Sony Home - The official thread*

[patsu]

I kinda missed the original Home experience where I could hear others' conversation. It makes the whole place more "human" given the zombie-like avatars.

And Peter Dille's comment is just disappointing:

"And, users are spending money, which is a big reason why we’re doing it [PlayStation Home]," Dille commented during that portion of his talk.

Compare this to Phil Harrison's vision and strive for innovation and you see where the big gap is. It doesn't hurt to put a little more imagination, usability and Internet savviness into the product, does it ?

 

[Arwin]

Compare this to Phil Harrison's vision and strive for innovation and you see where the big gap is. It doesn't hurt to put a little more imagination, usability and Internet savviness into the product, does it ?

Dille though probably mentions the single reason why it still exists today and publishers are still providing content for it, rather than being shelved for either ever or a 2.0 redesign for a next generation console? At least, that's my interpretation.

The way the group chat works though, with the channels for both voice and text as well as supporting clubs, is interesting though, isn't it - comparing it to, say, the party chat feature in the XMB ...

The article mentions that the update has various other smaller changes by the way that will be discussed later - these are just the two 'main events'.

Seriously though, this update means being in Home with a bunch of friends that you also play online games with makes a little more sense. May be small steps, but it's a good step.

 

[patsu]

I usually see Home as promiscuous mode XMB chat.

People can walk into your party anytime, as opposed to by invitation only. e.g., A girl "overheard" and barged into my conversation with friends some time ago. When I'm in Home, I guess that's okay. If I'm in XMB, I usually want to play alone, with random folks, or follow my friends.


Nevertheless, Home UI is sucky.

EDIT: As for Dille's comment, if Home is more user friendly and is inspiring to use, I might actually spend more overall. Right now, I'm still out of Home. Haven't visited it for 2 months. ^_^

 

[patsu]

Home 1.4:
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/11/05/playstation-home-client-update-1-4/

Home 1.4 Change Log leaked by Playstation Home Hong Kong:
http://www.alphazone4.com/2010/11/playstation-home-v1-40-full-change-log

Groups

● You can now create groups in Home.
● Groups can consist of up to 8 different people.
● You may invite your friends and anyone in the same space as you to your group.
● Groups work no matter where anyone is in Home – different public spaces, personal spaces or club houses.
● Groups have their own voice and text chat channels that allow all group members to communicate with each other wherever they are in Home.


The Chat Log

● The chat log has two tabs “Text” and “Voice”. The text tab handles all text chat while the voice tab handles all voice chat.
● Communication in the chat log has been separated into multiple chat channels.
- Local: The usual proximity-based text chat in a space.
- Group: Text and voice chat through the group channel. Works between all group members anywhere in Home.
- Club: Text and voice chat through the club channel. Works between all club members anywhere in Home.
- Things to note: You can only be in one club channel at a time. If you are in multiple clubs then you can switch the channel between each one.
● Each channel has its own prefix and colour scheme so that you can tell them apart in the chat log and understand where chat is coming from.
- As part of this change we have removed the display of custom pop-up colours from the chat log.
● The label on each tab is coloured and prefixed according to the channel you will send chat to if you type or speak.
● Text
● Voice: The voice tab lists all of the people in your current voice channel along with a status icon which indicates any of the following:
- Currently Speaking
- Has a microphone enabled
- Does not have microphone enabled
- Blocked, ignored or muted
● In addition to the standard menu options there are special slash commands for switching channel or sending private messages quickly:
- “/local” or “/l”
-/l hello
- “/group” or “/g
- /g howdy”
- “/club” or “/c”
- /c greetings
- “/privatemessage”, “/private” or “/pm”
- In the case of a private message you also need to specify who the message will go to. For example:
- /pm <name of friend> how are you?
- There is a quick reply command to respond to your most recent private message with the “/reply” or “/r” command. For example:
- /r I’m fine thank you


Wardrobe

● We have replaced the old wardrobe background that was tied to the Harbor Studio apartment with a simpler, more neutral one that loads more quickly.
● You can now tag “favourite” items in the wardrobe.
● It is possible to filter the wardrobe view to only display favourite items, purchased items, rewards or recently acquired items.
● Each category in the wardrobe can have the items in it sorted by when they were acquired and when they were last used.
● New items will have a ‘new’ icon to make them easier to spot (as will categories that contain new items).
● There is a storage section into which you can put items that you don’t use very often. Putting some of your items into storage will mean:
- The wardrobe loads faster (and depending on how much is being stored Home may load faster as well).
- There will be fewer items to scroll through in each category.
● You can browse your storage section and swap items back into your main wardrobe whenever you want to.
- You can keep a maximum of 500 items in your main wardrobe at any one time. Any additional items will go into storage automatically.
- When you load Home for the first time after the patch we will automatically put some of your oldest items into the storage trunk if you happen to have more than 500 items already.
● There is a new “Both Ears” category in the wardrobe.
● Within each category the first option will keep your current selection.


