Networking Voice via Dissonance

Voice support has been on our TODO for some time now. Production-ready voice processing is no easy feat. So instead of solving the problem ourselves, we explored proven and loved solutions by the people we work with. One of them was Dissonance Voice Chat by Placeholder Software.

We had to try this out. Over a weekend, we had a rudimentary integration working for a customer project we’re working on. We saw the value, we had fun with it - we had to ship it!

So here it is, a coherence + Dissonance integration. You can access it through the coherence Hub.

If you’d like to see networking voice support for other libraries, don’t hesitate to reach us. Our plan is to integrate nicely with the existing Unity ecosystem, both first-party and third-party.

Samples, Meet the Hub

Not long ago we focused on the Hub, simplifying some of the views, reducing noise, and bringing what we believe was the core value upfront. That iteration was a core foundation for what we’re bringing today, as part of 1.8.

We’ve moved sample visualization from the Explore Samples window into the Hub. We’ve simplified its contents, organized samples within categories, added demos and documentation, and brought QoL improvements to make importing, updating and learning a more pleasing experience.

Keep It Simple, Main Menu

Internally, we felt the main menu was overwhelming. Too many options make it intimidating for first-timers, noisy for experienced users. So we had to do something about it. Here’s our take for 1.8.0:

CoherenceCloudLogin component

Using the coherence Cloud to handle players coming from different platforms is getting a new face. In past updates we’ve offered APIs, but this time around we offer a Unity component that centralizes this logic, and an inspector that helps you handle this abstraction with ease.

Read more to get the best out of it.

Opt-in Development/Release workflow for Cloud

You can now associate a Unity project with two Cloud projects. This affects Schema uploading and Simulator management.

Development is used within the Unity Editor and for Development Builds. So you can keep your bleeding edge changes and internal tests to yourself without having to build your own tools around it.

You can opt-in for this feature from within the Settings window.

Command, who is this?

When sending a command, you can opt-in to receive metadata about who is the sender and in what frame it was sent. Read more about why this is useful, and how to take the best out of it.

These are just the highlights, of course. For full detail on 1.8, check out the Release Notes.