Hello everyone! I got a new build for you (possibly the only one this week since I'll be at EF) with a bunch of goodies!

The renderer decoupling is now implemented! This triggers only on large hitches by default (and during startup) to smooth out some of the lagspikes. While it will cause everything in the scene to freeze (except videos!), you will still have head tracking, which makes those hitches feel nicer whenever they happen and prevents interrupting video watching.

You can also force the engine and renderer to always be decoupled, essentially running asynchronously, but I only recommend this for diagnostic purposes (like checking if you're CPU or GPU bound) - it will be pretty stuttery in a lot of cases!

There's some smaller low hanging fruit optimizations as well and some bugfixes.

There's also a whole bunch of contributions from the team too! Updated World Light Sources Wizard, Active checkboxes in the inspector, updated badges and asset variant stability improvements!

New Features:

- Implemented renderer auto-decoupling and re-rendering previous scene state on hitches (issue #4747)
-- Whenever FrooxEngine hitches (by default for more than ~66 ms) the renderere will start rendering previous scene state independently
-- In VR, this allows head tracking to continue to work in such cases, only freezing the scene state rather than entire rendering and allows video playback to continue, reducing interruptions during such hitches
-- You can configure this mechanism in Settings -> Graphics -> Renderer Decoupling
-- You can adjust at what immediate framerate it triggers and how many frames it takes to re-engage the lockstep
-- You can optionally force the renderer to always be decoupled and run asynchronously. However this is mostly meant for diagnostic purposes - e.g. determining if you're CPU or GPU bound and will likely cause significant stutters in motion

- Added detailed diagnostics for issue #5482 by @thejebforge, @karasutengu, @dustysprinkles

- Added Set/Multiply Intensity and Set/Multiply Range to the World Light Sources Wizard (requested by @modernballoonie, issue #4684, implemented by @ryuvi)
-- These operators replace the old Change Intensity/Range, providing clearer info on what you're doing with those fields on the lights you're editing

- Added new yearly badges and updated existing ones (based on issue by @aegis_wolf, issue #5289, implemented by @aegis_wolf and @ryuvi)
-- Yearly badges have been added for 2021, 2022 and 2023.
-- The badges for 2018, 2019, and 2020 have been updated as well to match the new style for the yearly badges.
-- In addition to the yearly badges, the potato badge has been updated, and so have the fruit badges.


- Added a quick toggle checkbox for every slot's Active property to the inspector hierarchy (requested by @Krzeszny, issue #4940, implemented by @Gawdl3y)
- Added the ability to grab & drop Slot references onto bool reference receivers/fields to insert a reference to the Slot's Active property (requested by @Cameron5, issue #4641, implemented by @Gawdl3y)

Optimizations:

- Optimized submission of data to renderer by reinterpreting memory as Unity types on Unity end, rather than converting them explicitly (issue #4766)
-- This reduces some wasted CPU cycles, particularly when updating a lot of things (e.g. lots of moved transforms)
- Skip processing & allocating renderable updates for subsystems that currently don't have any updates to submit (issue #4754)
- Smoothed out startup experience, by not engaging the frame-locking mechanism until the engine is rendering (issue #4756)

Tweaks:

- Change default FOV to 75 from 60
-- This only affects new users, if you already have initialized settings it will remain the same
- Auto AFK kick will not invalidate invites any more (issue #3005, implemented by @j4.lc)
- Added a new sound effect for receiving invite requests (requested by @zangooseoo, issue #3798, created by @LacyDoes, implemented by @Gawdl3y)
- Added a badge for attendees of VR Japan Meeting of Furries 2025
-- The badges still need to be assigned to users, they are now included in the build

- Inspector hierarchy expand/collapse buttons now require lock in to press to prevent accidental presses (implemented by @Gawdl3y)
-- This also applies to the new active checkboxes

Locale:

- Merged German locale update by @muppeq
- Merged English locale tweak by @muppeq
- Merged Chinese (Taiwan) locale update by @meowwei
- Merged Chinese (Mainland) locale update by modimobeikete
- Merged Korean locale update by @mirpasec

Fixes:

- Ensure that Awwdio gets properly disposed on shutdown to prevent it from causing shutdown sequence to hang
- Fixed crash when changing reflection probe type (reported by @reddneko, magenta76, @troyborg, issue #5453)
- Prevented Asset Workers from crashing when handling invalid Shader files (implemented by @probableprime)
- Enable Asset processing to handle R8 Formatted Images. This fixes a common Asset Worker failure (implemented by @probableprime)
- Fixed inconsistent vertical spacing in inspector hierarchy (implemented by @Gawdl3y)
- Fixed duplicating a slot with the same slot reference used as both the template and overridden parent crashing the game (reported by @JackTheFoxOtter, @mint_shock, fixed by @Gawdl3y, issue #3950)