Character status

● Your character can now be set into one of several different statuses:
- Normal
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Confused
- Busy
- Wants help
- Wants to chat
- Wants to play

● Setting a status will update the information in your character label and in some cases may change the expression on your character’s face and your idle animations.
Important Note: The default “Normal” face no longer has a smile on it. Instead the players must select “Happy” to get the smile back.
Improvements


Menu Pad and the Navigator

● We have added a simplified carousel of three main options (Navigator, Wardrobe and Settings) to the first page of the Menu Pad.
- All of the existing menus can be found under “Settings” now.
- The carousel view can be turned off in the settings if you wish.
● The Navigator can now be accessed directly in Home by pressing and holding [START] without having to go through the Menu Pad.
● Extra icons have been added to the side of each space in the Navigator to indicate if this space is a favourite and whether it has any friends in it.
● Now the player will have a direct access the screen to purchase the latest recommended avatar items from the Navigator instead of transiting the shopping mall.
Character labels
● There are extra options in the Menu Pad and Home Safe Screen for setting preferences as to how much of the new character labels you want to see.
Cross game invites
● Home now fully supports cross game invites.
● If one of your friends is online but not in Home you can use the Menu Pad or Navigator friend list to invite them to join you.
● When the friend accepts the invitation they will automatically load Home and be transported to your location.
Loading screen
● The loading screen has been simplified.
● Helpful tips are now displayed while you are loading.
General
● Access to Home is now restricted by parental control level (set on the console) as well as age (set on the PSN account) in each region.
● The audio system has been optimised and improved.
● Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound is now correctly supported.
● Added support for Polish fonts.
● Game camera collision has been improved so that there should be fewer instances of it cutting through objects or sticking out of the scene.
● The majority of videos in Home now use progressive download and so should start playing much more quickly while they download in the background.
● The anti-aliasing has been improved. This should mean higher quality shadows and a slightly better framerate.
● General optimisations to improve performance and framerate.
● Log in times have been improved once more.
● You can now zoom into screens while seated.
● The shadows and lighting in the Harbour Studio apartment have been improved.


Harbour Studio Apartment

● We have added some dynamic lights to the Harbour Studio apartment which can be turned on and off with a switch by the door.
System and network stabilities have been improved.

 

[Arwin]

And they are out today/tomorrow! Here's the official list from the Playstation Home forum (very similar). The group chat stuff and the cross game invite into Home is a pretty big thing, very interesting. I like how the group chat has been set up with the different channels!

New features


Groups

You can now create groups in Home.
Groups consist of up to 8 different people.
You may invite your friends and anyone in the same space as you to your group.
Groups work no matter where anyone is in Home – different public spaces, personal spaces or club houses.
Groups have their own voice and text chat channels that work between all group members wherever they are in Home.
If you leave Home then you leave your group.
If the leader leaves a group then leadership is automatically transferred to another member of the group.
The chat log has two tabs “Text” and “Voice”. The text tab handles all text chat while the voice tab handles all voice chat.
Communication in the chat log has been separated into multiple chat channels.


The Chat Log

Local: The existing proximity based text chat in a space.

Group: Text and voice chat through the group channel. Works between all group members anywhere in Home.

Club: Text and voice chat through the club channel. Works between all club members anywhere in Home.

You can only be in one club channel at a time.
If you are in multiple clubs then you can switch the channel between each one.
Each channel has its own prefix and colour scheme so that you can tell them apart in the chat log and understand where chat is coming from.

As part of this change we have removed the display of custom pop-up colours from the chat log.
The label on each tab is coloured and prefixed according to the channel you will send chat to if you type or speak.

Text
Complementing the telephone call system you can now send private text messages to other people through the chat log as well.
Voice
The voice tab lists all of the people in your current voice channel along with a status icon which indicates:

Speaking
Has microphone
Does not have microphone
Blocked, ignored or muted
In addition to the standard menu options there are special slash commands for switching channel or sending private messages quickly:

“/local” or “/l”
/l hello
“/group” or “/g
/g howdy”
“/club” or “/c”
/c greetings
“/privatemessage”, “/private” or “/pm”
In the case of a private message you also need to specify who the message will go to.
/pm <name of friend> how are you?


