MRTK3 Preview 13 Release

[Zee2]

We're happy to announce the pre.13 release for MRTK3. We hope everyone had a great holiday season and is back in the new year refreshed and ready to build some great XR apps! We have some great new features, fixes, and changes to share with you all.

We're making good progress on shaping our accessibility story moving forward. You'll see quite a few changes related to our accessibility subsystems and types, which are gearing us up for some future feature releases. We've added a new SpeechRecognitionSubsystem (Windows/local-only implementation so far, more to come!), a Windows implementation of the SpeechToTextSubsystem, some partial fixes for audio spatialization problems, as well as the brand new Dialog 2.0 refactor.

Read on, and happy new year!

Changelog for MRTK3 pre.13

[pre.13] - 2023-1-5 - a918e44

The format is based on Keep a Changelog. The content is mirrored at the changelog page of our docs.

Added

• Added reasonable-default ARCore loader/settings assets to MRTKDevTemplate (#11167)
• Added Unity's Android logcat package for improved debugging on Android (#11167)
• Added missing .npmrcs in individual packages (#11136)
• Added IsContextuallyRelevant to DescribableObject (#11143)
• Added a handy HasAnyControls utility method to check if an action has any controls bound (#11181)
• Added support for custom min/max ranges for sliders (#11192)
• Added SpeechRecognitionSubsystem definition (#11157)
• Added WindowsSpeechRecognition implementation of the SpeechRecognitionSubsystem (#11157)
• Added new physically-accurate options for customizing rigidbody grab and fling behavior (#11032)
• Added a button to automatically populate an empty MRTK Profile field with the default MRTK profile asset (#11259)
• Added a default Audio Mixer + mixer group for use with the new spatializer package (#11271)
• Added a SpatializationMixer property to MRTKProfile so scripts can lookup a reference to the correct spatializer mixer to use at runtime (#11271)
• Added ConfigureSpatializationSettings which can be used to ensure audio sources are properly connected to the spatializer mixer at runtime (#11271)
• Added additional UI controls (UI/MRTK/Canvas, UI/MRTK/Canvas + Graphic Raycasting, UI/MRTK/Plate, and UI/MRTK/List Menu) to the UI/MRTK/ menu. (#11281)
• Added the brand-new, overhauled Dialog 2.0 API for efficient and extensible runtime dialog popups (#11113)
• Added tests for the new Dialog 2.0 API (#11113)
• Added math utilities for dealing with byte buffers (#11209)
• Added WindowsTextToSpeechSubsystem implementation (#11209)
• Added a parameter to control the max length of the hand ray gradient (#11313)
• Added USE_INPUTSYSTEM_POSE_CONTROL define symbol to opt-in to the input system pose refactor

Changed

• Excluded Oculus Integration Package from git tracking, for better development workflow while using OIP + OpenXR (#11167)
• Changed background of default Android app icon to black (#11167)
• Added HandheldRAInputDevice pose paths to our camera pose driver (#11167)
• Bumped minimum Android SDK version to 29 (#11167)
• Removed DescribableFlag (#11143)
• Changed StatefulInteractable to use new-ish C# syntax for implicit backing fields (#11144)
• Bumped MR OpenXR Plugin version to 1.6.0 (#11163)
• Bumped XRI version to 2.2 (#11164)
• Refactored out EventSystems in sample scenes to a reusable prefab that contains an XRUIInputModule (#11170)
• Reserialized hand controller prefabs + cleaned up overrides (#11182)
• Removed unnecessary HandsAggregatorConfig type (#11157)
• Overhauled the algorithms for rigidbody grab and fling, using critically dampened springs, new optional torque settings, and ensured all physics operations were occurring in FixedUpdate (Thanks @NorbertNemec!) (#11032)
• Bumped sample project version to 2020.3.42f1 and indicated that it's our new minimum version (for IL2CPP fixes) (#11213)
• Renamed UITearsheet to NonCanvasUITearsheet (#11255)
• Renamed ObjectBarExample to NonCanvasObjectBarExample (#11255)
• Renamed UIBackplateExample to NonCanvasUIBackplateExample (#11255)
• Breaking: Refactored DescribableObject* into AccessibleObject* (#11261)
• Breaking: Replaced ComponentRole enum with a set of scriptable objects for better extensibility (#11261)
• Updated Microsoft Spatializer to v2.37 (#11271)
• Changed default UWP OpenXR settings to include the Microsoft Motion Controller interaction profile, to match Standalone (#11194)
• Moved existing/legacy Dialog APiI into the UX.Deprecated namespace and into the Legacy Dialog folder (#11113)
• Updated MR OpenXR Plugin to 1.7.0 (#11303)
• Breaking: Refactored TextToSpeechSubsystem.Speak into TextToSpeechSubsystem.TrySpeak, returning a Task<bool> for async TTS jobs (#11209)
• Style updates and cleanup, including using tuple swaps, more (safe) use of ??=, TryGetComponent, SetPositionAndRotation, and other optimizations (#11314)
• Breaking: Burninated all API surface that marked obsolete more than 5 months ago (#11326)
• Breaking (Editor only): Removed MixedRealityInspectorUtility, moving part of its functionality into InspectorUIUtility and the rest into MRTKEditorStyles (#11330)
• Breaking (Editor only): Refactored MixedRealityStylesUtility into MRTKEditorStyles (#11330)
• Breaking (Editor only): Removed scriptable object foldout utility (will be replaced by the new XR Coreutils Datums) (#11330)
• Reorganized folders inside Core/Editor (#11330)
• Improved doccomments/documentation for several core utilities and types (#11330)
• Breaking (Editor only): Renamed various *Inspector classes to *Editor for clarity and consistency (#11330)

