EDIT (2017-12-28, 11:24 CET): We just posted a quick fix because in the original version, Time Dilation was on by default instead of being opt-in with Psychedelic Mode, and also, it didn't properly react to the main checkbox for switching it off (which was why it was on by default in first place). But that issue is fortunately fixed now - apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

Most of the time I work on fixing bugs and polishing existing features ... but sometimes, I need to take a little break and do something completely different. And since it's (still, kind of) Christmas, I want to make this new thing I just built a Christmas present for all of you:



For the full experience, you need to play the game - but here's a nice session with a song that fits this mode really well in my opinion:

https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=RRFe73Q7rCQ
So, this is obviously "opt-in", so to activate this mode, enter the settings (either pause by pressing and holding the menu button for a second, or enter Game Settings through the Music Library), there "Style" and then you already see "Psychedelic Settings":



Be careful with the strobe effect ... that one can be very intense!

• Psychedelic Mode: Added strobe lights and saturation / hue shift color effects, as well as Time Dilation based on gameplay (available in all environments)!
  
• Streamlined Settings UI: We've had Gameplay, Themes and Avatars as buttons squeezed into the "Style Settings". Instead, we now have a "Style Menu" which has buttons for Guidance (previously "Style Settings"), Gameplay, Themes, Avatars ... and something new.
  
• Avatar System: Loading the Avatars takes quite a little while, and most of the time, people are not using them, so that loading time really is wasted. Instead, we now have a "Load Avatars" buttons in the Avatar System screen, and the Avatars are only loaded when you click that button. Also, you can select for each Avatar whether you want to load it, or not.
  
• Mixed Reality: Volumetric Fog in Retro Clubbing wasn't rendered correctly in Mixed Reality. This should be fixed now.

EDIT (2017-12-28, 11:24 CET): We just posted a quick fix because in the original version, Time Dilation was on by default instead of being opt-in with Psychedelic Mode, and also, it didn't properly react to the main checkbox for switching it off (which was why it was on by default in first place). But that issue is fortunately fixed now - apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

Most of the time I work on fixing bugs and polishing existing features ... but sometimes, I need to take a little break and do something completely different. And since it's (still, kind of) Christmas, I want to make this new thing I just built a Christmas present for all of you:



For the full experience, you need to play the game - but here's a nice session with a song that fits this mode really well in my opinion:

https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=RRFe73Q7rCQ
So, this is obviously "opt-in", so to activate this mode, enter the settings (either pause by pressing and holding the menu button for a second, or enter Game Settings through the Music Library), there "Style" and then you already see "Psychedelic Settings":



Be careful with the strobe effect ... that one can be very intense!

• Psychedelic Mode: Added strobe lights and saturation / hue shift color effects, as well as Time Dilation based on gameplay (available in all environments)!
  
• Streamlined Settings UI: We've had Gameplay, Themes and Avatars as buttons squeezed into the "Style Settings". Instead, we now have a "Style Menu" which has buttons for Guidance (previously "Style Settings"), Gameplay, Themes, Avatars ... and something new.
  
• Avatar System: Loading the Avatars takes quite a little while, and most of the time, people are not using them, so that loading time really is wasted. Instead, we now have a "Load Avatars" buttons in the Avatar System screen, and the Avatars are only loaded when you click that button. Also, you can select for each Avatar whether you want to load it, or not.
  
• Mixed Reality: Volumetric Fog in Retro Clubbing wasn't rendered correctly in Mixed Reality. This should be fixed now.

So here's a bigger Music Library update just before Christmas. In case this breaks anything for you - please let us know and know that you can always use the previous branch to access the previous version.

When using the full osu! library, this version should work much more reliably than the previous one, and we have a new difficulty metric that I'm hoping to get feedback on because over time, this will become a very important part of the game. For example, we will have a skill based leaderboard in addition to the "grind your way to the top" accumulated score leaderboard. The way I currently plan to do this is simply take the difficulty of the most difficult map that you have full-combo'd. So that will be a value between 0 and 10 and define your skill level.

