How to revert wristwatch?

[AwesomeAce1604]

Basically title, havent played vr in a while and I find this new wristwatch unusable, but I dont know how to change it to the old version.

[CurtisVL]

Hi there!

What are you struggling with using the new wristwatch? I'd be happy to try to fix any issues!

If it's too small so it's hard to read, it can be resized via the + and - icons on the Home tab.
To add additional modules like with the old UI, click the '+' button below the wristwatch. :)

If you'd like to use the old UI you can opt into the 'old UI' branch using this beta code:
'dontuseolduibranch'

Please note that this branch will not be updated, fixing issues with the new UI is a much better solution than having both in active development.

[ubergeek77]

Originally posted by CurtisVL:

Hi there!

What are you struggling with using the new wristwatch? I'd be happy to try to fix any issues!

If it's too small so it's hard to read, it can be resized via the + and - icons on the Home tab.
To add additional modules like with the old UI, click the '+' button below the wristwatch. :)

If you'd like to use the old UI you can opt into the 'old UI' branch using this beta code:
'dontuseolduibranch'

Please note that this branch will not be updated, fixing issues with the new UI is a much better solution than having both in active development.

I've not seen a lot of constructive feedback so far besides "new UI bad," so I will try to provide some here.

(I'm not in VR right now, so I'm going off my memory from earlier today. Apologies if I'm not quite correct on anything!)

The one quick gripe that might be bugging people is the relocation of the "show/hide windows" button. It's now on the opposite side and a little lower; muscle memory is a powerful thing. Its icon also changed, so it might be that some people may not have realized the button moved, thinking they can no longer toggle the windows anymore.

But the main thing I dislike about the new wristwatch is the tabs system. If I'm not on the correct tab, information that used to be available at-a-glance now requires me to use my second hand to switch tabs. Unfortunately this is a bit of a usability downgrade. People might not be up front about this (or even realize it's their issue), but I suspect that this is most people's gripe with the new wristwatch.

I think the most straightforward middle ground to the tabs issue is to make it partially optional; for every widget that used to just be stuck to the bottom of the wristwatch, allow the user to choose if it should be inside a tab or not. This lets users still use the tab system, and it allows you to still use the tabs for more complicated things that the old wristwatch wouldn't support.

As for the text size, things are definitely smaller. We can resize the watch to compensate, but some users might feel like they need to make the watch much larger overall, just to get certain elements to be just as readable as they used to be. Especially in headsets that don't have much clarity; I'm on a Reverb G2 which has a higher resolution than the Index, and even I find some things too small to read.

[CurtisVL]

Originally posted by ubergeek77:

Originally posted by CurtisVL:

Hi there!

What are you struggling with using the new wristwatch? I'd be happy to try to fix any issues!

If it's too small so it's hard to read, it can be resized via the + and - icons on the Home tab.
To add additional modules like with the old UI, click the '+' button below the wristwatch. :)

If you'd like to use the old UI you can opt into the 'old UI' branch using this beta code:
'dontuseolduibranch'

Please note that this branch will not be updated, fixing issues with the new UI is a much better solution than having both in active development.

I've not seen a lot of constructive feedback so far besides "new UI bad," so I will try to provide some here.

(I'm not in VR right now, so I'm going off my memory from earlier today. Apologies if I'm not quite correct on anything!)

The one quick gripe that might be bugging people is the relocation of the "show/hide windows" button. It's now on the opposite side and a little lower; muscle memory is a powerful thing. Its icon also changed, so it might be that some people may not have realized the button moved, thinking they can no longer toggle the windows anymore.

But the main thing I dislike about the new wristwatch is the tabs system. If I'm not on the correct tab, information that used to be available at-a-glance now requires me to use my second hand to switch tabs. Unfortunately this is a bit of a usability downgrade. People might not be up front about this (or even realize it's their issue), but I suspect that this is most people's gripe with the new wristwatch.

I think the most straightforward middle ground to the tabs issue is to make it partially optional; for every widget that used to just be stuck to the bottom of the wristwatch, allow the user to choose if it should be inside a tab or not. This lets users still use the tab system, and it allows you to still use the tabs for more complicated things that the old wristwatch wouldn't support.

As for the text size, things are definitely smaller. We can resize the watch to compensate, but some users might feel like they need to make the watch much larger overall, just to get certain elements to be just as readable as they used to be. Especially in headsets that don't have much clarity; I'm on a Reverb G2 which has a higher resolution than the Index, and even I find some things too small to read.

What is interesting is the toggle windows button actually nearly didn't make it in! It was added a day before the public release as internally we'd forgot it existed. (Oops) The tutorial teaches you to double tap both Grips or both A buttons on Index to toggle your overlays on/off, this is usually a lot faster than clicking the icon.

In the internal design, this icon wasn't supposed to be there so it was sort of an afterthought. I'll be talking with my UI designer about what should be done, however, I don't want to break people's new-found muscle memory with the new location in the process. It's a tough call. :)

For the wrist watch, remember you can pin a tab open just like before! Previously you had to go into many submenus to do this, now you just click the '+' at the bottom of the wristwatch to add a module that's always visible. With the tabs, you can at least access every tab without having to clutter your wristwatch, but the option is still there to display all at once like before. (Actually you can display 1 more than previously as well due to the more compact design)

For the visual clarity, on Index I can read it from roughly arms length away, same as the old UI. Do remember that SteamVR may scale overlays differently on different systems though! This is an unfortunate issue with SteamVR, they do a GPU speed test and use this information to decide overlay scale with no user option to bypass this. :(

Here's a side-by-side of before and after the change created by a user in our Discord:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/491621961370304516/1002260304631185508/unknown.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/491621961370304516/1002260304224329808/unknown.png

(Note that since these screenshots where made the size of the date has been increased - The screenshots are taken on an OG Vive, you can see how the resolution isn't great for either UI's really)

I'm struggling a little to understand the problems with font size as mostly all font is the same size as it was before, actually the battery percentage is larger than before even. Maybe the issue is more with contrast?

