Camera Avatar Animation now enabled by default for new experiences

Im still speaking to moderators as to why it got silently taken down :sweat_smile:, no reasoning or even mention of it, it was just pulled under the rug.

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they afraid to admit your right lol

Thanks for your feedback :+1:
Weā€™re working towards achieving a balance there where we want to make it as intuitive and easy and fun as possible for users to use avatar chat/ voice/ camera in experiences/ games, while also respecting developer and user preferences in case someone does not want it at all or not at that moment or not in a particular experience.
The idea behind enabling camera communication by default for new experiences is so that devs can try it right away in their experience already before having saved the place to Roblox and getting the test experience right away they would get when saving/publishing to Roblox. Once you save a place to Roblox, if you donā€™t want to have support for camera based animation, you can go to GameSettings/Communication Settings and disable Camera there. I understand if you are of the view that you donā€™t want to have it in an experience it can be a hassle to have to do the extra step of disabling it, but on the other side if a user expects some communication features and doesnā€™t have them in an experience, that can be not ideal for them, too, so we wanted the selection of the developer to be an intentional explicit one if they really want to disable it.
With the upcoming Chrome UI Unibar (Currently available in Studio only as Beta Feature) the Bubble Chat Cam/Mic Buttons will go away completely as the Mic/Cam Buttons will instead be in the Unibar then.
Based on the feedback of Chrome UI the team is doing further improvements there, so weā€™ll post further updates on that once they are ready.

Overall, yeah, it is a process to stepwise get an ideal balance going of ideally having it supported in as many experiences as possible and making it fun, easy and intuitive for users to use it, while at the same time respecting dev and user community preferences for cases they donā€™t want to have it or donā€™t want it in just that moment or in a particular experience :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi all, weā€™ve temporarily rolled back this change due to a related bug impacting Studio stability. We have identified a fix that is expected to roll out in the coming weeks. Thanks for your patience.

I appreciate the lengthy response. Many (including me) would appreciate a vision / synopsis of where this is all going. Iā€™ve noticed a pattern with updates like these being pushed and a lot of people (minus the rage messages here) disliking this. I donā€™t want to judge all this too quick since I know this took a lot of engineering time and money to accomplish. I really, just want to understand the vision and where I, as a developer, fall into it.

Additionally, thereā€™s been a growing issue where game settings has a lot of clutter from being tied to published games. Features like these have been expanding the menu by quite a lot to the point where itā€™s jarring. I would appreciate, at the very least, that this be decoupled. Iā€™ve been working in local files a lot lately and itā€™s painful trying to navigate.

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I see where youā€™re coming from regarding the game settings, itā€™s been a pain point for us with this, too,
so it is something weā€™re brainstorming on how it can be improved further.

Iā€™m strongly advocating for us improving how we communicate things and also how we listen to and incorporate dev and user community feedback.

I feel like a lot of the things done would be more well received if people would see weā€™re doing them with best intentions and not just listening to feedback but also incorporating it, sometimes itā€™s not easy to communicate some things openly for a company in all aspects, but yeah, something to strive for improving constantly.

Ideally weā€™d also catch more feedback earlier on in dev cycles and implement more improvements based on that already before full rollout, sometimes thatā€™s not possible in some aspects as some additional feedback only comes in on broader rollout, so then thereā€™s some post release adjustments needed.

So bear with us as we get there together.

Regarding giving a vision synopsis:

Iā€™m a software engineer with game development background, so iā€™ll reply with first the company product vision synopsis and then how i picture that would affect a person like me (someone who would make a game/ experience)

We want users to be able to express themselves however they want, that includes all aspects of their avatar, the look, the sound, the facial expression, makeup, clothing and accessories, and, over time even upper body movement and being able to change their voice however they want and more.

And we want to level up communication further.

Like Initially we had text chat only, then voice chat, now avatar chat with animating your avatarā€™s face from mic or cam input and weā€™ll have animating the avatarā€™s upper body from cam input in the future and other enhancements.

All those should be additional options and choices for users and developers, where we present the additional features and open up new possibilities and then it is up to developers and users what they make of it and what they want to use how (much) in particular experiences and games at any given time.

Those features being worked on are independent of other UI, Rendering, Physics and other improvements being worked on as we have dedicated other teams working on all those and many other things.

Still, one could wonder hey, iā€™m personally not working on a ā€œmetaverseā€ kinda ā€œexperienceā€, what do i need those enhanced expression and communication features for?

