VaM2 better hurry up. Others are chasing your tail

[epi.noah]

A physics engine update is desperately needed. It's a waste that it won't happen.

• I take the environment out, it speeds things out.

Okay, I can live with just the character. I can offer the room as an option, let people switch it on and even switch to a more demanding one with the click of a button if they have a better hardware than mine.

• I take the simulation requiring hair and clothing out, it speeds things out.

Okay, I can live with just no-sim wearing character. I can offer different clothing sets with the click of a button. I can offer different hair options for different levels of performance/quality with the click of a button.

• I take the 3-point, 4-point lights out, get similar or subjectively better quality with spot lights, and if my GPU is the bottleneck, it speeds things out.

Okay, I can design something that looks great with just the character and spot lights. I can offer different lighting rigs with the click of a button.

BUT these are just incremental gains.

• I turn the soft physics and additional colliders off and the thing flies.

I get 2-4x performance gains.

But some scenes don't work without those. Some dancing scenes (even some high quality mocap) can but not everything.

Okay, so I can't improve that. I either,
• Forget about good quality & high performance in VR.
• Stick to dance scenes with soft physics and additional colliders off.
• Beg for an updated physics engine.

It's a shame that all this content made for the current VaM is being held back by the dated physics engine. It could all be remixed and brought to a much higher quality until VaM 2.0 gets here, and people can provide simple tools , or alternatives, and guides for that purpose. It would be the best VR content out there. But the physics engine is the bottleneck. And it's not the wait that bugs me, VaM 2.0 is not supposed to be compatible with all this content. It will all just go to waste.

Memory management is also problematic but I can understand that one. It's hard to design something that works for both creators and final users. Creators need you to retain things in the memory and let them cycle seamlessly, final users need you to drop what won't be needed next to free up memory for run time performance. It would be better if loading a scene cleared things out first, and merge leading scenes would clear out what is overwritten but at least I can fix that problem with more RAM. The physics thing is a bummer.

You can go the brute force approach and get the fastest CPU to get better physics performance. The engine doesn't even fully use it because it's bottlenecked by single thread performance.

I understand that the team chooses to work on 2.0. I just wish it was possible for someone to revamp the physics engine for better performance.

If I had three wishes, it would be
• Physics engine update,
• DLSS and RT support in VR.
• Better memory management,
And I'd be happy with just the physics engine update for VaM 1.x, the rest for VaM2.x.

If I was allowed to dream bigger,
• I'd let the user capture their experience and share it, and
• I'd offer intuitive and immersive controls for final users in VR as default.
• I'd rebrand by changing the name from something that sounds like "for lonely sad creeps" to "create your dreams".

 

[SPQR]

I'd rebrand by changing the name from something that sounds like "for lonely sad creeps" to "create your dreams".

nah cmon, virtamate is fine, now it's just getting petty lol

but once vamx buys virtamate your wish might come true

 

[epi.noah]

It's fine for me But I can see people shying away from sharing their experience with their friends with the current name. If the sharing thing was possible, and the image was improved, it would go 100x viral.

If the PR was was less about the sex scenes, more about the dancing scenes etc. and it had a name that reflected it, you'd be more likely to say "check this out man, I was in VR and walking around this dancing person, checking them out as if I was there". That's more interesting that "our crappy avatars will get legs someday".

The sex stuff would find its way to people on reddit anyway and VaM would still be one of the first things people find when they Google "Adult VR game". No need to give that to the "press" ready to make a fluff piece titled "check out these losers".

It's tool to create and share unique experiences but the name makes it sound like it's less than that. It's an adult sandbox, could be "Minecraft for adults", but sounds like "Fleshlight without the feeling of touch".

Oh well. What I really care about is the physics part.

