New Visualizer - AVS Forums

!!!!unlem!!!!

30th October 2006 22:35 UTC

Re: New Visualizer
Quote:

kostyap

30th October 2006 22:43 UTC

Re: Re: New Visualizer

Originally posted by !!!!unlem!!!!
7800GT and higher :igor:
i have only 6600gt

ATI just released X1650 XT. That thingy has 24 pixel shaders and cost the same as 6600GT. Manufacturers releasing new cards faster then one sneezes. http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/10..._ati_x1650_xt/

kostyap

30th October 2006 22:57 UTC

Originally posted by Warrior of the Light
I think you're aiming at a complete different audience then.

I am not aiming at any particular group. Just posted announcements in forums where people in general could be interested in visuzlisations

For AVS, we would love that every user is able to use it and enjoy it without much hassle. Noone wants to upgrade their hardware first just to see "some swirly images", as most people refer to visuals anyway.

I am in no way advocating that someone upgrades hardware for that purpose. I just thought that some of you might be running hardware that is good enough to run that vis of mine.

But as you said yourself, you're not too certain about your product yet.

I am certain in the way that I do use it in commercial installations. I am kinda clueless about home user market. It seems that at leas one company (Soundspectrum that makes G-Force) manages to sell vis commercially to home users

(which also raises the question for me why you're asking money for something that's possibly inferior to free software but that's something else

First: I did not ask you for money. Second: I do not think that my software is "inferior". Third: making software free is not a duty, there is enough space for both models

Why are you so afraid of people making presets for it by the way?

ROFL. Why would I be afraid? I already said that if enough people will like the general concept then I will create interface that will let other people to create their presets.

!!!!unlem!!!!

30th October 2006 23:03 UTC

Re: Re: Re: New Visualizer

Originally posted by kostyap
ATI just released X1650 XT. That thingy has 24 pixel shaders and cost the same as 6600GT. Manufacturers releasing new cards faster then one sneezes. http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/10..._ati_x1650_xt/

:up: it's very cheap.

Warrior of the Light

30th October 2006 23:29 UTC

I thought that by "And if I got 100 authors that'll be a nightmare." you meant people that made presets.

When you wrote about the not being sure about scripting, I thought you meant using/modifying the visualizer in general. That's why I thought you were incertain. forget about that then.
Keep up the good work then and make something beautiful.

kostyap

30th October 2006 23:53 UTC

Originally posted by Warrior of the Light
Keep up the good work then and make something beautiful.

If you got the hardware then check it out. Some people told me that it is already beautiful. At least some presets;)

jheriko

31st October 2006 09:09 UTC

What is this R4? Sounds like it might be good.

Also you using other artists work doesn't mean you have to pay them. It depends on how you manage it.

Also, what features do you use exactly that stop this from being scalable? Looking at the screenshots (I know screenshots aren't great) it looks like a load of stuff you could render without any fancy pixel shader loops and branches.

I am also curious, which functionality of the GeForce 7800 series do you use that isn't on the 6800 or earlier models? IIRC the difference is nothing in terms of extensions and shader model etc.. there is just some extra UltraShadow API or something. Is it just a guideline for speed?

Warrior of the Light

31st October 2006 09:32 UTC

J: R4

kostyap

31st October 2006 10:35 UTC

Originally posted by jheriko
Also you using other artists work doesn't mean you have to pay them. It depends on how you manage it.

First of all good preset writers are hard to come by. And the few I know want to get paid.

Also, what features do you use exactly that stop this from being scalable? Looking at the screenshots (I know screenshots aren't great) it looks like a load of stuff you could render without any fancy pixel shader loops and branches.

Ok. Try replicating this for example:
http://www.exsotron.com/exs_pics/vis_1/0135.JPG along with lighting and bump-mapping. Just keep in mind that it is all real time and moving (no static stuff in there) and high resolution. When you do we would have something to discuss.

I am also curious, which functionality of the GeForce 7800 series do you use that isn't on the 6800 or earlier models? IIRC the difference is nothing in terms of extensions and shader model etc.. there is just some extra UltraShadow API or something. Is it just a guideline for speed?