Generally we see the more of the avatar expression and communication features a game/experience supports, the more that helps with playtime, adoption, retention and other metrics.

From the angle of a user, sure i want to express myself in the look and feel of my avatar and have any communication features available to me to the degree i want to use them in a particular game/experience anytime accessible right away.
Maybe in a particular game iā€™m cool with text chat, in another i may want voice chat or full avatar chat.
Maybe in one game iā€™m cool with the custom avatar it gives me, while in another i would prefer my own avatar to be in there or maybe sometimes it should look like a realistic version of me, sometimes like a cartoony or blocky version, sometimes like a version of the avatar i made but automatically adapted for the look and feel of that particular experience/game.
So as a user i want to have the choice on all of that as much as possible anytime i want and that is a common view among many users, in many places.
(One can see it in many other places, too where more limited expression and communication ways usually take a backseat as more expressive and elaborate ones appear and are adopted, like way less people use fax or sms nowadays that we have many way more faster, more expressive, fun and elaborate other means of expressing oneself, socialising and communicating. So hence, yeah, as Roblox we want to stay right up there on the leading edge in whatā€™s possible and offer that to our developer community as additional options).

In short it is very popular among users to be able to express themselves and hang out and communicate with others.

Various experiences have risen massively in popularity since supporting layered clothing, dynamic heads and avatar chat with voice and camera input. And generally speaking some of the most popular games and experiences are ones which support full avatar chat features.
Not saying those only became or stayed popular due to those features, but yeah, they help.

Now as as an engineer/ developer with game development background creating a Roblox game/experience, what would that mean for me?

Every dev may be different, just speaking from my stance, both because i like experimenting with new fun tech and also to increase the chances of my experience/ game becoming//staying popular longer by giving my users expression and communication features a good chunk of them likes, iā€™d like my player base to be able to use the ones of such new features they want to use and which make sense for the type of game/experience i create.

That may be different features for different games/experiences.

For example if i was creating a chat/hangout, avatar editor or maybe yoga or fitness experience or dancing one, then something like upper body animation from camera input could be a feature iā€™d be excited about and would want to add to my game/experience once it is available.

Whereas if iā€™d make for example a first person shooter, maybe other self expression and communication features could be more sense making for such a game.

So weā€™ll have settings to set which of these features are available to users in an experience.

Which of these features devs use how in particular experiences/ games is up to them, our work is to open up new possibilities. I think there is potential for some amazing things there :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thank you for going out of your way to explain all this. I canā€™t put into words how much I appreciate the transparency, the fun examples and genuine use-cases that I would seriously consider. I am a software engineer w/ a game background myself (largely spent outside the roblox ecosystem) and I really wanted to see where this was going so I could a). prepare for it properly and b). to understand where I could put these types of things in my games.

I think with all these in mind, I do understand where this is going now and I am excited for how this plays out.

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Thanks a lot, very glad to hear =)

And yeah, i know what you mean, useful and needed sometimes to bring up use case examples.

We sorta try to hold ourselves back some regarding doing big large scale games like things from company side, more often release less games/ experiences other than basic examples, as we donā€™t want to compete with our dev community, but yeah, sometimes it can help just to give some more use case ideas and examples and general direction idea so it is more understandable whatā€™s the thought behind it and what all it could for example be useful for and why we see it as powerful and huge potential having.

Iā€™m glad if the things i listed were helpful, i have to bite my tongue to not babble out some still unannounced things which would allow more examples for things where more self expression and communication things could be useful for more other game types :slightly_smiling_face:

Without giving too much away, imagine in which ways for example voice chat could be more useful for team based shooters for example when there can be things like team speak in the future or what a privacy improvement and fun aspect it could be to have a voice costume where one can have a different voice in voice chat like Dave (builderman) brought up before.
(As game dev i also imagine it could be fun if in a team game one or some players could be playing the evil side and they would get more darker voices and the heroes could choose more friendly voices, just a thought =) )
Or for a picture in picture view like the Self View we have for avatar chat, what all one could use that for to show it for more players, could be quite useful in many game types.

Well, more on such things later as we can announce more =)

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Hi all, this has been re-enabled after resolving stability issues. Weā€™ve also addressed the UI concerns about the camera toggle above the head. If you are not interested in this feature while testing in an local file, you can choose to close the self-view and it will remain closed in future sessions.

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My friend seems to be having an issue where they cannot disable the camera feature (yes it is forced on)
any reason as to why this might be happening?

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