1.5 Release Update

Bad news: I have decided to push 1.5 release out about a week. I don't have Trigger System and Audio 1.0 quite where I want them to be for the release and I have not had time to work on any new scenes for the release. I usually take a few days to work on scenes and final bug flushing, and I have not even been able to start that yet. I also have a couple of personal schedule conflicts this week that prevent me from pulling my usual end-of-month all-nighters. So - the right thing for me to do is take some more time to finish up.

Good news: Here are some previously unannounced features/content that will be in 1.5 release!

* You can now add more Person atoms. You are no longer limited to 2. Be warned performance is still an issue in 1.5, so to get more characters on screen you probably have to turn off advanced features like soft-body physics in order to maintain a stable FPS.

* A new monitor/keyboard/mouse mode. It is fairly full featured, and more will be added over time.

* A new Quick Select menu which allows quickly selecting and moving to nodes in the scene. No more endless hunting the scenes for a specific item!

* One of our own community members Ren has made 25 new face morphs based on community requests. These are really well done, and I have already added them into the release! These morphs include popularly requested brow and chin morphs! Huge thank you to Ren! Please thank Ren yourself over here https://www.patreon.com/posts/16684546

A few other things about 1.5:

* Much faster and consistent scene loading - physics simulation and animation systems are paused during load to prevent glitches, but also gives load consistency to make sure all objects are in correct position before interaction or movement happens. Load system completely redone and has a nice blackout/progress monitor. Scene is shown once loading is complete.

* Much lower memory usage.

* Many bugs fixed

* Shadow system enhancements

* More atoms have editable materials

* Physics (CPU) Performance improvements with the environment atoms (bedrooms and crypt)

* New emissive (self-lit) web/image panel atoms

For more info - check out the trello board:

https://trello.com/b/LDlEpfvk/virt-a-mate-public-plans

Thank you all for your ongoing support! It has truly been amazing so far!

Meshed