v0.3.6

Another chonky update, v0.3.6 weighs in at over 200 commits! The primary focus for this update was adding asynchronous asset loading. This applies only to textures for now, but this helps significantly when trying to decode large and expensive .png or .jpeg files! A staged loading process will display temporary textures, and smartly load textures in order of importance. All of this is automatic in the background, with no breaking API changes. But that's definitely not all that we've been up to, check out the Feature Highlights below for a list of notable items!

A big thanks to all the contributors that have features is this release, as well as the Discord community's valuable feedback and testing! StereoKit is much better thanks to all of your contributions :)

Quick plugs

Just to highlight some related items here, there will be 3 StereoKit presentations at Mixed Reality Dev Days on June 8th! These won't be streamed, but will be made available online sometime after the event. If you'll be present at the event, do stop by and say hello! There will probably still be a few StereoKit stickers left :)

Also, Microsoft is hosting another MR hackathon that includes StereoKit! Plenty of prize money there too, so be sure to check it out if you have the time. We're very excited to see what you'll make!

Feature Highlights

• Texture loading is now asynchronous! This drastically improves the load experience for most GLTF assets.
• All asset loading/creation is now thread safe.
• New UI elements UI.ButtonImg, UI.ProgressBar, and UI.PanelBegin/End.
• New UI API for inspecting the state of the most recent ID'ed UI element, UI.LastElementFocused, UI.LastElementActive, and UI.LastElementHandUsed.
• Extended access to low-level Backend features for OpenXR, Android, and D3D11!
• Facebook's Quest pass-through extension implemented using Backend as an optional IStepper.
• Duplicating the desktop screen as a texture on Windows, and using it for development! Check out the experimental dev template with passthrough + a persistent desktop view.
• Linux ARM64 binaries now ship in the NuGet package.
• Added support for the XR_OCULUS_audio_device_guid extension.
• A TON of fixes!
• ...and much more.

Additions

• Added new Assets class for managing asset loading.
  • Assets.CurrentTask
  • Assets.TotalTasks
  • Assets.CurrentTaskPriority
  • Assets.BlockForPriority
  • Assets.ModelFormats and Assets.TextureFormats for easy lists of supported asset types.
• Added Tex.AssetState to peek at the loading stage.
• Added Tex.OnLoaded event for load messages. This is tex_on_load & tex_on_load_remove in C.
• Added Tex.FallbackOverride for overriding the default fallback before load is complete.
• Added Tex.SetLoadingFallback and Tex.SetErrorFallback to give control over the default fallback textures.
• Added Tex.DevTex and Tex.Error, nice looking placeholder textures that help give a better sense of perspective on objects.
• Tex.From* now also take a loadPriority value as a parameter.
• Added Tex.SetNativeSurface to the public API. #86
• Added UI.ButtonImg and UI.ButtonImgAt for text + image buttons! #340
• Added UI.LastElementFocused, UI.LastElementActive, and UI.LastElementHandUsed. #272
• Added UI.ProgressBar and UI.ProgressBarAt. #326.
• Added UI.PanelBegin UI.PanelEnd and UI.PanelAt, a tool for visual grouping.
• Added UI.Get/SetThemeColor for granular manipulation of UI colors.
• Added Separator, SliderLine, SliderPush, and SliderPinch to UIVisual for UI.SetElementVisual.
• Added Backend.Graphics, and Backend.Platform for info about the current platform and graphics code backing the current session.
• Added a Backend.D3D11 class with Backend.D3D11.D3DDevice, and Backend.D3D11.D3DContext for mucking about directly with Direct3D.
• Added a Backend.Android class, for access to a number of low level Android interop variables.
• Added Backend.OpenXR.EyesSampleTime, #356, #358. Thanks @sandrist!
• Added Backend.OpenXR.AddCompositionLayer to work with the FB passthrough extension.
• Added ModelNode.Visible for hiding nodes on a Model.
• Added Mesh.VertCount and Mesh.IndCount.
• Added Mesh.Intersect overload that returns the index of the intersected tri. Thanks @Faolan-Rad! #293
• Added Mesh.GetTriangle for fast retrieval of just a tri. Thanks @Faolan-Rad! #293
• Added Bounds.Scaled and Bounds.Scale, #351. Thanks @Strepto!
• Added Color.Hex and Color32.Hex for using hexadecimal color values.
• Added Renderer.Projection, SetOrthoClip, and SetOrthoSize, thanks @slitcch!
• Added Text.Add overload that takes a color tint as a parameter.
• Added SK.AppFocus to tell the current focus state of the session/window.
• Breaking change to C API only for mesh_get_vert/inds, added a parameter to describe memory ownership.