Wardrobe

We have replaced the old wardrobe background that was tied to the Harbour Studio apartment with a simpler, more neutral one that loads more quickly.
You can now tag “favourite” items in the wardrobe.
It is possible to filter the wardrobe view to only display favourite items, purchased items, rewards or recently acquired items.
Each category in the wardrobe can have the items in it sorted by time acquired and when it was last used.
New items will have a new icon on them (as will categories that contain new items).
There is a storage section into which you can put items that you don’t use very often. Putting some of your items into storage will mean:

The wardrobe loads faster (and depending on how much is being stored Home may load faster as well).
There will be fewer items to scroll through in each category.
You can browse your storage section and swap items back into your main wardrobe whenever you want to.

You can keep a maximum of 500 items in your main wardrobe at any one time. The rest go into storage.
When you load Home for the first time after the patch we will automatically put some of your items into the storage trunk if you happen to have more than 500 items already.
There is a new “Both Ears” category in the wardrobe.
The “Glasses” and “Headphones” categories have been replaced with “Face Accessory” and “Head Accessory”.
Within each category the first option will keep your current selection.
Your character can now be set into one of several different statuses:


Character status

Normal
Happy
Sad
Angry
Confused
Busy
Wants help
Wants to chat
Wants to play

Setting a status will update the information in your character label and in some cases may change the expression on your character’s face and your idle animations.
Improvements


Menu Pad and the Navigator

We have added a simplified carousel of three main options (Navigator, Wardrobe and Settings) to the first page of the Menu Pad.

All of the existing menus can be found under “Settings” now.
The carousel view can be turned off in the settings if you wish.
The Navigator can be accessed directly in Home by pressing and holding [START] without having to go through the Menu Pad.
Extra icons have been added to the side of each space in the Navigator to indicate if this space is a favourite and whether it has any friends in it.
There are extra options in the Menu Pad and Home Safe Screen for setting preferences as to how much of the new character labels you want to see.


Character labels

There are extra options in the Menu Pad and Home Safe Screen for setting preferences as to how much of the new character labels you want to see.

Cross game invites

Home now fully supports cross game invites.
If one of your friends is online but not in Home you can use the Menu Pad or Navigator friend list to invite them to join you.
When the friend accepts the invitation they will automatically load Home and be transported to your location.

Loading screen

The loading screen has been simplified.
Helpful tips are displayed while you are loading.

General

Access to Home is now restricted by parental control level (set on the console) as well as age (set on the PSN account) in each region.
The audio system has been optimised and improved.
Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound is now correctly supported.
Added support for Polish fonts.
Game camera collision has been improved so that there should be fewer instances of it cutting through objects or sticking out of the scene.
The majority of videos in Home will now start playing more quickly (before they have been fully downloaded).
The anti-aliasing has been improved. This should mean higher quality shadows and a slightly better framerate.
General optimisations to improve performance and framerate.
Log in times have been improved once more.
You can now zoom into screens while seated.
The shadows and lighting in the Harbour Studio apartment have been improved.
The club menus have been simplified and made easier to use.

Bug fixes
System and network stability has been improved.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Whoa, this is pretty BIG! Home will be a LOT more central to my PS3 experience, going forward. If they can extend this voice feature to places outside Home, that will be it for me.

 

[patsu]

I updated, but the server is not up yet it seems. Will check later.

Want to see how fast it takes to load, and whether they fix some (any !) basic usability issues. It's the first time I go Home since 2-3 months ago.

 

[Dungeonscaper]

Just update, here's what I've noticed:

They've changed from 2xMSAA to MLAA. (Has sub-pixel problems, the birds outside your apartment are now a bunch of flickering black pixels, but otherwise things get get done properly look extremely well anti-aliased)
The new wardrobe is this blue area with little home logos flying around behind you.
The navigator's become far simpler.
Framerate has improved a bit, could still be improved further in Sodium.
The new 'Dynamic Lights' in your apartment are just 3 extra lights in the corner of the room. They didn't add any lamps or anything so you just see this light coming from nowhere.

Everything loads faster, the loading screen has become less 'round'.
They must have changed some other lighting stuff because my characters hair looks a lighter shade of blonde now.

They've added everything I've been bugging them about, yay!

 

[patsu]

They've added everything I've been bugging them about, yay!

What did you bug them about ?

