Foster deeper connections and engagement with Landmarks, Particle Effects, and Message Notifications

Takeaways

• Use Landmarks to quickly find where like-minded people are socializing in a world. World admins can designate an asset as a landmark in Modify Asset > Zones.
• Enhance immersion in your world using animated Particle Effects powered by Topia’s SDK.
• Keep up with your direct messages from anywhere using the New Direct Message push notification.

Landmarks

Help users find a sense of place in the world, enhance immersion and facilitate meaningful interactions with Landmarks.

Find where people are gathering

Landmarks allow you to decide if you want to party with a large group or relax with a few familiar faces. Open the Current Users page and filter by landmarks to quickly see the names and quantity of people socializing in an area. Click 👣 “Walk To” beneath someone’s name to travel directly to them. 

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Find like-minded people

Explore landmarks that fit your interests or mood (e.g. “work zone”, “dance floor”) to find other like-minded users in the world. Open the World Map page and click the 👣 “Walk To Landmark” action to send your avatar to a landmark. Think of landmarks as your menu of social experiences. 

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Create a Landmark 

As a World Admin, use landmarks to encourage people to congregate in social groups you think will be engaging and enjoyable for them.  Designate an asset as a Landmark Zone using the checkbox in Modify Asset > Zones. To make the landmark visible to users, you’ll need to add a name and switch the “Visible to Users” setting to on. 

• Note: When “Visible to Users” is on, the landmark will show in Social Hub (Current Users and Friends) and This World.

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Particle Effects

Inspire wonder in your world using animated particle effects powered by Topia’s SDK. 

Trigger particle effects in your world

Experiences and games with animated particle effects are more dynamic, visually appealing, and memorable to users. Moving forward, you will start to see more games and experiences enhanced with particle effects in our Scene Library and dedicated Metaverse Cloud deployments (learn more below). Here are a few examples of how particle effects can be used:

• 🌧️ Create weather in your world
• 🎮 Enhance games with celebratory fireworks
• 🫧 Add bubbles to an underwater world

What is a Metaverse Cloud deployment?  Metaverse Cloud deployments bundle the entire Topia application stack into a container that can be deployed into your existing cloud infrastructure. Your deployment comes with a Topia application that you can customize to match your brand, integrate into your data sources and user accounts, and host on your domain.

If you’re a developer eager to create an engaging experience with our SDK, contact us at [email protected] to learn more.

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Create particle effects in a dedicated deployment

Customers with dedicated deployments can create and experiment with new particle effects using their own particle effect generator. New particle effects can be easily uploaded to your application so that developers and game designers can dream up and build new and engaging experiences with them.

Message Notifications

Keep up with direct messages anytime, anywhere – even when you aren’t in a world.

Get notified about new direct messages‍ 

Turn on the “New Direct Message” setting in Dashboard to start receiving push notifications when you receive new direct messages. You won’t be notified if you have existing unread messages. Also, push notifications are managed per browser. When you want to manage notifications for a specific browser, you’ll need to sign in with that browser.