Also, we'll have more abstract skill levels that will map to filter settings so that you can easily find maps and progress through maps that match your current capabilities.

Finally, we also lighted up Zero Distraction a little to make it look more like its original version.

As always, please let us know how this works for you and in case you run into any issues.

• Music Library: Changed order in area Quick Access from "quick and simple" to "more involved", so Random is now first, then Favorites, then Recently Played, then Recently Added.
  
• Music Library: Put proper instructions into "Music Library Info" that explain how the Music Library works.
  
• Music Library: Redesigned how caching works. Previously, when multiple beatmaps were being cached, they would run in parallel, slowing each other down. Now, the most recently selected is always cached next (possibly after one that is currently in the process of being cached). That way, you'll usually have the beatmap you want to play cached much more quickly than before, especially when having browsed intensely before.
  
• Avatar System: All Avatars were already start in the startup scene which caused the main startup to take very long. This has now been moved to the appropriate scene so that loading progress shows correctly which operation takes how long.
  
• Music Library: Finally fixed bug that had the progress for loading song still open after the song was already played.
  
• Music Library: Fixed issue with Unicode characters that made them have a mostly transparent rectangle around them when viewed from a distance. Also made the font atlas textures much smaller for quicker loading.
  
• Music Library: Fixed a few issues and added additional criteria to calculate beatmap difficulties based on actual difficulty in Holodance.
  
• Music Library: Improved progress while settings things up. Usually, you won't see this because it happens in the background on game start, before entering a Free Mode environment. But if you are quick enough, or your library is large enough, you may see this.
  
• Music Library: Significantly improved caching of beatmaps. This is now much more reliable and faster than before.
  
• Music Library: We now have two separate states for when Quick Access can be used (as soon as Favorites and Last Played have been loaded), and when Browse Music is available (when filtering has been completed). This should prevent trouble when clicking things wildly while filters are being refreshed.
  
• Music Library: Added Tempo range filter. This lets you define a BPM-range in which the maps you want to see in Browse Music and Random must fall.
  
• Music Library: Fixed issue that filters were not properly updated when changing the range sliders.
  
• Music Library: Created a new metric for difficulty based on values relevant to the difficulty in VR. We may still need to balance this a little.
  
• Music Library: Fixed minimum ranges for difficulty, tempi and duration. Difficulty can now be just a range of one (e.g. 3-4, or 3.5-4.5), and tempi can now be within a range of 30 (e.g. 60-90). Durations already had a minimum range of 30.
  
• Music Library: Beatmap details now show the date of the first time you full combo'd this map.
  
• Music Library: When you have caught 90% of a map, the map details now show an orange checkmark. If you have full combo'd a map, it shows a green checkmark.
  
• Startup: Fixed a rather nasty bug during initial loading that caused the loading screen to be ended while the initialization was actually still taking place.
  
• Music Library: Beatmaps now also show the full combo status in lists so that it's really easy to get an overview of where you are with which map.
  
• Music Library: Added missing sections - Browse Music now also has Tempi and Durations and is only missing Beatmappers. Quick Access now has Recently Added.
  
• Music Library: Added some new stats that may or may not always work, like best and current leaderboard rank.
  
• Zero Distraction: Lighted things up a little.

So here's a bigger Music Library update just before Christmas. In case this breaks anything for you - please let us know and know that you can always use the previous branch to access the previous version.

When using the full osu! library, this version should work much more reliably than the previous one, and we have a new difficulty metric that I'm hoping to get feedback on because over time, this will become a very important part of the game. For example, we will have a skill based leaderboard in addition to the "grind your way to the top" accumulated score leaderboard. The way I currently plan to do this is simply take the difficulty of the most difficult map that you have full-combo'd. So that will be a value between 0 and 10 and define your skill level.

Also, we'll have more abstract skill levels that will map to filter settings so that you can easily find maps and progress through maps that match your current capabilities.

Finally, we also lighted up Zero Distraction a little to make it look more like its original version.

As always, please let us know how this works for you and in case you run into any issues.