-Why is an update needed? Wouldn't old scenes be designed to work with VaM's physics engine anyway?
-Not in VR at high speeds. If it wasn't for the physics, old scenes that barely worked on a flat screen a few years ago could all be brought to VR. Not just stuff that's on the hub but stuff that didn't even make the cut because it wasn't ready at the time. GPU performance advanced immensely. CPU single thread performance hasn't kept up. You remix the scene, optimize it, the graphics work but the physics performance is still the bottleneck.

This would all be unnecessary if VaM2.0 was just around the corner, with plugin support and backwards compatibility. But it isn't (and to my understanding won't be backwards compatible).

 

[SPQR]

It's tool to create and share unique experiences but the name makes it sound like it's less than that.

i keep reading that but it's been like 5 years of vam...
i've played lots of unique vr experiences, demos and whatnots over the years. i don't remember one from vam tbh. sfw scene i mean that you could say has replay value and you might load vam just for that

i agree of course that you can make a lot of stuff. but the creator aspect of it was meant for creators and for small quick stuff, it's not built with casual users in mind. it's actually easier to do stuff directly in unity than operate vam. it's quicker to learn unity, build there and just import complex scenes as assetbundles. it's easier & quicker to learn to code and do plugins than do a million triggers and all that. that's no minecraft..

personally i don't think it was meant to be a sandbox, more like a scene player like the others out there just smarter, more abstract. everyone just jumped on the creator version because of the lack of content ("playable" scenes).

If you advertise it as sandbox and 'tool to build your infinite sexual dreams' & all that the risk is you'll get a lot of people mad because in truth it's too much of a chore to operate in multiple ways

 

[Kosmosx]

"but once vamx buys virtamate your wish might come true "

good joke without VAM VAMX wouldn't even exist

and who knows what geesp0t would do also its not entirely his work alone he was just clever gathering devs around that wanted to make a bit of money for their Study pockets

And not few of those creators do these colab things to push themselves now you want to tell me this is not a job for them

a lot of people try to commercialize themselves over VAM and surely a lot of Covid Job survivors are under those especialy over time it got more of them, especially many of those Asians.

Though it becomes more and more of those Asian Patreons sooner or later it will be oversaturated and then the real fights will begin,

Patreon just for "recognition" i have to lough heavily by the intention especially of many who beg around but overall it is sad and shows many of those economical situation.

Many of those Patreons lie to no end and they have no problems to even watch themselves in the mirror after they wake up.

And you wondering why im mad ?

And then we have all those Asian competition growing up vs VAM tough most of them will fail.

I wonder how much more Chinese copycats we gonna see.

Though you also can see now how the suppressed Chinese are exploding currently

Sooner or later they will be the biggest Digital Porn Creators

 

[SPQR]

no joke, you'll see. steam discussions is already more active than this forum

 

[Kosmosx]

This is already alone great for AVG joes to enjoy VAM

Scenes - 50 animated sex loops

sxs4 submitted a new resource: 50 animated sex loops - animations Made 50 animation loops all in one scene,most of them used from other creator poses.Thanks to them! Makes my work faster;) Enjoy=p Read more about this resource...

hub.virtamate.com

Vamasutra with Basic animations high performance capable

all kind of variations can be created with it forcing timeline in time to give up nodes control where needed for realtime reaction changes

combining ideas from catalog with this could yield masterful results in in animation realtime puppeteerring

we can get entire realtime control any time of Mocaps and remixing them any way we want in application

Soon even Adobe has to fear VAM


VAM could become the most powerful Content Creation and Transfer tool for other Pipelines

i guess rather Unity itself gets more and more interested in it's core ideas they would have the power to bring VAM into a complete thing of it's own, especialy when WETA DIGITAL works directly on it's base
Integrating VAM into Unity or better melting both at the core together is not only the PATH for Humanoid Simulation Perfection


