was bad at their job,
and now they can't work anywhere to do radiation again
because it's too much of a risk of them actually having more long term damage,
which is a really interesting way to, like, lose your career.
They did get compensation. Yeah,
I'll find that video whilst we talk.
Uh, E before he asks, Um,
can you provide a concise history of religion from 30,002 2000 years ago?
I try and stay away from
because, uh, there's a lot of merit in the,
um, structure and story of a religion.
Um, I have my own personal opinion, but that's really not there.
Um,
something which I I do encourage people to do, though,
is to just look at the root of the religions where they came from.
Uh, I find that more fascinating.
The actual contents themselves, uh,
so the sort of common religions that you hear about, um,
Islam, Christianity, even, uh, Judaism,
uh,
they're called Abrahamic religions because they all stem
from a sort of common thread of ideas.
Just how those were, uh,
put into words and how they diverged is also very interesting.
So there's the post of the link for the nuclear reactor.
Engineer talks about the incident. It's very, very good video. It's not that long.
Some of their conversations go quite long with other people.
Yeah, there's a lot of content on that channel. I'd recommend taking a look at it
like there's one here which I instantly want to watch,
and that's how like good that channel is.
It says this boomer uses VR chat to cope with PTSD.
I know that's going to be an interesting story,
so I highly recommend you take a look at that channel.
There are a couple of 100 channels that do it.
As for the comment on Abrahamic religion, So I get the Wikipedia page on that.
Yeah,
So, um
yeah, it's just it's just interesting.
Like the the law behind lots of topics ends up being like the law for a TV show.
I'm one of those people who might be like at the end
of episode one of some sort of sci-fi or fantasy show.
I'll be on the wiki for that show,
wheeling myself.
But just because it helps me understand who the hell I'm watching, et cetera.
So I realised I could then start doing
that with other topics like language and religion,
and I sometimes do that and get lost in Wikipedia.
Jack asks about my creativity, and I haven't really done anything creative lately.
I've been really busy with a lot of stuff,
including being sick and falling over and sleeping a lot.
I might be adopting a dog soon as well, which meant I had to do
just stuff for that as well, which included cable management under my desk,
which is a complete mess.
I also bought a new mop for my apartment because, um,
I just had a flat like Swiffer style mop. Uh, but I wanted, like, a a mopping bucket.
And there's these, like mop buckets on tiktok that are really popular.
So I bought one of those, um, they separate the dirty and clean water.
And so I've been mopping the floor every day and
every day the water has been coming up filthy.
I can see,
um, in the flooring. I can see a difference. You wouldn't know it is the difference.
But I can see
the difference in, um
in the floor like it's a good difference.
The floor looks more radiant.
Not the floor should be radiant
and like you wouldn't know it if you came and visited here.
But I do because I saw the floor before it was cleaned.
Um,
Jack says Fresno, I don't I don't know.
I just I woke up this morning and there's my my apartment's like,
there's one big window.
That's it, right? I mean, it's technically two windows or whatever.
There's one big window by right to my right. And
it,
you know,
light was streaming in this morning when I came out from my bedroom, and I'm like,
Wow, the floor looks good.
I'll probably mop it again today
because the water is still coming up dirty.
Uh,
Jack says please tell us about your potential dog. Yeah, I I'll get you a picture.
Um, I don't know if I'm gonna get it. It's like a long process, et cetera.
And I can always say no any part of that process, so I'm
just sort of feeling it out. Um,
as is the place that I'm looking to get the dog from.
Oh, thank you for tagging your question. I'll get to that in just a second.
Um, I am not naming the dog Resonate. Uh, someone suggested
re at a
Yeah, maybe. But it's like I don't want to tie my dog to a meme
Um uh, back to the questions.
Ah, right under there. Thank you, I. I
apologise for missing them.
Uh, for
have you experimented with a value gradient driver
animation or using value grade drivers for multiplication?
I have used value gradient drivers. Let me get you a video. Um,
so, uh, a long time ago. Um,
I think it was like July. Like last year.
I gave a talk, um, about surgical planning.
And I made a behind the scenes video because lots of people were like,
That's a cool set up.
And so I made a behind the scenes video
and lots of the very quick animations I made in there use value gradient drivers.
So I posted both the behind the scenes and the actual presentation itself.
Uh, I'm scrolling through back up to check if I've got any questions. Missed.
I kind of asked any new tool world. You see, you've come across this week.
Not this week. No, I haven't noticed anything cool this week. Um,
I have noticed something outside the world of of VR, which was, like, insane.
Um, I've got to find the tweets, though. Um,
I got lost in AAA rabbit hole about it because it was
insanely well explained.
Right? Did I imagine this? It's like a new rendering technique.
Um that's similar to photo Grat, but it's like newer.
I just can't remember the the next word
Gaus
and something Gaus
and Splatting. There we go.
I was like, It's not Gaussian
Blur because we've had Gaz and Blur forever. It's Gaussian
Splat! It's a really cool thing. Apparently, I
can't spell Gaussian,
which is why my Twitter search wasn't going there.
There's a really good, uh, explanation on a Twitter, um, on a Twitter thread there,
I'll try and find it like it's really good. I wanna I wanna make sure I've got it.
Uh, explanation, no explanation.
That's the video I was looking for. Thank you. Yeah, that video.
I recommend everyone take a look at that video. It's it's amazing.
And the way that they have explained it takes what is really,
like a really complex mathematical research paper and and distils it into, like,
a sort of way that, uh,
millennial stroke Gen Z person will retain their interest.
Uh, Gerson says any plans to further optimise knees at all.
