First Release of 2021! 🎉

What’s new?

2021.1.0 is the first major release of the year, aptly named “Eos” after the goddess of the dawn.

This release is incompatible with previous versions, so be sure to download the latest client and upgrade your server!

Let’s run through some highlights for this release.

VR Controls Reworked for Regular and Full-Body Users

Much of the original configurations for the VR controls were unintuitive, and sometimes outright wrong. Improvements have been made:

• Walk speed when your avatar is scaled up or down has been corrected.
• Leaning and recentering in VR has now works at any avatar size.
• Fix hand-relative walk/fly directions to correctly follow the hand instead of the head.
• And much more: read the release notes for the full list.

Original Pivot for Models

Models can now use their original pivot as specified in their 3D modelling application of choice. This is done through a new ‘Use Original Pivot’ property in the ‘Create’ app.

Billboard All Entities

All entities now have a billboard mode allowing them to face the camera in ‘yaw’ or ‘full’ mode if desired. This simple but effective rendering feature can help with graphical tricks and interesting customization of worlds.

Vircadia Alpha

Vircadia has had all of its ‘Alpha’ references removed in the latest release.

Vircadia supports a diverse range of functionality under its Apache 2.0 open source codebase. The project is a large and mature one in many aspects. As such, it does not make sense to label the entire project as alpha when only some components of it are in the alpha stages of their development.

The ‘What is Vircadia‘ has been added in order to better outline supported use cases.

There have been many changes and improvements in the ecosystem.

You can view the full release notes here.