Throwing out DAZ Entirely and taking on WETAS work

Tough im not sure but i think WETA itself has no Generic Morph Model they are fully dependent on 3D/4D Scans, i think they only have some good working Horse base a stable hair simulation and some rather good working path tracer but that was it.
Overall they aren't so advanced as Sony Imageworks or Disney Animation but they where a cheap buy for Unity
And i think WETA not yet tried to bring back a very well known by it's Fans of different Generations Dead Human with low clone base data in a entire Movie most advanced they presented was a living full data Will Smith tough they synchronized it on his younger version rather efficiently

Which neither EPIC/TENCENT have yet


@Epi
Your ideas are nice but this moving light idea is always about to fail you don't want to have shadows all the time moving around, it is freaking disturbing we aren't used to it perceptually in this heaviness and it brings everything to fall apart in motion fast.

Replacing Epis Lighting

hub.virtamate.com

Replacing Epis Lighting 2

hub.virtamate.com

Replacing Epis Lighting 3

hub.virtamate.com

Replacing Epis Lighting 4

hub.virtamate.com

 

[SPQR]

from vamx on steam

2.0 is super far off from releasing, and certainly from releasing with the kind of features 1.x has.
....
That said, hopefully in a couple of years we'll see Virt-a-Mate 2.x + vamX.

looks like 2025-2026 for vam2

 

[epi.noah]

@Epi
Your ideas are nice but this moving light idea is always about to fail you don't want to have shadows all the time moving around, it is freaking disturbing we aren't used to it perceptually in this heaviness and it brings everything to fall apart in motion fast.

Replacing Epis Lighting

hub.virtamate.com

Replacing Epis Lighting 2

hub.virtamate.com

Replacing Epis Lighting 3

hub.virtamate.com

Replacing Epis Lighting 4

hub.virtamate.com

I have two solutions:
1. Using lights fixed in place (like 4 spots wide) so that moving shadows etc. do not bug you. You pair with with a nice environment for high quality.
2. Using these lights following the person if you're ditching the environment etc for high performance on lower end systems (and thus you won't have problems with shadows.
One or the other, depending on your needs.

And I can't take credit for the moving light stuff, it's been done before me. I just adopted my fixed place lights to that approach so that people who use these can replace them with mine.

Like these ones lately:

Scenes - Sexy Kpop Dances - 72 songs

NOTICE: There might be an issue with downloading PluginIdea.HPVL.6 dependency from in-game hub. If you see errors, please download it manually from the dependencies tab. and place in VaM/AddonPackages folder Dance animations for sexy Kpop...

hub.virtamate.com

Scenes - Free Idle Mocap for Creators

You may use this resource to make videos of any kind - for free or for paid releases provided credit is given somewhere in the video. The mocap should not be included in any released scenes - free or paid. Includes hand and finger tracking...

hub.virtamate.com

So basically,
1. You open a scene like these, you wanna try different lights, you can replace the existing rig with one of mine (chest, head, abdomen...)
2. You open a scene that has fixed lights, you wanna try different lights, you can replace the existing rig with one of mine.

 

[Kosmosx]

im doing this but i also have my own rigs that are optimized for maximum performance distance relation and i counter test a lot currently with my favorite results.
i have a very large database by now of results some you can watch here also in motion results and performance relation

Kosmosx Space's Porn Gifs | RedGIFs

Find out more about Kosmosx Space and explore their 569 porn GIFs and images. Browse the millions of other porn GIFs and images free on RedGIFs

www.redgifs.com

though i specifically optimize first for my own model results which is a small short babyface

she has no real human counterpart one goal is semi efficient skin transformation (efficient realtime tanning simulation)

so very fine spectrum changes without to much detail loss especially on the albedo layer

i also think many of those Kpop girls are useless we can simulate it

Thats where Kporn Kelly grows up on

Yoga Kelly Ready for Action 6

hub.virtamate.com

Kporn Kelly 4

The Porn Doughtier of Kiss has arrived

hub.virtamate.com

Kelly wants to become a Kporn Star 8

hub.virtamate.com

Yes it is all the same base you see 1 base transforming virtualy entirely in light space alone

