While talking about collaboration, would it be possible for an online collaboration mode to take place such that the account holder is locally connected to sketchup and able to make changes while a guest can access the same model, see everything that the account holder is doing but only have the limited online functionality (i.e. no edits, time of day sunlight etc)?
Thanks!
Collaborative mode
Hello, any thoughts on when some kind of link access directly in Quest would be implemented, please? Thank you !
It was actually implemented recently! We need some feedback over whether this is useful, but you can try it: just follow the URL of a cloud model in a normal browser (on any machine, e.g. it can be on your phone).
This solution avoids the need to transfer the URL somehow on your Quest, which has always been the tricky problem.
Amazing! So absolutely wonderful and simple. well done. Thank you!
Couple of points:
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it would be very useful if once viewed by a guest (ie currently someone without an account), the model could be accessed without having to resend the link to quest. Currently, once you’ve left a session, the link needs to be manually resent to quest even if the model appears to be cached in the headset’s memory. If online, the app should perhaps still check that the link is still valid before opening the model and if it no longer exists, delete the cached content.
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Would it be possible for a model to be updated under the same link? Quest would then check how up to date the link was before opening the model and if it was changed since the last viewing, the latest version would be updated.
Thanks!
PS. I appreciate that there are some privacy issues associated with sharing a model in real time (one may not want to have sudden uninvited guests who also happen to be in possession of the same link popping up while enjoying a viewing). A private viewing mode may therefore be useful… But then if the model
viewed is the cached one, that may not be an issue. I imagine that shared online sessions can only happen through a live model and be initiated by the model owner.
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Right, that’s an old issue. It can occur if you send a URL from Sketchup to the Quest, too. I also think (but didn’t check yet) that the same occurs with PC VR, which caches models in the same way on the PC. As long as it is cached and you have the original URL, you can still view it.
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Yes, it might be possible, but it needs to be done carefully. The problem is that in older versions of VR Sketch, we have no way to force it to reload a model once it has been locally cached. It would be quite confusing for the user to update his model (using a recent version of VR Sketch on PC) only to have his Quest continue to view the old model. (In a way, it’s the same problem as point 1: when the model is cached locally, it’s used directly without further checking of the server.)
About the PS.: The model’s URL should not be shared with people you don’t want to invite. This URL is impossible to guess; it’s far more secure than, say, a user-defined password. Moreover, you always have the alternative of collaborative editing sessions, which is better if you want to be sure that nobody can access the model after the fact.
Thank you! that would be great.
By the way, trouble with links is that other people share them a lot less reluctantly with their friends and relatives than they would do with a password so there is a probability that someone I do not know enters the space at the same time… But I can see what you are trying to achieve. Looking forward to v18 
A quick update: now that v18 was released, I had some more time, and I just did a quick fix: if a cloud model is deleted, but we try to view it from a device where it is locally cached, then it will continue to work (we can still view the model) but as long as it is online then VR Sketch should also notice that the server is not recognizing the model—so we’ll get a message saying that the model was deleted. This should be in the next minor release, 18.0.3.
I thought about removing the local cached model from view (even if it is already partially or completely loaded at the point VR Sketch notices the problem), but I decided against that. I prefer to give a notification to the user without technically preventing him from still viewing the model.
That makes a lot of sense.
So, is 18 now compatible with Q?
Thank you!
If you mean Quest 1, then no, v18 still requires Quest 2 or Quest Pro. See this explanation about it and how to pick a working version for Quest 1 (which is 17.0.9 at the moment). (Also note that v18 works fine on Quest 1 if you’re using the tethered mode from PC VR.)
Hello, it has been some time :). I hope you are well. Congratulations on your ever-improving product! I love it.
I need some help please on a couple of fronts:
A. I need to be able to share a model with a client and store it locally on their headset:
- they would be using my own two original meta quest headsets (the black model- I lend them to people until they decide to buy their own)
- i already set up some free individual VR sketch accounts
- both headsets are registered under the same meta username.
- when I update a model, I would like to be able to send them another link to the revised model to upload and save locally on their headset, under their own VR sketch account.
Can this be done please?
I am aware that you can send a link to people but the model disappears as soon as they leave the app.
B. Outline rendering of round objects
Is there any way of replicating the sketch-up rendering effect of round objects, please, where a line is drawn that highlights the outline of an object? At the moment a white round object can completely disappear against a white wall if no direct light falls on it.
C. Dimension tool picking points in invisible layers
I may have brought this to your attention in the past… when I share a model with several layers, each containing a different design version for instance, when using the dimension tool, it snaps on points of the model in invisible layers.
