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Planned Features

The following is a list to keep track of all planned features but also things that are currently in progress or won't be implemented.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for new features, feel free to create a new thread in the #feature-requests channel on the Discord Server (but please check if it has already been suggested before or is part of this list). You can also add comments to existing threads if you have more ideas or want to discuss them.

Category

The following Tags are used to categorize the planned features:
Simulator, Visualizer, Texture, Setup, UI, Other

Status

A feature can be in one of the following states:
Done - This feature can already be tested in early-access and will be part of a future release.
In Progress - This feature is currently being worked on.
Planned - This feature is planned to be implemented in the future.
Not Planned - This feature is not currently planned.
Idea - This feature is just an idea and it is not yet decided if it will be implemented.

Tags: Simulator Visualizer
Status: Planned

The Audio Link feature will allow you to link audio data to various parameters in the simulator and visualizer. This will allow you to create more dynamic and interactive effects that react to the music that is playing in the world.
Both the simulator and visualizer could make use of this information in different ways.

Scalar Values​

  • ALPASS_AUDIOLINK
    • Bass, Low, High, Treble
    • History
  • ALPASS_FILTEREDAUDIOLINK
    • Bass, Low, High, Treble
    • various degrees of smoothness
  • ALPASS_GENERALVU + uint2( 8, 0 )
    • Intensity (RMS Left / Peak Left / RMS Right / Peak Right)
  • ALPASS_FILTEREDVU_INTENSITY
    • Filtered Intensity (RMS Left / Peak Left / RMS Right / Peak Right)
  • ALPASS_AUTOCORRELATOR
    • waveform which can be used in distance based weighting

Color Values​

  • ALPASS_THEME_COLOR0 - ALPASS_THEME_COLOR3
    • use as color
  • ALPASS_CCCOLORS
    • different colors, but mostly 1-5 are okay
  • ALPASS_CCSTRIP
    • used for coloring where all colors are represented to varying degree
  • ALPASS_CCLIGHTS
    • used for coloring with 128 individual color sections of two separate themes, or 256 colors combined

Time Values​

  • ALPASS_GENERALVU_NETWORK_TIME
    • use for time-based calculations
  • ALPASS_CHRONOTENSITY
    • used for time based calculations where time should only progress while the audio is active
    • Bass, Low, High, Treble
    • different kinds of progression

Positional Values​

  • AudioLinkGetAudioSourcePosition()
    • use as reference point for distance based calculations

Shader Settings​

Simulator​

  • Base Settings
    • Sim Speed: Scalar Values
    • Sim Scale: Scalar Values
    • (Sim Time : Time Values)
  • Forces - General
    • Field Strength: Scalar Values
  • Forces - Attraction
    • Position: Positional Values
    • Shape Scale: Scalar Values
  • Forces - Directional
    • Direction: Positional Values
  • Forces - Turbulence
    • (Density: Scalar Values )
    • (Panning Scale: Scalar Values)
    • Panning Time / Change Speed: Time Values
  • Spawning
    • Position Scale (Shape Texture, Sphere, Box): Scalar Values
    • Velocity Multiplier: Scalar Values
    • Age Multiplier: Scalar Values
    • Lifetime Multiplier: Scalar Values
    • Partial Respawn Progress: Time Values
    • Inherit Movement Strength: Scalar Values
    • Time Dependent Noise: Time Values

Visualizer​

  • Base Settings
    • Sim Speed: Scalar Values
    • Sim Scale: Scalar Values
    • (Sim Time : Time Values)
  • Shape & Size
    • Line Length Limit: Scalar Values
    • Line Length Multiplier: Scalar Values
    • Line End Pos: Positional Values
    • Size Multiplier: Scalar Values
    • Flicker Time: Time Values
  • Color Settings
    • color mode: Color Values
      • Static/Pulse/Direction: replace individual colors with theme color or color chord when audio link is available
      • Pulse/Cycle Time: use Time Values or Scalar Values
    • Color Blend: Multiply / Replace / Add
    • Hue Shift: Time Values
    • Control Brightness: Scalar Values
  • Texture Settings
    • Animation Time: Time Values
  • Rotation Settings
    • Animation Time: Time Values
  • General Settings
    • effect distance
    • reference points
      • AL Source
      • Simulator Position
      • World Origin
      • Particle Origin (Visualizer only)
    • smoothness (Audio Link and Intensity)

Shockwave / Pulse Effects​

Tags: Simulator Visualizer
Status: Planned

Create a Pulse or Shockwave, where the effect propagates through the particles depending on their distance to the world origin or a simulator point.

