Flipside Alpha Update #18 - Show/hide menu, camera movement settings, Cinemachine support, and more

October 16, 2018 - 4:00pm - by John Luxford

This update focuses on usability improvements and bug fixes, making Flipside feel a little better all around.

Show/hide the palette menu

Pressing the menu button (above the thumbpad on Vive, left controller menu button on Rift) now hides the palette menu, or if it's already hidden recalls it to your hand. If a recording is in progress, it continues to stop the recording as well before recalling the menu.

This should also help a few edge cases where users have experienced the palette menu disappearing. Pressing the menu button ought to recall it if it ever disappears.

Camera movement and easing settings

Camera moves can now be controlled with two new settings: Camera Movement Speed, and Camera Easing. Movement speed determines how fast the camera moves between positions, and easing lets you choose whether the moves are linear or use one of a couple dozen easing options.

In addition, all cameras can now be grabbed and moved around, including using the thumbpad to zoom in and out, not just the handheld camera. To activate a camera position, grab it and press the trigger if it's not active.

Support for Cinemachine virtual cameras

Flipside already imported cameras embedded in your sets into Flipside's camera system, but now we've added the flexibility of Unity's new Cinemachine camera system as well. Any Cinemachine virtual cameras also become camera positions in Flipside, complete with all the capabilities that Cinemachine has introduced in Unity.

Featured characters and sets

We looked through all of our shared characters and sets and realized we've reached over 100 shared characters and over 50 shared sets! And that list is growing daily. There's lots we can do to improve our categorization and browsing, but as a first step we've added a new Featured category as the first category under both characters and sets, so we can highlight specific ones for new users.

We don't see the Featured category as just about showing the "best" but rather about showing what's possible, so we're always looking for characters and sets that add something new or make a great example of a particular feature.

Other bug fixes and improvements

• You can click the "x" in the corner of the in-VR camera switcher to switch out of full screen mode and back into the 2D camera switcher.
• The loading animation now shows "Set - 21%" and "Sky - 12%" so you can tell what's loading and how far along you are in the download.
• The Desktop View prop has been temporarily disabled as we fix edge cases causing crashes for some users.
• We disabled camera shake on cameras imported in custom sets.
• We fixed the handheld camera and other objects accidentally being dropped from your hand in Director Mode and Set Builder Mode if you move your hand too fast when the world is scaled down.
• The handheld camera now uses the correct camera layers so it can capture UI elements if you have them set to visible (via Alt + V).
• Multiplayer initial state was being sent before remote players were ready to receive packets.
• Major internal cleanup of our character system.
• Observer Analytics plugin fixes.

We hope you enjoy this update, and stay tuned because we have more updates already in the works!