D. Shadows in scenes
Is there a way of saving shadows in scenes? I realise that unless connected to a computer, the app cannot render shadows by season or time of the day. But what if some shadow settings were saved in SketchUp scenes?
It is very important for clients to have an accurate shadow simulation in their own time without being connected to a computer. For several reasons I cannot share my SketchUp models with my clients directly.
Many thanks!
Best wishes
Sabin
Hi!
A. Sharing a model with another VR Sketch account: Something similar is possible but using an not-official-so-far solution. You can change which models appear in the “Demo” page for a given Meta Quest (or PicoNeo) headset, identified by its 6-digit Quest ID. This is probably the easiest way in your case: https://vrsketch.eu/set_demo_models.html. To use this page, you need to have uploaded your model or a new version of it to our cloud; copy and paste the URL of the form https://vrsketch.eu/m/xxxxxxxx into the big text box. Several such URLs can be specified. It’s per-headset, not per user account, so you need to repeat the procedure to set it up on two headsets. The Quests themselves will get the new list the next time VR Sketch is restarted on them.
B. Can you include a screenshot? It can be a screenshot of Sketchup, showing the effect you are describing and that isn’t really visible in VR Sketch.
C. Can you confirm that the problem still occur in the latest VR Sketch, version 25? I thought this was fixed, but it may not be.
D. It’s always possible to set the sun’s angle by pointing in the sky, but I realize that (1) it’s not a setting saved with the model and (2) you’d prefer to set it by date and time in the first place. I think that SketchUp supports saving and restoring the shadow settings in the scenes, and these settings should automatically be updated in VR Sketch when you’re connected to a computer. So the question is to add support for doing it with view-only cloud models. That should be relatively easy but we’ll check.
Hi again,
About B., I think now that it’s because SketchUp has got two different edge-visibility modes: some edges might not be drawn in SketchUp except if they are part of the “profile” of the object. VR Sketch has no corresponding notion. It’s a bit more delicate to do that in VR, though, because in some cases an edge is part of the “profile” from one eye, but not from the other eye. Moreover, very small random movements of the head can make the profile edges jump. I could try to experiment and check if that’s still OK, though.
Thanks Arigo! Just got your message. Reassuring to know that you are still around. The app is really great. I’ll get back you on Monday. Thanks again
A. That is neat for now, thank you!
B. Noted
C. Only in 17.09 on my older headsets. 25 on my Quest 3 works a treat.
D. That would be a great start, at least until the headsets are powerful enough to generate their own shadows. Or is that still the issue with the latest models such as Q3?
Feedback update:
A. This works flawlessly- you guys have thought of everything :). thank you.
D. Having just checked, the shadows settings are not remembered in VR Sketch. I was very careful to create scenes in Sketchup which only remember the time of the day and month, and anything else, such as camera location, layer visibility, style etc. Also, if I click on any such scenes in 17.09, I am teleported to the origin of the model. This does not happen in 25.
Thank you!
Hi!
OK, there’s an issue with your use case: we no longer really support the Quest 1 headsets, in the sense that we stopped publishing updates since 17.0.9 at the beginning of 2023. It would be seriously more complicated for us than just making one extra build, because the Quest 1 hardware does not support the new, much faster display technique we introduced in version 18.
This explains some issues you have with 17.0.9 when used together with much more recent versions of VR Sketch. For example, scene support has been improved since version 17, so if you create and export scenes using SketchUp together with a recent version of the VR Sketch extension, but then load it in a Quest running 17.0.9, then things may not entirely work as expected.
Similarly, if we extend the scenes support in the future VR Sketch version 26 or 27, e.g. to add shadows, then in all likelihood the users would all need version 26 or 27 on their Quest for the shadows to work correctly—so it won’t work with Quest 1.
It’s also why some menus are different—some functionalities were added more recently, so of course their menu command was not present in 17.0.9.
Quest 1 is really unsupported at this point, not just by us but by Meta and the community around it… Please contact us at info@baroquesoftware.com if you are really stuck with these Quest 1 headsets and would like us to check if we could do something, and what amount of money it would take. But no promises: it depends if we have enough time to allocate to that.
Oh well, I guess I will have to live with what I’ve got then and avoid saving shadows in my scenes. Thanks anyway.
Quick question. If I were to register my quest 1 with meta with a new user account, would I still be able to install VR Sketch v 17.0.09 through Meta store?
Thanks
Sabin
I think so. We try to make that work, but we have no guarantee that Meta itself doesn’t arbitrarily “break” it just because it wants to push people away from the Quest 1. If that’s the case, you should still be able to download and install the file manually (see “Installation without using the App Lab” in our documentation).