I’m happy to say that this update didn’t break my experience (and therefore didn’t mess up Nexus VR Character Model), but I did notice two things:
The Roblox staff member that replied to me before mentioned something about hiding the bottom bar when not looking down, which would be a good update, but as of now, it’s still always visible.
What’s this new shield icon on the bottom bar? Interacting with it doesn’t make any UI appear; If I had voice chat (if only), I would assume it indicated if I was allowed to use it. Is this for the planned safety bubbles in VR?
That’s the Safety Bubble feature that when other users come too close to you, the bubble automatically fades them out from your view. There’s an option in the settings to exclude friends from being hidden by the bubble, as well as being able to disable the bubble altogether.
There is a dedicated voice toggle that appears to the left of the bubble toggle, on the same column with the UI and chat buttons.
I have spotted another issue, but I am not entirely sure if this has been reported yet. When you playtest in VR after editing a script, you are thrown an error that won’t be fixed until you restart Studio. The error is thrown seemingly every frame.
I use a Valve Index and have set OpenXr to Steam VR runtime.
Last night, I was using VR to test how my items and recently-imported piano keys were scaled relative to me, and I found that the bottom bar stays at just the right position to get in the way of the keyboard. (I know it won’t stop scripts from detecting where my hands are, so I will still be able to play it, but its position doesn’t seem the best.)
I also noticed that the bottom bar relocates if I look down enough. I think it would be really nice if there was a setting to hide the bottom bar until I look down enough for the bar to move into this lower position. That way, the bar is still there since it’s required, but also hides until the player might need to see it after they’ve hidden the experience’s custom GUIs.
I can’t find the post but I know a staff member mentioned something about hiding it until the user looked around where the bottom bar’s positioned. I still think that’s nice, but then again, I like when users are given options to customize apps to suit how they’d like to experience them.
Also, since there’s a staff member in this topic, I’d like to report that I believe a previous Roblox update wasn’t completed.
In version 578, a great change was made, making it so that pressing backspace didn’t forcibly move the player’s held tool into their backpack. As far as I can tell, that was only changed for the keyboard. If I press the left trigger in VR, my tool is still put in the backpack. (I haven’t tested this with a controller, but I’m assuming the left trigger/L2 also puts away tools too.)
The bottom bar should hide from your peripheral vision if you collapse it (the button with two arrows on the bar). It should also shift a bit further down, but it’s likely still not ideal for piano playing.
is it possible to hide the bottom bar completely until you press the menu button instead of it still being there even while minimized and invisible i have a problem where i still press the leave game button by accident because im pointing down and pressing trigger while accidentally pressing the buttons which disrupts gameplay
I think it would be a really nice option for players that need it or understand how it works like us.
I understand the bottom bar is the equivalent of the “Roblox button” outside of VR so it should be always accessible, but in ways, I prefer how things worked before the bottom bar update; Hiding the UI hid everything and gave a clean view of the virtual world.
I know it’s required so players can exit the experience at any time, view the player list, and report other players/the experience itself, but that’s why I said that phrase, “understand how it works”. The average player wouldn’t care about the bottom bar potentially getting in the way of interactions. However, for people like myself that are aware of it, letting them completely hide the bar on command (only after changing a setting or something) would be great. I’m sure we’d remember to try pressing or holding the menu button to bring back the bottom bar when we need it.
Plus, if it were a user setting (not something a developer can control), it would be up to the player to unlock the ability to completely hide CoreGui’s bottom bar. I know that’s inconsistent with the Roblox menu button, but there’s a difference between these GUI elements.
The Roblox button, while sometimes annoying for those wanting clean screenshots of more well-made, detailed virtual worlds, is very small in the grand scheme of things; It never takes up too much space, and in a way resembles a TV channel’s watermark. (It would be nice if Selfie Mode could hide it when it activated the core-only “take screenshot” function too, but that’s off-topic.)
The bottom bar, on the other hand, is placed on a specific height in front of you. While the non-VR button just covers a small part of the screen, the bottom bar can overlap anything positioned slightly below you, in front of you, like the piano’s keys in my example. I would detect the player’s hand positions and press keys that way, but imagine if a developer uses ClickDetectors or SurfaceGuis; You can’t point at anything that the bottom bar covers up!
Also, though really any UI breaks immersion, having UI that follows the player around and can’t be hidden really does that. If the player can’t hide it, it would be nice if the player could grab the bottom bar and move it to different heights themselves, like how you can move the bottom bar in the Meta Quest 2’s main interface.
That would be a decent solution, given the player could place the bottom bar directly above or below them, so it’s almost always out of sight until they need to use it.
@AykeriZero The current topbar UI is very problematic in my VR game’s experience. Please consider using left controller’s hamburger menu button to hide/show the topbar rather than having it always visible. Having a way to disable and re-enable the top bar is still very important, to access the core features, but having the bar always visible, even in its minimized position overlaps too much with vr experiences, where the players look all around and interact via object prompts. Another alternative could be to only show the topbar when the player’s head position is fixed around the same orientation for a period of time (like 10secs), then fade it out when head moves; however, this alternative still has problems in spaces like the piano game above. At least the player could move their head to the music while playing to keep the bar from showing
…or, you could open up the roblox menu whenever the player looks at one of their wrists, like a watch. Something Rec Room (a game?/platform?/metaverse? VERY similiar to roblox) does for their own VR menu. Some of the choices roblox has done so far (such as no official implementation of controller to avatar hand tracking) or that flying menu panel are pretty strange when compared to other social VR platforms like VRChat or Rec Room.
Also would be nice if we would be able to attach UI elements to hands rather than the main UI panel while in VR. Some GUI elements in my game are really far outside of my fov in VR.
I know I already made a reply about the bottom bar, but I made a short video demonstrating how Meta handles their bottom bar while I was in the Roblox app. (You can grab it and move it anywhere, at any time.)
Is this fix actually planned to release any time soon?
I mean come on guys, please don’t break something and then take months to unbreak it while adding even more stuff on top.
I really hope Roblox update priorities see some changes in the near future.
I like knowing that a staff member approves of this possible way to handle the bottom bar/CoreGui. I’m thinking that everyone will be okay with the bottom bar if they can grab it to adjust its height like that.
I think the game UI is attached to the bottom bar currently, since it moves up towards it when the screen GUI is enabled. I guess these two elements will need to be separated, so experiences’ UI elements stay where they are now while the bottom bar could be freely repositioned (while still following the player).