  • In the Visualizer this can be used to change the particle size, color, rotation, etc.
  • In the Simulator this can be used to control forces like attraction, repulsion, turbulence, or even speed up the aging of particles along the shockwave, making them respawn

Simple Collision​

Tags: Simulator
Status: Planned

Basic Collision simulation for the Particles.
These Colliders would be placed at the Simulator Positions.

  • List of shapes to choose from like
    • Box
    • Sphere
    • Cylinder
    • Inverted shapes (aka containers)
  • Settings for collision
    • plasticity / elasticity (control how much the particles will bounce or just stick to the walls)
  • Maybe use the depth texture from a GrabPass to have particles collide with what you see on your screen (would cost some performance and only work on the opaque surfaces facing you)

Particle Chains / Trails​

Tags: Simulator
Status: Planned

This setting will cause particles to strictly follow each other like a chain or trail.

  • Setting for the length of the chain
  • Offset Texture to finely control the connections between individual particles
  • This will not increase the amount of particles, so if you have a chain length of 10 then only a 10th of particles will continue to move around freely, the other 90 % will be used for the trails

Grabbing​

Tags: Simulator
Status: Planned

Grabbing Particles to make them behave like they are stuck to your hand or wherever your simulators are.

  • similar to position space local but with the addition of them keeping their current position relative to the simulator when this is toggled on
  • currently this is already kind of possible by using the drag force with a uniform strength of 1 but in this case it would be more stable and would behave slightly differently when rotating

Dependent Force Strength​

Tags: Simulator
Status: Idea

Make the force strength of a particle depend on:

  • Speed
  • Age
  • Size

Dependent Timeflow​

Tags: Simulator
Status: Idea

Make the Timeflow of a particle depend on:

  • Speed
  • Age
  • Size

Areas of different Timeflow​

Tags: Simulator
Status: Idea

Make it possible to create areas to slow down or speed up particles.

  • this will not change their actual velocity, just the speed at which the particles are simulated, so when an area slows down the particles inside will also live longer and will keep moving when leaving that area

Particle Mesh​

Tags: Visualizer Simulator
Status: Planned

Not to be confused with Mesh Particles form Unity’s Particle System, this would not turn the individual particles into Meshes but instead have the particles form a Mesh together.

  • Instead of using a special Particle Mesh for the Visualizer, any Mesh could be used as long as it follows a few criteria
    • The Mesh should have the same amount of tris as the particle system or less (when using more the tris would be missing or stacked on each other)
  • The particles would use the shape, size, rotation, color and maybe even a given texture to imitate how the mesh would normally look with something like an unlit texture shader but each triangle could move around and their size, rotation and color can be changed
  • In combination with creating a shape Texture of the same Mesh this can be used for some interesting effects, like having the particles spawn in the shape of the mesh, and then start moving, or using it as an attraction shape the particles can flow into

With some extra steps and a special setup it would even be possible to use the live mesh positions with all the posing applied to it, making it possible to have effects like particles spawning from the surface of your skin or clothes.

HSV Color Settings​

Tags: Visualizer
Status: Planned

Add Hue, Saturation, and Value settings to the Color settings, which will be used to modify the current color of the particles.
This could be used for animations to easier control the color of particles through parameters.

Bokeh​

Tags: Visualizer
Status: Idea

Bokeh depth of field for particles

  • control the distances where it starts
  • control strength

Shape Texture Creation​

Tags: Texture
Status: Planned

  • Create from Texture
    • choose between alpha / luminance or any combination of ARGB
    • add option to use a depth texture to add depth to an image generated shape texture
    • add stippling as method to place dots instead of a random placement
  • Create from mesh (.fbx)
    • create a colormap from vertex colors or texture colors to be used as color texture in the visualizer
    • place a particle on each vertex and use vertex colors to generate a colormap (could be used for point clouds)
  • Create from Particle Clouds, use common file types to load particle cloud data, generate both a texture for coloring and one for positions

Offset Texture Creation​

Tags: Texture
Status: Planned

  • Random
  • Loops (adjustable length)
  • Mesh edges
  • Other structures

Filter Textures​

Tags: Texture
Status: Idea

  • use a texture to filter out particles based on their id
  • will use a float value which can be used as a multiplier for an attraction force or other attributes
  • can be use to apply special effects to only a specific subset of particles

Alternate names:

  • Weight Textures
  • Mask Textures

Integrated Texture Creation​

Tags: UI Texture
Status: Planned

Integrate creation of special textures like Shape Textures into the Shader Editor and remember their settings.