Default Scene Rig

hub.virtamate.com

Wide Scale Low Shadow count

hub.virtamate.com

Wide Scale High Shadow Count

hub.virtamate.com

 

[epi.noah]

i've played lots of unique vr experiences, demos and whatnots over the years. i don't remember one from vam tbh. sfw scene i mean that you could say has replay value and you might load vam just for that

The girls say: Everything has replay value if you torch your memory

(don't listen to them, they're bad kitties)

Yeah, "create your dreams" would be pushing it because it still has a steep learning curve for new users. But something like "chase your dreams" could work. That's what people are doing by either putting things together themselves or downloading the content that speaks to them.

Also, it's easier to put together something with replay value today. We didn't have the GPUs that it takes to render great looking experiences, all the plugins, tools and assets needed to polish them, nor the equipment to capture the motion for them. But lately, it seems like we got there. We even have something like the Quest Pro and the AR passthrough approach to bring them into our rooms.

All that's holding it back is the physics performance.

But of course every shiny new thing like DLSS requires a newer version of Unity. So while I'm salivating over possible 2-3x physics performance improvements that a 1.x could have, the devs might be thinking "try 4-9x with Physx5.1 and DLSS3".

My only problem with that is the time a fully functional VaM 2.0 will take to get here. A 1.x with a physics engine update (if that's even possible) would tie us over while we wait. Admittedly, I don't know how hard that would be to build and it wouldn't be worth it if it takes too long.

 

[epi.noah]

I have two solutions:
1. Using lights fixed in place (like 4 spots wide) so that moving shadows etc. do not bug you. You pair with with a nice environment for high quality.
2. Using these lights following the person if you're ditching the environment etc for high performance on lower end systems (and thus you won't have problems with shadows.
One or the other, depending on your needs.

And I can't take credit for the moving light stuff, it's been done before me. I just adopted my fixed place lights to that approach so that people who use these can replace them with mine.

Like these ones lately:

Scenes - Sexy Kpop Dances - 72 songs

NOTICE: There might be an issue with downloading PluginIdea.HPVL.6 dependency from in-game hub. If you see errors, please download it manually from the dependencies tab. and place in VaM/AddonPackages folder Dance animations for sexy Kpop...

hub.virtamate.com

Scenes - Free Idle Mocap for Creators

You may use this resource to make videos of any kind - for free or for paid releases provided credit is given somewhere in the video. The mocap should not be included in any released scenes - free or paid. Includes hand and finger tracking...

hub.virtamate.com

So basically,
1. You open a scene like these, you wanna try different lights, you can replace the existing rig with one of mine (chest, head, abdomen...)
2. You open a scene that has fixed lights, you wanna try different lights, you can replace the existing rig with one of mine.

Another way of looking at this:
1. Lights fixed in place if the room asset isn't self lit (dark before you add any light)

TheOffice

Thinking about adding more rooms in a "epiSmallRooms" package. wip. No RT, no post-processing. Exactly as in VR.

hub.virtamate.com

(You may need to use Vamifier on the asset to tweak it)

2. Lights following the person if the room asset is self lit (bright without even adding a light)

cozy

Thinking about adding more rooms in a "epiSmallRooms" package. wip. No RT, no post-processing. Exactly as in VR.

hub.virtamate.com

(might have to play with the exposure slider to better match the room)

 

[Kosmosx]

You did better on the new light context

 

[Kosmosx]

I love you EPI

 

[epi.noah]

This is the closest I can get to photorealism with free and hub-hosted assets:

The room asset ( RealityCapture_Room ) is self-lit. The scene creator only needs to light the character. The 4spots rig (in epiLight) does that well if you attach its position to her chest ( I used Epi4SpotsChest1400, and I would manually rotate it to better match the room if needed). Normally, I prefer to use rooms that respond to lights the same way the character does, which I find is ideal for VR. But this alternative approach can work for scenes where the creator controls the camera and the action, like music videos.

