A couple of updates

I've been working on a couple of things since I last did a proper update here, sadly the other app I was working on, Cam companion, isn't really ready for a release yet, and I want to prioritize the development of Skin Companion for now.

Skin companion

Skin companion has been getting a couple of quiet updates in the background, mostly some minor fixes here and there, as well as some minor UI change, but those aren't really important for existing users that got the app through Patreon.

Some of those fixes include:

• Being able to change skins on servers which don't have skins on cars by default. (That one was already supposed to work but when i updated the code i missed one detail, oops...)

• Better support for cars with encrypted ext_configs. Previously those could take up to 30+ seconds to load, causing the game to freeze during that time... and it wouldn't even be able to read the file... Now that step is a lot faster (around 60 times or so), so it would only freeze a bit for a short while.
  I didn't have time to do it for today but I'll shortly push another small update getting rid of those freezes when loading in entirely.

Also, the app is now on app shelf!
I think it should help massively promoting the app, and in my opinion, the more people use it, the more value it provides.

On top of that, it was recently added to the CUP system, which means that CM will notify you when updates are available, and I suspect many of you already got such notifications. However the system is being worked on atm and as of now it might not work, but it should make keeping the app use to date easier in the future!

This app will be the focus of the next few weeks.
As of the latest CSP update (0.2.5), KN5 loading works a bit differently, and it should finally allow for proper support of skins that load extra parts, so I want to focus on that first and foremost.

Twitch Companion

So first of all I'm sorry for login breaking for new users, I was relying on a third party to handle login originally because of the limited tools back then. The video player broke for a similar reason, as there was no proper way to implement it back then, and the hacky way I used ended up breaking.

I'm happy to say that now, login is not only fixed but it's quite friendly for new users:

Clicking the login button will redirect you to a in your browser when you can authorize the app (you'll be prompted to login in case you aren't already):
Once the app authorized, you'll be automatically logged in.

I encourage existing users to revoke the old app's authorisation and use the new login system instead.

You can do so here. I believe the app was called twitchapps-tmi or something similar. The app for Twitch companion is called ac_chat_app.

The video player is fixed/improved. It's loaded as an embedded webpage, so if you login, you'll be able to earn channel points etc.

You can either log in the video player itself or in the web app from app shelf if you've got it.

In other news, 7TV emote support is fixed, and 7TV seasonal emotes will work properly now too.

View count should be fixed as well, and work for the 3D chat.

The 3D chat got some fixes too, but it's still in the debug tab as I need to do a few more things before it's really ready to be properly integrated.
I disabled it for screen use, as it needed a different type of rendering to work there, and it was never intended to be used in screen mode anyway.

Finally, a small note for TTS users: you change choose what TTS is being used in CSP -> Small Tweaks, by default it uses an old version of windows TTS, which isn't so great 😅:

Cam Companion

Cam companion is something I've been working on for quite a bit since my last updates here. Sadly it's not anywhere ready for a release but I still through I'd write something about it.

Ideally, I would like for it to be able to reproduce the visual look of different types of cameras:

• the visual quality

• camera overlays

• zooming behavior

• stabilization

• depth of field

But also some immersive pov look for both screen and VR (either neckFX based, or some similar alternative)
The idea is to have those different looks and behaviors and to be able to apply them to procedurally placed cameras on the track.

And then if you used something like the obs plugin, you could have some type of cameras defined, like track cameras, different sets of procedural cameras with different types of cameras in it, etc and it would switch randomly between those.

I have already worked on many of the pieces of the puzzle, but sadly none of them is ready, and there is a ton more work needed for the whole thing. But I hope one day it can get there.

For now the focus will be on Skin Companion mostly though but I'm sure this will be released someday. :)

Thank you and merry Christmas

As a final note, a big thanks to everyone for the support, financial and otherwise.
Patreon is as of now my only source of income, and I would like to keep developing things here so any support goes a long way in that direction.
Sharing the Patreon and the apps has a bigger impact than you know in the long term, so if you can't contribute financially, this is a great way to support the development of those apps:
It may not seem like it helps much but in the past year the amount of people that are even aware that this page exist has increased a lot, and it's thanks to people sharing the apps and the page to other people.

To give some indication, this is roughly the amount of people that joined the patreon since Skin Companion has been out, it's not that much considering the amount of people playing Assetto I suppose, but it's still pretty nice and more and more people are finding out about it every day!