• Music Library: Changed order in area Quick Access from "quick and simple" to "more involved", so Random is now first, then Favorites, then Recently Played, then Recently Added.
  
• Music Library: Put proper instructions into "Music Library Info" that explain how the Music Library works.
  
• Music Library: Redesigned how caching works. Previously, when multiple beatmaps were being cached, they would run in parallel, slowing each other down. Now, the most recently selected is always cached next (possibly after one that is currently in the process of being cached). That way, you'll usually have the beatmap you want to play cached much more quickly than before, especially when having browsed intensely before.
  
• Avatar System: All Avatars were already start in the startup scene which caused the main startup to take very long. This has now been moved to the appropriate scene so that loading progress shows correctly which operation takes how long.
  
• Music Library: Finally fixed bug that had the progress for loading song still open after the song was already played.
  
• Music Library: Fixed issue with Unicode characters that made them have a mostly transparent rectangle around them when viewed from a distance. Also made the font atlas textures much smaller for quicker loading.
  
• Music Library: Fixed a few issues and added additional criteria to calculate beatmap difficulties based on actual difficulty in Holodance.
  
• Music Library: Improved progress while settings things up. Usually, you won't see this because it happens in the background on game start, before entering a Free Mode environment. But if you are quick enough, or your library is large enough, you may see this.
  
• Music Library: Significantly improved caching of beatmaps. This is now much more reliable and faster than before.
  
• Music Library: We now have two separate states for when Quick Access can be used (as soon as Favorites and Last Played have been loaded), and when Browse Music is available (when filtering has been completed). This should prevent trouble when clicking things wildly while filters are being refreshed.
  
• Music Library: Added Tempo range filter. This lets you define a BPM-range in which the maps you want to see in Browse Music and Random must fall.
  
• Music Library: Fixed issue that filters were not properly updated when changing the range sliders.
  
• Music Library: Created a new metric for difficulty based on values relevant to the difficulty in VR. We may still need to balance this a little.
  
• Music Library: Fixed minimum ranges for difficulty, tempi and duration. Difficulty can now be just a range of one (e.g. 3-4, or 3.5-4.5), and tempi can now be within a range of 30 (e.g. 60-90). Durations already had a minimum range of 30.
  
• Music Library: Beatmap details now show the date of the first time you full combo'd this map.
  
• Music Library: When you have caught 90% of a map, the map details now show an orange checkmark. If you have full combo'd a map, it shows a green checkmark.
  
• Startup: Fixed a rather nasty bug during initial loading that caused the loading screen to be ended while the initialization was actually still taking place.
  
• Music Library: Beatmaps now also show the full combo status in lists so that it's really easy to get an overview of where you are with which map.
  
• Music Library: Added missing sections - Browse Music now also has Tempi and Durations and is only missing Beatmappers. Quick Access now has Recently Added.
  
• Music Library: Added some new stats that may or may not always work, like best and current leaderboard rank.
  
• Zero Distraction: Lighted things up a little.

So here's another fairly small, and yet fairly big release: We have just added support for Unicode in artist names and song titles. This version also makes using Unicode the default. But if you don't like that, you can change it in the Music Library settings (click the gear-symbol in the Music Library, and you'll see where this is done: Native Artist Names and Song Titles).

SteamVR introduced a few strange issues recently, at least with the beta, and this version fixes or works around some of those. Like, when you activate the SteamVR keyboard by "clicking" into the text search, currently in SteamVR beta, the resolution goes down quite a bit. I have noticed that my workaround may not be perfectly reliable, so you may have to exit and re-enter text editing to get the Music Library non-blurry in that state - but at least you can make it happen ;-)

One more fairly big change with this one: The order of items in the top level of the Music Library is now exactly inverse from before. This may take a little while to get used to but I feel this is much better now because we go from the quickest and most specific search (text based search) to "Quick Access", and then to "Browse Music" which is very broad and usually the slowest way to start playing. In the next release, we'll probably do something similar in Quick Access because really, "Random" is the fastest way, so it should be on top there.

