I've had some time to use the new BYOJ for several weeks now and here are my thoughts:
Overall, I'm really excited for the future of what this new system can do. I can't wait to upload assets, have the gamified options, use more branching, randomization etc. I appreciate the ambitiousness (even though it sucked not having BYOJ for 8 months). The potential for this new framework is immense.
I'll start by saying that I don't think it is as complex as a lot of other people are saying in this thread. But I'm biased because I have some experience with video editors (like Davinci Resolve and Final Cut). I can see how the "target time" and "jump" system is genuinely confusing for people, though. I started treating each Project Source as a standalone puzzle piece. In other words, if you cut a video from, say, the 3 minute mark until the 7 minute mark, that's one workable component rather than the entire segment. You still have to choose a target time within that project source for it to be valid if you're jumping to it from another source. My suggestion is to have the target time jump to the first frame by default. For example, in the example I mentioned earlier, it would jump to the 03:00:00 segment automatically (unless the user wanted to manually go in and change it for whatever reason). This would save a lot of time and confusion for people - not only for people confused by the logic but also for those who don't want to manually alter it for every single source.
I think the #1 flaw right now, though, is what Picouser mentioned earlier in the thread about it being linear. Not being able to go back to certain scenes at a previous timestamp is a massive limitation. If someone is creating a scenario that's mostly from one scene with multiple performers and they want to do "x' or 'y' with Performer A, B and C, the new system makes that practically impossible unless their decision branch happens to be linear by coincidence. I'm not sure if this is a technical limitation from Hyper DeoVR or if it's on the BYOJ integration side, but this is, by far, the most hindering aspect. The logic for what constitutes an "unreachable scene" can be really frustrating.
In terms of the project building at-large, I would highly suggest adding a "Save Project" feature in addition to a Private/Public publish option. The very first project I tried building was almost completely lost because the system wouldn't let me update what I was working on due to a system logic error. In other words, you can't save a project if there's a jump or asset conflict. The problem was I didn't know where the conflict was happening. Even after I made sure there weren't any "unreachable scenes" (which in itself is super frustrating), it was still failing to update. If you close the tab or your browser crashes, all the work you put in is essentially erased because you weren't able to update the project.
The ability to modify the camera angle, zoom etc. for each Project Source in the builder would be huge. We're able to change the axis placement for buttons and text, but a similar thing for the camera angle overall would be amazing.
One other thing to consider: an option to press and unfurl a list of buttons (a button for a button, if you will). Instead of crowing the screen with buttons, it would be nice to have something that unfurls a list by clicking it.
Overall, my impression is really positive. I apppreciate the work you guys put into developing this. I'm excited to see it keep progressing