Even though I fit the recommend specs, I get a lot of lag.
There's lots of improvements that we want to do. Um,
in sort of all areas.
We've got a lot of rendering stuff that want to do, uh, colour management and then,
um, swapping out unity for another rendering engine.
Um,
And then there's a lot of enhancements that we want to do on the other side as well,
in less rendering things.
So
there's a huge optimisation that we can do in IK dynamic bones,
the data model itself, lots that we can do to make everything better. It's not like
how to optimise it. It's like, What part of optimisation do we want to work on today?
Like there's there's a lot that we could potentially do?
Someone has commented on the video that, uh, the, um, euphoria link, Um, and I
No nonsense. No fella, no BS. Just pure information, I guess.
Uh, peach Clover says we're regarding updates.
I hope you straight up again all the good ideas from a verte, since it's open source.
That's not really how, like open source works, um,
particularly in the game world.
There's lots of, like information about how to do things.
For example, this Gaussian
Splatting
There's a research paper that tells you how to do it,
and then someone will be like, Well,
you could just lift someone's open source code from it.
It's like, Well, sometimes you need to integrate it into your own pipeline,
so you'll end up redoing it like it's not that we don't know how to do it.
There's, like, AAA format for doing it. For example, colour management.
There is
a
lot of like we know exactly what we need to do. We just need to do it, uh,
replacing their rendering engine. And we know exactly what to do.
We need to just do it for anyone who remembers the, um
the weird house that had the bathtub,
um, that you could take a tour through Blue Brick Lane or something like that.
Um, the really weird house that Gaussian
splatter would just be amazing.
And then, um, a
guy called Patricia. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly.
They've come up with an algorithm that takes, um, spatial data.
It's something similar to calcium blowing.
They haven't actually shared how they're doing it yet
because they think it's it's patentable, which is is very good. Um,
that's, uh, I so I don't know what they're doing.
I mean, I know sort of what they're doing. But like
specifically,
uh, they're taking any video that's like any video, and they're able to make it
somewhat 3D.
So this is a classic scene of Of, uh, die hard in the in in the air shaft.
But, um, process using this technique and they can.
It's like it's 3D.
Of course,
there's a bunch of tearing and and gaps
because there's no information to fill those gaps.
But it it's really good,
Like there's no extra data. It came straight from the video.
Is is why it's really good. Like if if that that's an old film.
If that film was recorded with newer cameras,
maybe there'll be more data if that was recorded with one of the camera.
You know, the cameras.
Now that we have on iPhones and stuff like that, that data would be included,
but because it's not included, they managed to do that on just a video.
There was another post on that twitter that Twitter users, um, tweets.
I can't find it currently.
Uh, well, there was another demo that was particularly like cool to look at.
Anyway, I'm gonna scroll up,
make sure I haven't got any questions because it is half
past so we can go ahead and leave off here.
I've got a bunch of stuff to do today, So, um,
yeah, I don't see any other questions.
If you have any questions, please feel free to direct Message me or, um,
hold on,
I'll I'll take it. Peach clover. I'll take it.
Um,
uh, Peter Clover says I witness people being intimidated by neo
because they see so much that they don't know how
to do and maybe shy away because they're afraid they might
want to learn something they can never learn.
Do you have anything to say to these people?
Um,
yeah.
Um
that actually is a sort of a changing culture that I need from you, the community.
So I'm glad this question came up last.
When someone comes into neo,
just ask them if they want to learn technical stuff
so much so we barrage them with so much stuff.
You know, people will spawn complicated things from their inventory.
They'll pop open inspectors, et cetera.
Just
don't do that.
The single greatest time I've had in neos recently and I know
that recently is kind of difficult to sort of box up,
et cetera, was the king's coronation
the king's coronation?
I went into a big red wolf. He's head list.
No one had an inspector open.
There was basically just a pile of people in front of a video player,
and we watched the king's coronation.
We came up with a bunch of jokes and references.
If you're aware of the chair, you know what we're talking about.
If you're not aware of the chair, then it's difficult to explain.
Um,
but
no one had an inspector open.
No one needed to learn logics, components,
inspectors or even how the video player worked.
We just sat in front of a video player and watched the King get coronated.
It was it was great.
Um, people need that experience in,
too, right?
So if you think about why you might go on VR chat, right,
let's think about a Friday night.
Stereotypically, you go on the yard,
chat on a Friday night to hang out
with people and consume copious amounts of alcohol,
seriously damaging your liver, which will have no life,
life altering consequences at all.
I.
I worry sometimes about those people who probably will
have bad livers by the time they're my age,
Um,
but
they don't want to learn.
They don't want anything technical, and they don't get anything technical.
But kids are challenging thought, maybe host a headless
that has no permissions.
I know that some do exist,
but they're usually empty because people get
itchy because they don't have permissions.
The one problem there, though, is of course, once people come in,
they want to get their avatar done.
And that requires,
uh, technical skill.
Now something which I I've experimented and had success with once is saying,
Let's not get your avatar
in straight away. Let's wait a little bit right?
So I give them an avatar That sort of closely
approximates what they want to be a robot ego,
purry, whatever they want to be.
And we we show them
without their avatar
so that they can get a feel for the platform,
and then later we'll bring in their avatar because so much
so like it's The first thing people see is down Neo
Install
Neo set up an avatar, and it's like straight into the weeds of technicalities,
and that's not required sometimes.
So there we go.
It's more a cultural thing for us to change than,
um for people who are overwhelmed to change.
Uh, I will leave off there and I will speak to you guys next week.
If you have any additional questions,
drop them in questions and help or direct message me.