Much better looking now:

Can't wait to check out the improvements this evening !

EDIT: Another good shot here:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._497613746843_758756843_7197660_6298027_n.jpg

You can see the floating UFO avatar and the Big Daddy avatar in this screen.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Just update, here's what I've noticed:

They've changed from 2xMSAA to MLAA. (Has sub-pixel problems, the birds outside your apartment are now a bunch of flickering black pixels, but otherwise things get get done properly look extremely well anti-aliased)
The new wardrobe is this blue area with little home logos flying around behind you.
The navigator's become far simpler.
Framerate has improved a bit, could still be improved further in Sodium.
The new 'Dynamic Lights' in your apartment are just 3 extra lights in the corner of the room. They didn't add any lamps or anything so you just see this light coming from nowhere.

Everything loads faster, the loading screen has become less 'round'.
They must have changed some other lighting stuff because my characters hair looks a lighter shade of blonde now.

They've added everything I've been bugging them about, yay!

I thought it was no or 0xAA before. It looks like 2xAA to me now.

 

[patsu]

Went in for a spin...

Just update, here's what I've noticed:

They've changed from 2xMSAA to MLAA. (Has sub-pixel problems, the birds outside your apartment are now a bunch of flickering black pixels, but otherwise things get get done properly look extremely well anti-aliased)
The new wardrobe is this blue area with little home logos flying around behind you.
The navigator's become far simpler.

This is the best change. It makes Home very accessible. I think they should also have a quick "Help" button in the 3-icon screen. Was trying to find out how to use the new eMote. Had to go back to the old menu pad to dig out the info.

The loading has indeed improved noticeably. The instant video streaming is very very welcomed. I like the experience quite a bit. The only time where the movie didn't show up was in the Central Park.

They also reorganized the navigator again ? I am not sure if the stores were listed under one icon in the previous Navigator. Now it's easier to find all the shops in the Navigator. I didn't hear any voice chat. I assume it's only enabled privately (within a group, clubhouse).

It looks like object selection has been improved. I seem to be able to select the target object/game easily now. It's always the first item even when many people were crowding around the object. This is another simple but huge plus.

They've added everything I've been bugging them about, yay!

They polished the existing system, but the underlying concept remains the same.

Would be great if they can improve the following:

* We still have to download a theater for every new video. This is unacceptable. We should only need to download the theater once since they all behave the same way. Most of the theaters I went to are empty, except for the Testers and Hip Hop Gamer. They are being promoted in the Navigator itself. The ability to watch a video with so many people is quite unique. Glad that they added fullscreen mode when we are seated.

* I saw 1-2 people trying to solicit for Black Ops game party. Would be great if they start supporting Game Launching for all games. Also hope to see trophies, gamer stats, community highlights in Home.

* The X, [] and O buttons are not mapped to anything when you're in an open space. They should be shortcut to emotes, animations or anything to make the world more lively and useful.


I like Sodium because it knows how to make the gamers happy. When you're in that space, you're constantly rewarded with items for trying out different things. It reminded me of Valkyria Chronicles. ^_^


EDIT: I think when they settle down, they should also refine the art style. The current color scheme is bright and colorful but it's a little uncoordinated IMHO.

A little transition animation in the Navigation screen should give the entire Home world some depth or even metaphor also.

Overall, a marked improvement, but still more work to do (to become sexy and easy to use) !


EDIT 2: The store UI is too slow though. Overloaded ?

 

[Arwin]

Would be great if they start supporting Game Launching for all games

Now that we have the group and club chat options, and being able to invite someone to your location into Home when those people can be playing any game, this is the most important one. Note that you can already launch directly into any game from Home, but to be able to start the multiplayer match/party directly from Home for all major games (instead of the 10-20 supported now) would solve most issues that people like Shifty have with the system, I think?

 

[Dungeonscaper]

What did you bug them about ?

Much better looking now:

Can't wait to check out the improvements this evening !

EDIT: Another good shot here:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._497613746843_758756843_7197660_6298027_n.jpg

You can see the floating UFO avatar and the Big Daddy avatar in this screen.

I made a lot of requests for MLAA, better framerate, and better texture filtering. I forgot to mention they also improved the texture filtering, you can see all the brick and texture details more clearly on the ground a little ways in front of you.

I thought it was no or 0xAA before. It looks like 2xAA to me now.

It was using 2xAA before but it really didn't do much for it. The edges are far too smooth now to be 2xAA. I'm positive it's MLAA now because of the sub-pixel problems and pixel crawling, and the release notes said the improved AA also improved performance (moving the AA off the GPU) and improved shadow quality which points to MLAA.