• Music Library: Changed order of main entry points - Free Search is now first, then Quick Access, then Browse Music. This order is based on the "easiness" of each step.
  
• Music Library: Added a font texture with all characters of all artist names and song titles. Now, activating "Native Artist Names and Song Titles" should work well.
  
• Music Library: Fixed issue where folding/unfolding Browse Music and Quick Access when entering text in the free search text field got confused when using the "Done" button on the keyboard. This now works reliably, regardless of how the keyboard is hidden.
  
• Music Library: Fixed issue where pointing at a list while a song is being loaded, and keeping pointing at the list when the UI is hidden would cause the list to react to scrolling events even when no laser pointer was pointing at it, until the game was restarted.
  
• Gameplay: Fixed issue where haptic feedback could happen for wrong controller while following a Slider.
  
• Pause / SteamVR Dashboard: Fixed issues related to pausing the game and opening the SteamVR dashboard. Holodance now also goes back into grayscale mode when going into the SteamVR dashboard (we've had this effect in the early days but then removed it because grayscale made the UI look terrible, and using two cameras, one for UI, one for the rest to have both was terrible on performance). Part of this was also fixing the issue that going into the SteamVR Dashboard while playing would not let you pause again.
  
• Worked around a bug in the current SteamVR beta, together with SteamVR Unity Plugin 1.2.2 (the current version) that caused the events on opening the SteamVR Dashboard to not be sent at all.
  
• Worked around a nasty behavior of SteamVR (probably beta) where it changes reduces super-sampling when we open the keyboard, causing a really blurry image while browsing via the search.

So here's another fairly small, and yet fairly big release: We have just added support for Unicode in artist names and song titles. This version also makes using Unicode the default. But if you don't like that, you can change it in the Music Library settings (click the gear-symbol in the Music Library, and you'll see where this is done: Native Artist Names and Song Titles).

SteamVR introduced a few strange issues recently, at least with the beta, and this version fixes or works around some of those. Like, when you activate the SteamVR keyboard by "clicking" into the text search, currently in SteamVR beta, the resolution goes down quite a bit. I have noticed that my workaround may not be perfectly reliable, so you may have to exit and re-enter text editing to get the Music Library non-blurry in that state - but at least you can make it happen ;-)

One more fairly big change with this one: The order of items in the top level of the Music Library is now exactly inverse from before. This may take a little while to get used to but I feel this is much better now because we go from the quickest and most specific search (text based search) to "Quick Access", and then to "Browse Music" which is very broad and usually the slowest way to start playing. In the next release, we'll probably do something similar in Quick Access because really, "Random" is the fastest way, so it should be on top there.

• Music Library: Changed order of main entry points - Free Search is now first, then Quick Access, then Browse Music. This order is based on the "easiness" of each step.
  
• Music Library: Added a font texture with all characters of all artist names and song titles. Now, activating "Native Artist Names and Song Titles" should work well.
  
• Music Library: Fixed issue where folding/unfolding Browse Music and Quick Access when entering text in the free search text field got confused when using the "Done" button on the keyboard. This now works reliably, regardless of how the keyboard is hidden.
  
• Music Library: Fixed issue where pointing at a list while a song is being loaded, and keeping pointing at the list when the UI is hidden would cause the list to react to scrolling events even when no laser pointer was pointing at it, until the game was restarted.
  
• Gameplay: Fixed issue where haptic feedback could happen for wrong controller while following a Slider.
  
• Pause / SteamVR Dashboard: Fixed issues related to pausing the game and opening the SteamVR dashboard. Holodance now also goes back into grayscale mode when going into the SteamVR dashboard (we've had this effect in the early days but then removed it because grayscale made the UI look terrible, and using two cameras, one for UI, one for the rest to have both was terrible on performance). Part of this was also fixing the issue that going into the SteamVR Dashboard while playing would not let you pause again.
  
• Worked around a bug in the current SteamVR beta, together with SteamVR Unity Plugin 1.2.2 (the current version) that caused the events on opening the SteamVR Dashboard to not be sent at all.
  
