Beta Release 84

We released Beta Release 84 on Monday September 23, 2019.

Note: There is a protocol change in this version.

New in v0.84.0!

  • Acoustic Echo Cancellation: In this release, we implemented Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC), which improves voice quality by preventing the echo that results in open mic setups. By default, AEC is turned on, and you can turn it off in Settings > Audio. Documentation is available at Acoustic Echo Cancellation.

Improvements

Avatares

  • Improved our safe landing code so that avatars will no longer get trapped in the ground or other objects.

  • Added feetPosition property to MyAvatar API.

Crear

  • Added font, textEffect, textEffectColor, and textEffectThickness properties to text entities to allow configuration of the appearance of the text.

  • Changed the keyboard shortcut for 'Duplicate entities' in Create mode to Ctrl + Click (Windows) or Cmd + Click (Mac).

Rendering

  • Improved performance when any entity needs to be re-rendered (thanks to HifiExperiments!).

  • Improved performance for Interface's rendering pipelines.

  • Added a check to see if a user's machine will render cleanly using a higher graphics mode; if not, we will default to "Low".

  • Fixed rendering issue where the sky was a darker color than it should have been for some users with AMD graphics cards.

  • Automatically tier computers with Intel videos cards and Mac without secondary video cards into "Low" graphics rendering mode by default.

  • Improved rendering of entities on low-end PCs:

    • Invisible polylines

    • Black fringes surrounding polylines

    • Missing blendshapes on avatars

Other Mentions

  • Updated High Fidelity branding on the login screen and dialogs throughout the Interface.

  • Added setting to keep audio volume settings across sessions.

  • Removed Crash sub-menu from the Developer menu in Interface.

  • Removed keyboard shortcut (Shift+L) to open LOD tools.

  • Provided additional information in the scripting console for debugging picks. This introduces the ability to get:

    • the list of created picks (Picks.getPicks())

    • the properties that were given to a pick at time of creation (Picks.getPickScriptParameters(id))

    • the current properties of a pick (Picks.getPickProperties(id))

  • Introduced new build-time environment variable HIFI_VCPKG_BOOTSTRAP that will allow developers using Visual Studio 2019 to build the High Fidelity binaries. See the updated build guide for Windows here: https://github.com/vircadia/vircadia/blob/master/BUILD_WIN.md

  • Updated High Fidelity's copyright on the About dialog.

Fixes

Installer

  • Fixed missing api-ms-win-shcore-scaling-l1-1-1.dll installer error introduced in v0.83.0.

  • Removed the Sandbox that was inadvertently added to the client-only installer on Windows.

Avatares

  • Bugs were fixed when users would incorrectly receive an avatar theft message in the following circumstances:

    • Following disconnects of Interface

    • Laptops falling asleep with Interface running

    • Changing network connections

    • Rapidly switching between avatars in Inventory

    • User reloads content

  • When traveling at higher speeds, whether flying or running, the collision box for the avatar no longer extends outward to hit objects that are more than a meter away

  • Fixed an issue where avatars were able to fly through some walls and other objects

  • You no longer have to set MyAvatar.hasProceduralEyeFaceMovement = false in JavaScript for MyAvatar.setJointRotation() to function properly on eye joints

Rendering

  • Fixed an issue occurring in "Low" graphics mode where some semi-transparent entities would show black artifacts from the objects behind them

  • Corrected the sky color on Mac where it would flash a different blue color before settling into the normal sky color

  • The in-world representation of "20:20 vision" now more closely matches real-world 20:20 vision, and is set as the default

Other Mentions

  • Returned Shield icon to HUD and Interface window in Desktop mode

  • Using track pad with Mac no longer gets stuck in "mouse look" mode after releasing the click buttons

  • 8-Channel audio output works again in Interface (thanks to ctrlaltdavid!)

  • Removed 'HMD Mute Warning' option from Settings > Audio > Desktop tab

  • Fixed memory leak in the ESS causing a leak of all XMLHttpRequests in the domain server

  • Addressed security issue that allowed server scripts using web pages to access files on the local machine

  • Fixed crash in the Oven executable for lack of MaterialCache instance in DependencyManager

Crash Fixes

  • Fixed crashes in the following scenarios:

    • In AudioInjector when Mac laptops go to sleep

    • Closing laptop lids and re-opening them while Interface is running (on both Windows and Mac)

    • Checking for web page access permissions was not thread safe

    • Attempting to stop the audio injector when exiting out of interface on a Mac

    • Using 'originalProperties' in a Domain filter

    • Using the ScriptDiscoveryService.scriptsModel property and trying to access data for a non-existent row in the model

    • Added a workaround for a bug present in the Qt framework that can cause a crash when multiple threads attempt to serialize rendering of QML surfaces

Android

There are no Android-specific fixes in this release.