 

[patsu]

Now that we have the group and club chat options, and being able to invite someone to your location into Home when those people can be playing any game, this is the most important one. Note that you can already launch directly into any game from Home, but to be able to start the multiplayer match/party directly from Home for all major games (instead of the 10-20 supported now) would solve most issues that people like Shifty have with the system, I think?

Right, they can be less ambitious at first. Do ALL the PSN games first !!! They are all on the HDD, ready to launch.
Small developers need the most marketing support. Once they build the momentum, they can lure the biggies.

I made a lot of requests for MLAA, better framerate, and better texture filtering. I forgot to mention they also improved the texture filtering, you can see all the brick and texture details more clearly on the ground a little ways in front of you.

Argh, doesn't concern me.
But it sure looks better now. Did you request for jump action ? I hate to be limited by the walkways.

I all the improvements to the 2D UI though.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

It was using 2xAA before but it really didn't do much for it. The edges are far too smooth now to be 2xAA. I'm positive it's MLAA now because of the sub-pixel problems and pixel crawling, and the release notes said the improved AA also improved performance (moving the AA off the GPU) and improved shadow quality which points to MLAA.

Then it must be a FAR less aggressive version of MLAA than we are use to in other Sony creations. I was standing completely still (Harbour apartment) and saw jaggies all over. I must agree that the edges are smoother, though.

 

[Arwin]

Right, they can be less ambitious at first. Do ALL the PSN games first !!! They are all on the HDD, ready to launch.

Well absolutely, for PSN games they need to do something. If they make it as easy as possibly can be for PSN games to have themselves started from Home and then make it required to at least support that, it will provide a much better online experience and draw many more people into home. And as a huge bonus, from there it should be much easier to support the same directly from XMB should they ever want to bring it there. But if they decide to make Home the startup place for online gaming, I can absolutely live with that! It's more than fast enough now for it, at least for me, and with all the social stuff in there now, I'd prefer it.

 

[Delta9]

I like this update a lot. Lots of stuff improved that makes it feel more seamless and polished feeling.

Here some max zoomed shots with the camera for the MLAA guys.

 

[Arwin]

Just went in ... great update. Took my wife shopping for a new avatar and outfit, since she lost a lot of weight since last time we went in there.

Everything is very smooth and fast now, and a lot more polished on every level. I'd say it's almost ready to go out of beta - just needs some Move support now. (didn't try but assume it's not in there yet)

The new filters for the items (one of the few things that I suggested somewhere) really help a lot - we could now just filter for new stuff when we went into the wardrobe.

 

[patsu]

MLAA is nice but it can't make Home more useful or usable. T_T

I hope they continue to improve the 2D UI (first). Right now, we still get some pauses right after launching Home. They are loading the 3D assets, and perhaps syncing with the Home database. We can't do anything during that period. Since the 2D Navigator is fully functional at that time, they should engage us in some fun mini-activities to hide the load/init time.

A recap of the Home community stats and activities since last login would be fine. They can retrieve material from the disk cache. The info does not have to be really up-to-date. If they want, they can secretly update our cache like the PS+ auto-update mechanism. Or they can use "newsletters" from the XMB inbox, materials from the "What's New" section, or even the ticker. It would force the other Sony teams to make good use of them.

Right now, the ticker is both annoying and useless. It should be informative.

Everything is very smooth and fast now, and a lot more polished on every level. I'd say it's almost ready to go out of beta - just needs some Move support now. (didn't try but assume it's not in there yet)

Speaking of Move, I think all the Skinny apps do not support it.

 

[patsu]

Caught 2 of my most hardcore gamer friends in Home. They have the highest trophy levels on my friends list. Only inefficient here is in their league. Frankly, I was surprised to see them in Home.

One competed in RFOM years ago. The other is the best RFOM sniper I have ever seen (He could jump down a slope, and snipe accurately; just don't let him see you in R3. ).

Home allowed me to join them on the Mui Mui ship in the LocoRoco space. Asked them why they bothered with Home. Turns out they were there to complete their virtual item collections. When I saw them, they were doing strange moves in Home to earn the items. >_<

I think I understand a little bit more about Home's current strategy (They are still serving the core gamers ^_^). While it's squarely focused on gamers, I think Sony have some leeway to attract the casuals. Will see how they evolve this thing.


EDIT: Home crashed twice if I have multiple spaces being downloaded, and when I tried to enter one of them at the same time.