In the most recent update, I added a feature which would force the compositor to supersample overlays like it will for those with a higher end GPU, but unfortunately this has too large of a performance hit for users on lower end GPUs so I had to revert it. (That was the latest update an hour or so ago!)

[ubergeek77]

Ah! I must have missed the + button at the bottom. Good info, thank you! I look forward to trying this tomorrow.

Not sure about the clarity issue, to be honest. Your screenshots definitely show they're pretty much the same font size. Perhaps it's a visual illusion caused by the new battery indicators being smaller (pill-shaped instead of square), even though the font itself hasn't changed. I will have to pay special attention to this next time!

As for the window toggle button, interesting to hear it almost didn't make it in! It's definitely needed. I very often use the double tap gesture to toggle the windows, but there are cases where one or both of my grip buttons are occupied and need to remain held. For example, I might be using a grip to hang off a wall in Zenith, but still need to show/hide my windows. If I use the gesture and release my grip, I'll fall! So a standalone button is definitely useful.

Overall, I think this is a good direction for OVR Toolkit. It definitely doesn't deserve the "just give me the old version" treatment, though I do think some users might do well with a gentle nudge in the right direction when it comes to adjusting to the changes. The new UI is definitely more extensible and compact, so maybe we'll see some more fancy features or workshop content take advantage of them :)

[CurtisVL]

Originally posted by ubergeek77:

Ah! I must have missed the + button at the bottom. Good info, thank you! I look forward to trying this tomorrow.

Not sure about the clarity issue, to be honest. Your screenshots definitely show they're pretty much the same font size. Perhaps it's a visual illusion caused by the new battery indicators being smaller (pill-shaped instead of square), even though the font itself hasn't changed. I will have to pay special attention to this next time!

As for the window toggle button, interesting to hear it almost didn't make it in! It's definitely needed. I very often use the double tap gesture to toggle the windows, but there are cases where one or both of my grip buttons are occupied and need to remain held. For example, I might be using a grip to hang off a wall in Zenith, but still need to show/hide my windows. If I use the gesture and release my grip, I'll fall! So a standalone button is definitely useful.

Overall, I think this is a good direction for OVR Toolkit. It definitely doesn't deserve the "just give me the old version" treatment, though I do think some users might do well with a gentle nudge in the right direction when it comes to adjusting to the changes. The new UI is definitely more extensible and compact, so maybe we'll see some more fancy features or workshop content take advantage of them :)

You're absolutely not the first person to miss the + at the bottom, I'm looking into the reasons behind that. Unfortunately I just do the programming work, the 'psychological' side like how UI is perceived is a bit beyond me unfortunately haha.

For the font size, I'm thinking the exact same thing, just not sure how to resolve that one yet. As the box is smaller, it gives the impression that the text must be smaller too. The reason they got so much smaller was mainly to allow displaying more of them at one time. Previously you could show 5 devices then you'd have to scroll, now you can show 15 without having to scroll. (A heavy requested feature by the few people with more than 5 tracked devices, though this amount of people is increasing!)

Good point about the window toggle button! Unfortunately my VR gaming experience isn't very diverse, it kind of starts and ends up with VRChat these days. :)
(Side note, you can rebind that by the way so it's only on one hand or on a different button entirely!)

I think I'd agree with you, I really like the new UI design. Looking at the grand scheme of things, there's been several complaints, but there's also been a lot of "It looks so much cleaner!" - At the end of the day, the goal with the UI overhaul was to make OVR Toolkit look more modern and professional, the old UI looked messy and clunky. To remain competitive, this styling change was required. (Though we might not, a lot of users judge software by how the UI looks rather than the functionality!)

I'll keep what you said in mind though and forward some of it to the guy who helps me out with UI. I do honestly believe some of the issues are more a result of being used to the old design than an issue with the new one, but there's certainly some issues with the new one such as some difficult to hit small controls.

[CurtisVL]

Originally posted by ubergeek77:

Ah! I must have missed the + button at the bottom. Good info, thank you! I look forward to trying this tomorrow.

Not sure about the clarity issue, to be honest. Your screenshots definitely show they're pretty much the same font size. Perhaps it's a visual illusion caused by the new battery indicators being smaller (pill-shaped instead of square), even though the font itself hasn't changed. I will have to pay special attention to this next time!

As for the window toggle button, interesting to hear it almost didn't make it in! It's definitely needed. I very often use the double tap gesture to toggle the windows, but there are cases where one or both of my grip buttons are occupied and need to remain held. For example, I might be using a grip to hang off a wall in Zenith, but still need to show/hide my windows. If I use the gesture and release my grip, I'll fall! So a standalone button is definitely useful.

Overall, I think this is a good direction for OVR Toolkit. It definitely doesn't deserve the "just give me the old version" treatment, though I do think some users might do well with a gentle nudge in the right direction when it comes to adjusting to the changes. The new UI is definitely more extensible and compact, so maybe we'll see some more fancy features or workshop content take advantage of them :)

Quite add on to my other reply:

Do feel free to join us in Discord!
https://discord.gg/KFGxc3e

Feedback like this is greatly appreciated and it's a huge help to see things from a different perspective. :)