Who doesn’t love a good virtual head pat?
This past April, VRChat hosted a developer stream during which the company revealed a new set of features on the way to its ever-growing social VR platform. The Avatar Dynamics system, as it’s referred to by the company, will introduce a wide range of avatar-to-avatar interactions designed to enhance your in-game experience without killing your framerate. Some of these features will even be available on Quest, albeit with tighter restrictions compared to PC VR.
“Want to make it so people can boop your nose, give you a high-five with a satisfying crack, or make you self-destruct with the push of a physical button on your avatar? With Avatar Dynamics, you can do all that — and a ton more!” said the company in an official release.
In that same release, the company goes into detail regarding the Avatar Dynamics system. Here’s what VRChat users have to look forward to next year when open beta testing begins:
PhysBones: PhysBones allows you to touch, grab, and pose bones on your avatar as well as other people’s avatars. Included as part of the SDK, PhysBones will serve as a direct replacement for DynamicBones. VRChat promises a roughly 12–20x improvement over the original system, which should address the current framerate issues.
Performance Boost: According to VRChat, an example scene of 3200 PhysBones with 4 colliders per bone ran 1600% faster than DynamicBones. That’s a significant improvement over the original system. Most of the time, however, those numbers are significantly higher, “even when any avatar can interact with all PhysBones in the scene,” said the company.
Avatar Triggers: Triggers detect colliders on avatars, allowing you to interact with yourself as well as others in a variety of unique ways. Each avatar features its own standard colliders by default, though you will have the ability to customize your own, opening up the door for even more possibilities.
Permissions System: Using the built-in permission system, you’ll be able to control exactly who is allowed to interact with your avatar and how. You’ll, of course, have the ability to opt out of this system if you so choose.
Debug View: Activating Debug View in your Action Menu allows you to view an overlay of PhysBones, Triggers, and Colliders in both VRChat as well as the Editor, making it easier to customize your avatars.
Automatic Dynamic Bone Conversion: All avatars on the VRChat platform featuring DynamicBones will automatically be converted to PhysBones.
Automatic Collider System: A set of default colliders complete with Avatar Triggers and PhysBones will be automatically assigned to avatars missing a custom setup.
As for when users can expect to get their hands on the Avatar Dynamics system, VRChat states that it’s currently hosting a closed beta with users of skill levels and will be launching an open beta early next year. For more information on the Avatar Dynamics System, visit here.
Feature Image Credit: VRChat
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