• Worked around a nasty behavior of SteamVR (probably beta) where it changes reduces super-sampling when we open the keyboard, causing a really blurry image while browsing via the search.

This is both, a very minor and yet very major release: V0.8.7 was just a few days ago, so there wasn't even that much time to implement new things - but this release brings two major improvements to the Music Library and marks the first of several polishing releases that are coming to make the Music Library a really awesome browsing experience.




As you can see, we now have little preview images for songs and beatmaps, and also artists (for artists, we simply use the first image we find for that artist). Finally, you can browse more "visually".

What you cannot see in those animated gifs is that we also did some major work on how audio previews work: Instead of having to wait for a really long time in many cases, audio preview is now really fast, and also starts immediately when you select a song (instead of when you select a beatmap). One caveat: The only way to make it this fast was to use small and short audio snippets that are optimized for the previews - so you can't listen to the whole song in the preview anymore.


We've had filters all along - this is just to show you a nice little feature we have with the sliders: When you click on the button where the current value of the slider is shown, you get the slider right in front of you, which makes controlling them much easier. I also noticed a new bug while recording this: Changing the slider values should immediately update the results. Currently, it doesn't. I'll work on fixing that for the next release.




This is another showcase for one of my favorite features in the new Music Library: By selecting random, you can let Holodance pick a beatmap for you. Together with the improved audio preview, you can now very quickly find one you like, and then play it.

• Fixed issue where Avatar skin was transparent in Retro Clubbing environment.
  
• Music Library: Added quick audio previews to all ranked osu! beatmaps in the Music Library. No more waiting for the beatmap to be cached!
  
• Music Library: Added image previews for artists, songs and beatmaps.
  
• Music Library: Starting audio preview now already when a song was selected.
  
• Music Library: Moved mute audio preview button to navigation arrows because we now also have previews when a song is selected (and it may be that the beatmap UI is not even visible, yet)
  
• Music Library: Moved the Play button to the center and made it much bigger.
  
• Music Library: Artists that only have one song now skip a level, so you don't have to select the artist just to then select that one song. We currently don't have this for songs that only have one beatmap because that would break things.
  
• Music Library: Moved paging buttons to center top/bottom of the lists. This gives the scrollbar a little more room and also made it possible to make these buttons a little larger and easier to reach.
  
• General UI: Fixed an issue where disabling a fadein/out canvas too early would result in that thing still showing when being re-enabled.
  
• Cleaned up project (a little), reduced build-size from 9.3GB to 8.9GB.
  
• Fixed issue where dragon fist and high five hand would appear on feet, when Vive Trackers were attached to feet

This is both, a very minor and yet very major release: V0.8.7 was just a few days ago, so there wasn't even that much time to implement new things - but this release brings two major improvements to the Music Library and marks the first of several polishing releases that are coming to make the Music Library a really awesome browsing experience.




As you can see, we now have little preview images for songs and beatmaps, and also artists (for artists, we simply use the first image we find for that artist). Finally, you can browse more "visually".

What you cannot see in those animated gifs is that we also did some major work on how audio previews work: Instead of having to wait for a really long time in many cases, audio preview is now really fast, and also starts immediately when you select a song (instead of when you select a beatmap). One caveat: The only way to make it this fast was to use small and short audio snippets that are optimized for the previews - so you can't listen to the whole song in the preview anymore.


We've had filters all along - this is just to show you a nice little feature we have with the sliders: When you click on the button where the current value of the slider is shown, you get the slider right in front of you, which makes controlling them much easier. I also noticed a new bug while recording this: Changing the slider values should immediately update the results. Currently, it doesn't. I'll work on fixing that for the next release.




This is another showcase for one of my favorite features in the new Music Library: By selecting random, you can let Holodance pick a beatmap for you. Together with the improved audio preview, you can now very quickly find one you like, and then play it.

• Fixed issue where Avatar skin was transparent in Retro Clubbing environment.
  
• Music Library: Added quick audio previews to all ranked osu! beatmaps in the Music Library. No more waiting for the beatmap to be cached!
  