  • This Includes:
    • Shape Textures
    • Offset Textures
    • (Filter Textures)
    • Gradient Textures
    • Curve Textures
  • Every UI element which uses one of those Textures will have a section you can open or a button to create these textures in-place
    • Gradients and Curves already have this feature
  • Information on how this Texture was created will be stored with the Texture, so it can be recalled and edited easier later (this includes references to the Mesh/Image used or for curves the original control points)
  • Choose exactly which data should be created so only the relevant parts are present and the shader will be optimized to use those
    • this means when creating a shape texture for example with only position data and no velocity, age and lifetime data, the texture will be less than half the size
    • for the shader this means it will automatically know what kind of data is stored in the texture and can let the user know if it’s not suitable for a given texture field
    • additionally add a way to combine these textures so if you have a velocity and a position texture you can combine them into one again (maybe do this on the fly in the shader editor too)

Various UI Improvements​

Tags: UI
Status: Planned

This is a list of various UI Improvements for the Simulator and Visualizer Shader Editor.

  • Add warning to textures used for gradients when an unsuitable wrapping mode is used (for example: use wrap mode repeat for anything cyclic)
  • Add a warning for reset textures and offset textures if they are too large or too small for the amount of particles given by the Input Texture
  • Add Tooltips to Settings, this can be used to give explanations of settings inside the editor by simply hovering the mouse over a field
  • Make a miniature simulation of all forces acting on a few particles and show their movement
    • This could be helpful to show how the current settings affect particles and would be shown by having a section in the Shader Editor where you can see a small simulation
    • Adjustable sample count, scale and alignment (axis)
    • Each sample point spawns particles which will be connected through lines, so it looks like a string of pearls, showing the movement over time

World Prefab​

Tags: Setup
Status: Planned

A Prefab specialized for use in VRChat Worlds.

  • Could make use of Custom Render Textures so Cameras are no longer necessary for the update loop
  • Simulator Information is either provided through Udon or a single Camera (need to test possibilities and performance)
    • both options could allow for more than two reference points for the simulation, meaning you could have multiple players interacting with the same particles
  • As Quest supports custom shaders and cameras in Worlds this could be Quest compatible
    • the Quest version would be slightly different though as some Shader features are not supported, but this should only affect performance and not the capabilities

Shared Particles Setup​

Tags: Setup
Status: Planned

Special Setup which allows Particles to be shared between different Players.

  • This would require all Avatars to have this Setup on them and won’t just work with any Avatar
  • There are a few ways this could be implemented, one example would be:
    • you are in control of the visual aspect of the particles and their simulation settings but everyone else can have additional reference points for the simulation
    • this means if you have the fire preset for example, everyone who has an avatar with this setup active will also have fire spawning at their points
    • The maximum number of other people you can see interacting will be limited by your avatar’s prefab settings
  • Another way would be to have one player be the “Host” and others can connect to their particle system and interact with it
    • this would still require the other participants to have a special prefab on their avatar to join in, and of course everyone will need to have each others avatars fully shown or be friends to have it all work

Quantum Particles Component​

Tags: Setup
Status: Idea

Turn everything into a component which can be added to your avatar like normal Unity Particle Systems.

  • This Component will contain basic information on your setup like particle counts, where you want to have your simulators and more
  • Automatically create resources like render textures and meshes for that specific avatar/component, that way you can have completely different setups in the same Project without having to duplicate all resources and adjust all references or just have an easier time changing these settings
  • maybe even control the simulator and visualizer settings from this component (at least make sure their inputs are properly set up and they are adjusted for the particle counts etc.)

Particle Sub-Systems​

Tags: Setup
Status: Idea

Make it possible to have multiple particle systems in the same setup.

  • This means different portions of the particles are simulated at the same time and can have different settings but use the same update loop and same Render Texture to store their data, just different parts of it.
  • A result of them storing their data in the same texture would be that they could even interact with each other or behave in ways that depend on the other particles state (for example move, respawn depending on their state, or even be attracted to them)
  • These sub-systems could even use different visualizers but this would require splitting the mesh in accordance to the sub-system sizes (could be an automated process, only requiring a few button presses)

Animated Particles​

Tags: Setup Visualizer
Status: Idea

Animated Particles would not use a simulation setup, so their position and velocity cannot change dynamically and react to your movement or other influences, but with a special Visualizer Shader that can simulate basic motions on a loop for each particle, like spawning them, having them fly up and then respawn, they can still be used for various effects with a much lower performance impact and simpler setup

VCC Package​

Tags: Other
Status: Idea

Turn Quantum particles into a VCC package.

  • would make it easier to add them and keep them updated
  • would not affect the early access version, only public releases

Compatibility with GPU Particles​

Tags: Other
Status: Idea

Make it possible to update materials and textures from the old GPU Particle Setups.