Hi everyone
After the last release and all the work on the browser I received a couple of comments about Whirligig failing to open. I started examining this issue and discovered on the first run of Whirligig, Whirligig would take a very long time to open while being unresponsive giving the impression that it had crashed. Every time after that Whirligig would open much quicker. So down the rabbit hole I went and I've been improving loading times, reducing overheads and fixing issues to make Whirligig faster than ever. I'll go over some of the improvements.
Rooms
Rooms would load into memory at start which slowed things down quite a bit. I've changed this so that Whirligig only loads the room when when you're using it.
I've temporarily removed two rooms (the 3D ones at the end) as I need to determine what overheads these have. I hope to improve all the rooms in the future.
Controller Models skins
I've done the same as the rooms and they will only load in when you choose them.
UI improvements
I've spent a long time reducing all the texture for the UI as many were duplicates. This has reduced resource use and allowed me to standardise a lot of the look of the UI's. This will massively help me in the future when adding new features and improving the UI.
Added features
- Added another page of blank backgrounds so you can add more of your own.
- Two new mapping input options for Rotate. Rotate exists as a projection option and a position options. They work differently but now you can choose either one and they are better labeled.
- Vsync as an option to the quality menu. Some people have experienced black flashes in either the headset or the monitor. Enabling this can remove this issue.
- Reset all has been added to the position menu.
Bug fixes
I've also spent a large amount of time fixing issues as I go. Any time I've come across a problem I've address it so hopefully many of the little problems will be ironed out.
I'm not going to list them here as there are a lot of small ones and many of which may have been added during the optimisation process. If you reported a bug and I've addressed or attempted to address the issue I'll post in the respective forum/email to let you know.
Please let me know of bugs
I'm currently replacing a lot of the core code so any issues you have please let me know as I'm in the best position to address them right now. The more bugs reported the more I can fix and I very much appreciate when people let me know there is an issue I can fix :)
Do you like Whirligig?
Well if you do, let me know with a good review :D Me like many developers thrive on positive feedback and are destroyed by bad reviews, which cut much deeper than a good one helps.
In all seriousness though a positive review really helps me to know that the changes I'm making are improving Whirligig and that I'm still providing something that people want to use. That also goes for feature requests, bug reports and general questions. I'm a lone developer and rely a lot on feedback to make Whirligig better. If there are ways I can make your experience better let me know.
If you are having issues with Whirligig I will understand if you write a negative review and it will make me sad :( I would however appreciate if you let me know what the issue was so I can improve Whirligig for the future :)
And finally
Thanks to everyone who enjoys Whirligig, you're support is very much appreciated. I look forward to hearing your suggestions for future updates.
Happy Watching
Phil