• Music Library: Added image previews for artists, songs and beatmaps.
  
• Music Library: Starting audio preview now already when a song was selected.
  
• Music Library: Moved mute audio preview button to navigation arrows because we now also have previews when a song is selected (and it may be that the beatmap UI is not even visible, yet)
  
• Music Library: Moved the Play button to the center and made it much bigger.
  
• Music Library: Artists that only have one song now skip a level, so you don't have to select the artist just to then select that one song. We currently don't have this for songs that only have one beatmap because that would break things.
  
• Music Library: Moved paging buttons to center top/bottom of the lists. This gives the scrollbar a little more room and also made it possible to make these buttons a little larger and easier to reach.
  
• General UI: Fixed an issue where disabling a fadein/out canvas too early would result in that thing still showing when being re-enabled.
  
• Cleaned up project (a little), reduced build-size from 9.3GB to 8.9GB.
  
• Fixed issue where dragon fist and high five hand would appear on feet, when Vive Trackers were attached to feet

So this release was primarily driven by an event we've had in Berlin about a week ago, at the Conrad Drone Champions League. We once again met a lot of great people, created a lot of video footage and showed the new song for upcoming Level 10 to the public for the very first time. The actual Level 10 from Story Mode currently isn't that great, so we've had players play it in Sci-Fi Tunnels which is also a really fitting environment for this dubstep-like track. Here's a video that also shows Mixed Reality mixed with our new Avatar System:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttKEzy6hBhc
Speaking of the new Avatar system: This version has one known issue when you use the Avatar system in the Retro Clubbing level. Skin might disappear. I'm hoping to have a fix for that in the next version. We have also added one more Avatar, called Azeroid, who does not show much skin ;-)

So, most of the changes we have in this release are related to Streamer Mode, Mixed Reality and Party Mode. One interesting thing to note about this: When you use Party Mode, we now have tight integration with OBS.

But, there are also two really important changes to the Music Library: First, we have a lot more songs in there now (almost 12K and almost 60K beatmaps), and we now also have the statistical data about the beatmaps stored in the meta-data. This is the foundation for a much improved difficulty ranking that will land in one of the next releases.

We also cleaned up the level selection area for Free Mode quite a bit, I hope this won't confuse anyone but I think once you got used to the new layout, you'll agree that this is much better than before.

If you want to review Holodance, talk to us ... we have just added a feature to this release that makes this a lot easier than it was before.

• Music Library: Fixed issue with Refreshing / Rescanning library - this now works reliably.
  
• Music Library: Added metadata of ranked osu! beatmaps from June to November 2017. Now we're at 5,519 artists, 11,814 songs, 59,042 beatmaps. Previous, we had 5,252 artists, 11,216 songs and 55,236 maps. So we're nearing 12K songs, 60K beatmaps.
  
• Music Library: Added several new statistical values to our beatmap metadata and ran through the whole library to collect this data. Ran into several beatmap parsing errors (due to beatmaps having issues) that we now are robust against, so you can actually play a few more osu! beatmaps in Holodance that failed before.
  
• Avatar System: Added Avatar "Azeroid", who should be kind of gender neutral and is our first space soldier. Could be a human, could be an android. You can never know with these things.
  
• Free Mode: Re-arranged the environments to make more sense, also fixed some of the score thresholds to have a more sensible progression.
  
• Level Selection Area: Fixed bug that prevented settings from showing up properly, which is bad because this explains some things.
  
• Level Selection Area: Added more instructions to the "settings" screen.
  
• Fixed Skybox in initial loading screen (there was flickering when you looked back).
  
• Fixed Initial Loading screen that always showed "Virtual Clubbing", while this was actually the main Holodance scene.
  
• Streamer Mode: Re-Arranged UI Layout to be consume less space, and changed 2D GUI button to almost completely disappear when switched off.
  
• Streamer Mode: Removed "Take Screenshots" for now. This was not really meant to be used by people.
  
• Mixed Reality: Made parsing externalcamera.cfg a little more robust.
  