Misc. Improvements

• Updated OpenXR Loader to v1.0.22.
• Updated ReactPhysics3D to v0.9.
• Added support for Unicode in window titles, Win32 and Linux, #346, #347. Thanks @slitcch!
• UI.HSlider pinch has better hit volumes now, should mean less window grabs. #335
• Disabled UI elements now dim.
• Improved UI shader finger ring visuals.
• Increased vert count on default UI meshes for smoother corners.
• System initialization log now happens before initialization, so crashes obviously show what system was initializing.
• ISteppers can now be added before SK.Initialize, their Initialize call is deferred until after SK's initialization.
• A number of docs updates from @paulmelis, @Zee2, @TopperDEL, and @Strepto!

Fixes

• Tex.Rough is now (1,0,1,1) instead of (0,0,1,1).
• Fixed Material.Copy crashing when provided null.
• Fixed a bug in converting C# filenames to UTF-8.
• Fixed the MR fallback FilePicker failing to parse Unicode text. #374
• Fixed an issue where FilePicker would add a trailing \0 to C# strings.
• Fixed a bug where the FilePicker would crash on cancel.
• Fix for NRE when GLTF texture failed to load.
• GLTF loader now supports interlaced data. #320
• Fixed incorrect sprite alignment mixing up left and right.
• Added a warning for when SK.Initialize and SK.Run happen on separate threads, or execution is transferred to a blocking asset. #361
• Fixed an issue with UVs on non-unit sized rounded cubes.
• Fixed incorrect alpha values getting written to the screen buffer, causing compositing artifacts.
• Fixed an issue with Tex.GetColors returning black on separate threads.
• Fixed a bug in Sound stream's ring buffer.
• Fixed a bug in ui_quadrant_size_mesh.
• Fix for fallback keyboard not accounting for Renderer.CameraRoot.
• Fixed SK using unavailable stage bounds. Thanks @slitcch! #331
• Fix for stage (World.BoundsPose) not locating when stage bounds weren't available.
• Fix for crash when loading unavailable OpenXR functions via Backend.OpenXR.GetFunction.
• Fix for a bug with UI.Push/PopPreserveKeyboard not working with elements downstream a UI.Input element.
• Fix for simulated hand's palm pose being in the incorrect location.
• Fix for ModelNode.Mesh improperly returning empty Mesh objects. #302, Thanks @Strepto !
• Fix for Mesh references not releasing properly. #303, Thanks @Strepto!
• Fix for UI.HSeparator sometimes adding an extra empty layout line.
• Fix for empty layout line adding unwanted padding at the end of UI Windows.
• File picker handles different filter formats better (*.x, .x, or just x). #309
• SK handles audio playback failure more gracefully now.
• Fix for non-msvc compilers complaining about SK_CONST's weird attributes, now it's just static const for those compilers.
• Fix for improper capitalization in Linux shader compiler paths, thanks @slitcch!
• Fix a number of issues related to loading libdl on .NET/Linux.
• Fixed a GLX issue in the Linux graphics binding. #359, Thanks @ChristophHaag!
• No longer request Monado's EGL extension when using GLX.
• Fix for a surface resize failure on UWP flatscreen, #298.
• Fixed an issue with loading StereoKitC.dll in C# when starting in a working directory different from the exe.
• Fix for Win32 Windows not correctly restoring the mouse cursor sprite.
• Fixed SK crashing when the flatscreen app starts with a window too large for the screen's resolution.

SDK and Sample Updates

• Related StereoKit GitHub repositories were moved to the StereoKit organization!
• Added a Windows desktop mirroring demo to C++.
• Added a Windows window mirroring demo to C++.
• Added environment map demo to C++.
• Added point cloud rendering demo to C#.
• Updated skshaderc to provide better errors to VS, generate files in folders that don't exist yet, and no longer treat warnings as errors. May fix #329
• Added a "Dream Dev Template" C# project that includes Windows desktop duplication and Facebook's Passthrough extension.
• Moved the Cmake and XPlat templates to their own repositories with some light revisions.
• Updated StereoKit to VS 2022.
• Cleaned up directory structure, less items in the root.
• Added cmake option for removing physics, #354. Thanks @technobaboo and @slitcch!
• Improved StereoKit's Visual Studio dependency build process.
• Added StereoKit logo in .glb format.
• Added StereoKit logo with background for GitHub dark mode.
• Documenter support for operator overloads, #349.
• Contributor's guide.
• Updated samples for V and Zig.
• Added oculus-openxr option to xmake for using non-oculus OpenXR loader.
• Documented StereoKit's Row-Major matrix status, #352. Thanks @paulmelis!

Install or Update

Installation is via Visual Studio templates and NuGet, please refer here for instructions!
https://stereokit.net/Pages/Guides/Getting-Started.html

If you already have a project using StereoKit, go to Project->Manage NuGet Packages, and update to this version! Do a full rebuild of your project afterwards.