Vortex Studio 2024.10 Change Log

Owned by Marc Lievin
Nov 12, 2024
4 min read

What's new?

Unity Earthwork Integration

What’s changing

In Vortex Studio 2024.10, we are excited to announce the integration of the earthworks zone with Unity's terrain streaming. This new feature allows you to seamlessly add various Vortex earthworks extensions directly within your Unity project, all from the Unity Editor.

One of the standout features is the Earthworks Zone, which can be placed over a Unity terrain. This automatically generates the base heightfields from the terrain at the specified location of the zone and creates a hole in the terrain mesh to allow soil deformation. Furthermore, the graphical assets and Earthworks Zone dynamics parameters are entirely configurable within the Unity editor,

Why it matters

This enhancement streamlines the workflow by centering it around Unity, while also removing the necessity to specify the terrain in Vortex when earth moving is needed.

Additional details

Unity Earthworks Integration

User Defined Tire Model

What’s changing

Users of Vortex Studio have the capability to create custom tire models by implementing the ITireModel interface within an extension

Why it matters

This gives users the tools to make their own tire model for their own simulation.

Additional details

Creating User Defined Tire Models

User Defined Tire Model Tutorial

Technical Preview: Device Mapping Script

What’s changing

Users of Vortex Studio have the capability to create a Python script to perform the device mapping in place of using the current mapping capabilities.

Why it matters

This gives users the power to perform device mapping as desired, rather than be restricted by the basic offering of transfer functions, mapping and modifier capabilities.

Additional details

Control Mapping

The Control Presets Tab

Limitations

  • The device mapping script can only be setup using the control preset tab using the Vortex Player or the same page in a simulator.

  • The Vortex Editor does not currently support the feature.

  • There is no way to perform device calibration at the moment, any calibration must be taken into account within the script at the moment.

VP-48954

Minor Improvements in Vortex Studio 2024.10

In addition to features documented in the “What's New”, minor improvements have been made during the development:

ID

Summary

ID

Summary

VP-48977

Unity Integration - All Unity projects should have the same basic settings

VP-49120

Recorder - New option to prevent recording when simulation is paused

VP-49310

Joystick extension - Add option to allow users to use the axis raw value, as the default mode normalizes values and is including a deadband

Fixed Issues in Vortex Studio 2024.10

Various bugs and workflow issues have been fixed during the development:

ID

Summary

ID

Summary

VP-48954

Unity Integration: Potential crash when closing a running Unity Simulation, using setup file DynamicsDebug.vxc

VP-49040

VortexSetup: Unable install due to error Authentication failed : VortexSetup doesn't have access to the authorization domain.

VP-49126

Recorder - Replay - Starting the replay for the first time after a 10 min exercise can lags for more than 30 seconds

VP-49214

Vortex Editor - Impossible to directly delete a tire model from a tire type

VP-49292

Licensing Server: Most Vortex applications can check out a Create license when available, even if they do not need it

VP-49402

Rigid Cable - There is inconsistency in cable lengths across multiple cable systems that are controlled by the same winch command

VP-49403

Massless Cable - There is inconsistency in cable lengths across multiple cable systems that are controlled by the same winch command

System Requirements

The system requirements have recently been updated to reflect the wider range of GPUs Vortex Studio supports when using its Vulkan renderer.

See System Requirements

End-of-life Notice

n/a

Known Issues in Vortex Studio 2024.10

ID

Summary

Workaround

VP-39601

Unloading a lot of Dynamics Script Extension takes a long time. At unload when removing a Python script, ending a Python Interpreter is exponentially slower the more script is present in the loaded content. When more than a few hundred scripts are present, the unload time can be a few seconds.

Reducing the number of scripts.

VP-41437

When a sound is created such that the listener and the emitter are exactly at the same location, or the listener is moving together with the emitter such that it is precisely above it, the sound that the operator hears becomes garbled. 

This happens for monaural sound track when the listener and the emitter are moving in tandem while being either too close or aligned vertically. The workaround is keep the sound emitter and the listener separate and make sure they can't be move in a way where they could align with each other.

VP-43810

Memory blocks dumped, when terminating the application. 

None. This memory leak is not growing, it's memory that should be returned before the end of the process.

VP-44315

Memory leak related to VxContactMaterial when there is a contact upon termination of a VxCore application.

Removing all parts and collision geometries before destroying the VxUniverse ensures that any ongoing contact is invalidated before destroying the VxUniverse. Optionally, using the higher level VxSim API and loading content created in the Vortex Studio Editor seems to work around this issue as the content is automatically unloaded before the application is destroyed.