Fixed

• Fixed uses of InputActionPropertys not properly using Enable/DisableDirectAction (#11133)
• Fixed InterfaceSelectorDrawer not accounting for the type being an array/list (#11183)
• Fixed GrabBar material's incorrect package location (#11180)
• Fixed a bug where the reticle didn't get disabled when its visual script was disabled (#11204)
• Fixed rotation singularity errorspam when setting reticle orientation (#11204)
• Fixed missing Follow functionality in legacy/non-Canvas Slate prefab (#11255)
• Removed extraneous click handlers from Slate buttons that would cause the slate to close (#11255)
• Fixed incorrect icons on the base Slate prefab (#11255)
• Removed broken prefab references in the tearsheet scene (#11255)
• Fixed Using the Dialog control with the Canvas Dialog prefab from the UX components throws an exception #10888 (#11113)
• Fixed UI Tear Sheet Dialog examples have an additional PressableButton spanning the width as the expected two buttons #10893 (#11113)
• Fixed Dialog near/far broken; needs to be refactored to properly scalable Canvas dialogs #10812 (#11113)
• Resolved Unit tests for MRTK3 Dialog #11223 (#11113)
• Fixed PressableButton inspector throws errors when no BoxCollider present #11270 (#11296)
• Fixed PressableButton inspector doesn't visualize changes to push planes when manually entered #11295 (#11296)
• Fixed build error caused by breakage in Unity OpenXR Plugin (#11303)
• Fixed Android build issues and icon import errors (#11307)
• Fixed hand interaction polyfill not updating the UI Press controller state (#11307)
• Fixed the grab interactor + NearInteractionModeDetector colliders blocking mouseclicks in-editor (#11328)
• Fixed incorrect/out of date materials on the rigged hands (optimize/correct for Linear colorspace) (#11329)
• Cleaned up some dead code related to legacy Profiles (#11330)
• Fixed leftover legacy Dialog window in DialogExample scene (#11336)
• Fixed missing hand menu in VanillaUGUIExample scene (#11336)
• Fixed incorrect assembly version number for the accessibilty package (#11342)

Known issues

• There's a performance regression with the hand ray gradient visuals that causes a small per-frame memory allocation. We'll be fixing this very soon, and you can see more details here Perf regression in UpdateLineVisuals #11343 and here Remove allocs from idle and selecting ray interactor #11344.

Breaking changes

• There have been some breaking API changes in editor code. Unless you've written custom editor code that depends on MixedRealityStylesUtility or MixedRealityInspectorUtility, you will be unaffected.
• See above changelog for several breaking changes to the TextToSpeechSubsystem API.
• See above changelog for several breaking changes to the com.microsoft.mrtk.accessibility package.
• API that has been already marked obsolete for more than 5 months has been removed; see above for details.

Thanks!

As always, stay in touch! Reach out to us anywhere you see us, including the HoloDevelopers slack, the GitHub discussions/issues, or even Twitter! We love to see what you build with MRTK3 and hear your feedback.

Thanks again! 👓👐