Overall Progress Update
This month we completed 4 more items on the VaM2 Beta1.2 Release Trello list out of a total of 22 items targeted for the release. We added and completed an additional item (Save Scene Screenshot System) this month while working on the completion of the File Browser item.
These 4 completed items, however, were not the bulk of the work this month. The biggest amount of work was done on the still in-progress item: VR UI/UX. There are 3 items left to be completed for the release, all of which are already in progress. The bulk of the remaining work is still the VR UI/UX item, which we will detail more later in this post.
Here is the Trello board link if you wish to follow VaM2 development progress more closely:
https://trello.com/b/KByJdWtA/vam2-public-roadmap
We also recommend connecting to our official Discord server by linking your Patreon account with Discord. I am personally very active in the vam2 channels there, and I do my best to answer all questions and respond to mentions. You can link your Patreon account to Discord with this link:
If you don't want to link your Patreon account to Discord, here is a direct invite link:
Directly Join Our Discord Server
Some Completed Item Highlights
File Browser
The new file browser utilizes a new infinite scrolling optimized tile view with cached thumbnails. What this means is the file browser is capable of handling 1000s of files at once without slowing down the browsing experience. You can even browse and search across all of your folders at once with the "All Files" shortcut. Thumbnails are loaded as you scroll, and a special fast-load cache version of the thumbnail is generated once and used for all subsequent browsing to provide a snappy response as you browse. This new file browser includes various sorting options and a text search filter. In future updates we will add tagging, search by tag, and favorites to make it quicker and easier to find the scenes you are interested in. We know based on VaM1, you will eventually have 1000s of scenes to choose from in VaM2, and this browser will readily support that.
Save Scene Screenshot System
The save system now has a thumbnail screenshot capture that allows moving around and framing the scene before capture. If you are overwriting an existing scene, it shows you the previous capture and allows you to reuse it or capture a new thumbnail.
VR UI/UX Progress
Our original plan for VR user interface and interaction for this release was to improve our existing VR interaction system which already supported free fly movement and near grabbing of objects. We were going to round this out with far object grabbing, object selection, and a custom VR user interface and call it done for this release. As we dug further into this item, however, it became obvious we should instead be utilizing Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit as this provided a lot of the capabilities we wanted long term. Longer term, using Unity's system will save a huge amount of development time, but shorter term this added additional development time. Integrating Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit required learning the ins and outs of the system and figuring out how to tie it into our existing systems that were already working on the desktop, like object highlight and selection and our new gizmo system (see our April 2026 Development Log for more info on the selection carousel and gizmos).
The things we find most attractive about Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit are:
Implements all of the most common VR locomotion systems: Teleportation, Grab Movement, Free Fly, Snap/Smooth Turning, Climbing, and Character Controller. We only had Free Fly with Smooth Turning previously implemented. Having these additional options will allow creators to create custom experiences tailored for specific types of movement. The editing modes we include will support free fly and teleportation as those are the most useful for editing a scene.
Grab system: Near and Far interaction. You can remote grab and push/pull objects away/towards you.
Has controller smoothing when interacting with objects and the UI. Shaky hands and controller jitter make it hard to interact reliably, and Unity has improved this with a snapping and smoothing system that reduces jitter and snaps to interactable elements in an intuitive way.
Controller visuals and line and curve rendering - intuitively shows what you are aiming at or manipulating
Years of development and refinement: This kit has been in development for years by dedicated developers at Unity and other companies. The 1.0 version of this kit came out in 2019, and has been steadily improved since then (it is now on version 3.5). It would be hard to replicate everything this package does without years of work. We need to leverage as much as we can from others to get this project done in a more timely manner. We had a decent basic interaction system, but this system supercharges what will be possible in VR. For a sandbox application like VaM2, it makes sense to provide as much additional capability as possible, and this toolkit provides that.
The bottom line is by choosing to use Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit for this release, this specific development item is requiring a lot more short term work, but that choice will pay of in the long term with broader and more robust capabilities.
Completed parts of the VR UI/UX development task
Integration of Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit
Adapted to work with our Modes system
Created a custom Near/Far Interactor that supports our selection carousel and highlight and select system.
Created a custom Grab Interactable that works with our existing Pin system for grabbing physics-based objects and figure bones.
Update of Transform and Joint Gizmos to work better in VR
First pass at the VR specific UI
Created main world space UI - similar to desktop, but better optimized for VR usage
Implemented independent left/right selection carousel UIs to be able to show what each controller is pointing at and choose what to select or grab.
Video
Here is a short video showing off some of the completed VR UI/UX work.
Note the VR view choppiness is due to how Unity mirrors the VR view, so I have included Unity's Scene view for another, more stable perspective. In VR, it looks much smoother than what is shown. This was also captured within Unity Editor which has a large overhead and significantly hurts overall FPS. We were unable to maintain the desired 90FPS for the capture. I'm still exploring how to capture the in-VR view a bit better. It might require an additional stabilized camera view and capturing within the built application instead of in the Unity Editor to stabilize FPS.Some of what is left with this item
Add locomotion user preferences (snap/smooth turn, etc.)
Get remaining gizmos working in VR
Finish refining the VR UI
Convert VR UI to use VR composition layers for better clarity - current rendering is done in world space which is affected by DLSS and other post process systems.
Finish the work to allow VR to operate completely independent from the Desktop. Currently VR and Desktop share the global selection system.
Closing Remarks
VaM2 Beta1.2 development has been a long road, but we are finally getting close to the end! We are excited to get this beta release out to the community. Thank you for your continued support. This community is truly amazing, as we are very grateful to be a part of it.
Thank you!
Meshed and Team