• It can look great if the skin textures also have a lot of detail.
• It runs crazy fast too.

But for that crazy level of performance, you may have to disable advanced colliders and soft physics. A physics engine update is desperately needed.

For VR, I prefer rooms that respond to lights, like [Environment] The Dining Room with the settings in epiRoom. I use 4spotsWide or 4Points depending on the needs of the scene.

There was a time when I would say "4 lights, 8K normal maps, are you insane?!". But we have crazy fast GPUs and the bottleneck is the physics engine & CPU single thread performance. I see no reason to avoid chasing better visuals.

If VaM2.0 can't get here in a few months (which I would not expect), I wish we had a performance focused physics engine update to VaM before the move to VaM 2.0.

 

[Kosmosx]

you can still adapt that overhead but that needs a lot of manual work and optimization completely scene and context dependent
you also can adapt this dynamically if you really smart though dynamically adaption for interactive scenes that are rather unpredictable that's of course even more limited headroom.

Not always Physics are the biggest balance problem and take the most resources depending on the overall scene complexity

though you shouldn't measure in FPS sometimes it's even more efficient to measure in your own response feeling from input to output and not even believing any internal counters at all

of course it is different if you can measure fully system external and low OS/API overhead

Sometimes it's even a viable option to measure in Energy Efficiency and how for example your power management reacts

 

[SPQR]

If VaM2.0 can't get here in a few months

where did you hear that?! vamx was saying it's likely not gonna be out for like 2 years, and even then not at full functionality

 

[Kosmosx]

2 years is a crazy assumption i guess he rather hoped as long as possible to run his VAMX, it's not that you have to rewrite it entirely and can't leverage from nothing.

 

[SPQR]

i don't think he cares about that. when vam2 is out he just launches vamx for that too
he's probably working on that already if I were to bet

 

[epi.noah]

where did you hear that?! vamx was saying it's likely not gonna be out for like 2 years, and even then not at full functionality

Agreed. That's why we need a physics engine update.

If VaM2.0 can't get here in a few months (which I would not expect), I wish we had a performance focused physics engine update to VaM before the move to VaM 2.0.

I'm saying: If VaM 2.0 is indeed going to take some time, the original poster of the topic might be right unless the current VaM gets a physics engine update.

The choice are:
1. The physics engine in VaM 1.x gets improved.
2. VaM 2.0 gets here in less than a year (not likely).
3. We have a year where the core tech is way behind the times and alternatives can gain traction.

If we had a faster, better optimized physics engine, even just remixing and putting together content that is readily available for free would lead to the best adult VR content out there.

 

[SPQR]

i agree but i don't think it as simple as you might think. it's easy to say 'improve the physics engine' but it's not something you just code in. i'm not a game dev but i think it would require changing the unity version and that creates a ton of problems, it can break all sort of things. and if you go that way and waste the time with changing the version, you might as well do it for the latest unity version, you don't bother doing all that work to upgrade it just a bit while having plans to go for the latest as well. upgrading the physics engine is what they're doing right now with vam2, it's just easier & faster to rewrite most of the functionality than refactor it

 

[epi.noah]

Agreed if they need to update the whole engine. I thought they had a custom implementation for the physics engine, which made me assume that it can be updated without having to touch the rest. But maybe not.

 

[SPQR]

I thought they had a custom implementation for the physics engine

no way, that's the whole point of using game engines, so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel with things like that. there might be some custom stuff for physics but it's things built and relying on the unity engine physics

 

[taricol45]

interesting information

 

[SPQR]

interesting information

not to take away from what vam is doing! it's pretty complex, soft body physics & body parts resistance, that's all custom code to my knowledge and you don't see a lot of that in games

but it's built & relying on unity physics that's driving the forces, you can't go and improve that yourself or fix their bugs. to do that you update to newer versions of unity which is what they're doing already. to do an intermediary update would be a big waste of time. at least that's my understanding