• Mixed Reality: Now handling camera "stuff" related to quadrant view in Mixed Reality using the CameraManager instead of trying to find all cameras.
  
• Streamer Mode: You can now fully disable Mixed Reality, regardless of technology used (standard quadrant view based on SteamVR Unity plugin, LIV Client, MixCast) by checking a checkbox. This can be useful if you mix parts where you use Mixed Reality, and parts where you only use in-game footage (no Mixed Reality).
  
• Streamer Mode: Added a camera that is based on the MR-camera, so when you have a tracker, you can now simulate an in-game camera with that tracker, just like you would with Mixed Reality - except you don't need a greenscreen setup (this works best when using the Avatar System for representing the player).
  
• Streamer Mode: Mixed Reality can now also be part of the sequence used by "Switch Cams in the Rhythm".
  
• Streamer Mode: Fixed issue that when using "Switch Cams in the Rhythm", you'd get a "weird camera" after "Dragon Perspective", regardless of which camera were taking part in this.
  
• Streamer Mode: Holodance can now talk to OBS and activate different scenes, depending on whether we're entering new player data in party mode (will show a waiting scene), or we are in Mixed Reality (e.g. taking LIV client output), or in regular "Streamer Mode". Also, recordings are now automatically started when in Party Mode.
  
• Mixed Reality: Added parameter "disableQuadrantView" to externalcamera.config. If you set this to True, the quadrant view will be completely disabled. This is useful if you use LIV Client or MixCast and don't want the quadrant view to pop up before you have activated either of the other solutions.
  
• Mixed Reality: Much improved integration of MixCast that now properly supports configuration via externalcamera.cfg (but currently no longer the setup via MixCast Studio which unfortunately doesn't seem to use externalcamera.cfg or support writing it). We can now switch quickly between MixCast and our new MR Tracked Cam to switch quickly between the real person or an Avatar.
  
• Shader Prewarming is now disabled by default and you have to explicitly enable it (This is on the flatscreen UI, click button "Show Extra Settings", then it's the first checkbox, top right of the screen, called "No Shader Prewarming". Default is now checked, so usually shader prewarming is disabled. Eventually, this will disappear - unless we find a good reason to keep it.
  
• Removed VRTK from project. We never really used it much and will eventually use the SteamVR Interaction system which seems to be a much better approach to what we need.
  
• Added a feature that I'd rather not talk about publicly. This is for people doing reviews. If you want to do a review, ask me, and I'll let you know about it. It's not totally hidden, so, if you look for it, you'll find it, and you'll know why I'm not putting it into the release notes.

So this release was primarily driven by an event we've had in Berlin about a week ago, at the Conrad Drone Champions League. We once again met a lot of great people, created a lot of video footage and showed the new song for upcoming Level 10 to the public for the very first time. The actual Level 10 from Story Mode currently isn't that great, so we've had players play it in Sci-Fi Tunnels which is also a really fitting environment for this dubstep-like track. Here's a video that also shows Mixed Reality mixed with our new Avatar System:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttKEzy6hBhc
Speaking of the new Avatar system: This version has one known issue when you use the Avatar system in the Retro Clubbing level. Skin might disappear. I'm hoping to have a fix for that in the next version. We have also added one more Avatar, called Azeroid, who does not show much skin ;-)

So, most of the changes we have in this release are related to Streamer Mode, Mixed Reality and Party Mode. One interesting thing to note about this: When you use Party Mode, we now have tight integration with OBS.

But, there are also two really important changes to the Music Library: First, we have a lot more songs in there now (almost 12K and almost 60K beatmaps), and we now also have the statistical data about the beatmaps stored in the meta-data. This is the foundation for a much improved difficulty ranking that will land in one of the next releases.

We also cleaned up the level selection area for Free Mode quite a bit, I hope this won't confuse anyone but I think once you got used to the new layout, you'll agree that this is much better than before.

If you want to review Holodance, talk to us ... we have just added a feature to this release that makes this a lot easier than it was before.

• Music Library: Fixed issue with Refreshing / Rescanning library - this now works reliably.
  
• Music Library: Added metadata of ranked osu! beatmaps from June to November 2017. Now we're at 5,519 artists, 11,814 songs, 59,042 beatmaps. Previous, we had 5,252 artists, 11,216 songs and 55,236 maps. So we're nearing 12K songs, 60K beatmaps.
  
• Music Library: Added several new statistical values to our beatmap metadata and ran through the whole library to collect this data. Ran into several beatmap parsing errors (due to beatmaps having issues) that we now are robust against, so you can actually play a few more osu! beatmaps in Holodance that failed before.
  
• Avatar System: Added Avatar "Azeroid", who should be kind of gender neutral and is our first space soldier. Could be a human, could be an android. You can never know with these things.
  
• Free Mode: Re-arranged the environments to make more sense, also fixed some of the score thresholds to have a more sensible progression.
  
• Level Selection Area: Fixed bug that prevented settings from showing up properly, which is bad because this explains some things.
  
• Level Selection Area: Added more instructions to the "settings" screen.
  
• Fixed Skybox in initial loading screen (there was flickering when you looked back).
  
• Fixed Initial Loading screen that always showed "Virtual Clubbing", while this was actually the main Holodance scene.
  
• Streamer Mode: Re-Arranged UI Layout to be consume less space, and changed 2D GUI button to almost completely disappear when switched off.
  
• Streamer Mode: Removed "Take Screenshots" for now. This was not really meant to be used by people.
  
• Mixed Reality: Made parsing externalcamera.cfg a little more robust.
  
• Mixed Reality: Now handling camera "stuff" related to quadrant view in Mixed Reality using the CameraManager instead of trying to find all cameras.
  
• Streamer Mode: You can now fully disable Mixed Reality, regardless of technology used (standard quadrant view based on SteamVR Unity plugin, LIV Client, MixCast) by checking a checkbox. This can be useful if you mix parts where you use Mixed Reality, and parts where you only use in-game footage (no Mixed Reality).
  
• Streamer Mode: Added a camera that is based on the MR-camera, so when you have a tracker, you can now simulate an in-game camera with that tracker, just like you would with Mixed Reality - except you don't need a greenscreen setup (this works best when using the Avatar System for representing the player).
  
• Streamer Mode: Mixed Reality can now also be part of the sequence used by "Switch Cams in the Rhythm".
  
• Streamer Mode: Fixed issue that when using "Switch Cams in the Rhythm", you'd get a "weird camera" after "Dragon Perspective", regardless of which camera were taking part in this.
  
• Streamer Mode: Holodance can now talk to OBS and activate different scenes, depending on whether we're entering new player data in party mode (will show a waiting scene), or we are in Mixed Reality (e.g. taking LIV client output), or in regular "Streamer Mode". Also, recordings are now automatically started when in Party Mode.
  
• Mixed Reality: Added parameter "disableQuadrantView" to externalcamera.config. If you set this to True, the quadrant view will be completely disabled. This is useful if you use LIV Client or MixCast and don't want the quadrant view to pop up before you have activated either of the other solutions.
  
• Mixed Reality: Much improved integration of MixCast that now properly supports configuration via externalcamera.cfg (but currently no longer the setup via MixCast Studio which unfortunately doesn't seem to use externalcamera.cfg or support writing it). We can now switch quickly between MixCast and our new MR Tracked Cam to switch quickly between the real person or an Avatar.
  
• Shader Prewarming is now disabled by default and you have to explicitly enable it (This is on the flatscreen UI, click button "Show Extra Settings", then it's the first checkbox, top right of the screen, called "No Shader Prewarming". Default is now checked, so usually shader prewarming is disabled. Eventually, this will disappear - unless we find a good reason to keep it.
  
• Removed VRTK from project. We never really used it much and will eventually use the SteamVR Interaction system which seems to be a much better approach to what we need.
  
• Added a feature that I'd rather not talk about publicly. This is for people doing reviews. If you want to do a review, ask me, and I'll let you know about it. It's not totally hidden, so, if you look for it, you'll find it, and you'll know why I'm not putting it into the release notes.