24 Pixel shader piplines and raw speed. Shapes colors bump-mapping and lighting that you see are all generated at runtime using pixel shaders. t does run on 6600GT for example but with low FPS. It does have "light" mode where one layer is removed and it is possible in this case to use it on 6600GT.

jheriko

31st October 2006 13:56 UTC

I will check out R4 when I get home, but it doesn't look very programmable.

The geometry is very nice and the lighting looks reasonably nice, but there is nothing in this image that can't be done using PS2.0 and a lower specification card in a lower resolution with a less detailed model. I'm probably going to download your plugin when I get home after all this discussion just to see how good it is when moving.

Bump-mapping and lighting don't make things slow. Accessing large textures and rendering with a high polycount is more of an issue normally, especially on lower end cards like GeForce FX.

I understand that its annoying to make stuff scale nicely, I'm always trying to do it and its time consuming and takes the fun out of the code (not that I've finished anything big yet). There are somethings which are quite easy to do on PS3 compared to 2, such as omni-directional shadow mapping. (I've never been able to make it look good on GeForce FX) The reason to make things scalable though is that it opens up your software to a larger chunk of the market since, for instance, home users do not have high-end PS3.0 cards as a rule.

Anyway, you remind me that I must take the time to sit down and write a proper demo. If my guesses are right and you are using some light with normal mapping, specularity and some kind of parallax effect (there is a nasty patchy aliasy border around your model that I can't explain any other way) in which case its nothing I haven't done before on other models in different contexts both hardware and software, real-time or not. Also nothing I can't derive from first principles. So there is no good reason other than sheer lazyness (maybe lack of time from full time work but..) that I can't copy paste my existing code and throw together a demo.

EDIT: didnt realise how long that was!

Also, I don't expect you to make it programmable. Its a whole order of magnitude more complexity to add. You would be surprised how much you can get away with (and not even notice problems with) when you limit yourself to high-end hardware and non-programmable content. That goes for all software in my experience. Fast CPUs/GPUs let programmers get away with all sorts of evil.

BTW, my current project (woefully unfinished) game engine runs fine on any windows NT (3.51,2000,XP,2k3) machine with an OpenGL 1.2 compliant graphics card. Doesn't render anything amazing like yours though, just a boring console and a programmable UI.

kostyap

31st October 2006 14:11 UTC

Originally posted by jheriko
I will check out R4 when I get home, but it doesn't look very programmable.

It is programmable. Scripting engine is built-in

The geometry is very nice and the lighting looks reasonably nice, but there is nothing in this image that can't be done using PS2.0 and a lower specification card in a lower resolution with a less detailed model.

Less detailed picture looks awful. And there IS NO MODEL. Shapes are generated on pixel shaders

I'm probably going to download your plugin when I get home after all this discussion just to see how good it is when moving.

It is not plugin. Standalone app that grabs sound from audio card.
[QUOTE]

Bump-mapping and lighting don't make things slow. Accessing large textures and rendering with a high polycount is more of an issue normally, especially on lower end cards like GeForce FX.

There are no polygons there. How many times do I have to explain that shapes are created using Pixel Shaders.

[QUOTE]
The reason to make things scalable though is that it opens up your software to a larger chunk of the market since, for instance, home users do not have high-end PS3.0 cards as a rule.
[QUOTE]

These cards are produced in quantity of millions now.

kostyap

31st October 2006 14:17 UTC

Originally posted by jheriko
Also, I don't expect you to make it programmable. Its a whole order of magnitude more complexity to add. You would be surprised how much you can get away with (and not even notice problems with) when you limit yourself to high-end hardware and non-programmable content. That goes for all software in my experience. Fast CPUs/GPUs let programmers get away with all sorts of evil.

I would recommend you to refrain from assumptions like that. I have a scripting engine that compiles to native code and is blindingly fast. As for what it takes to add it, well I am not commenting here about your coding abilities so I'd like you not comment on mine. I have used various scripting engines for years in applications that I have created for various enterprises.

BTW, my current project (woefully unfinished) game engine runs fine on any windows NT (3.51,2000,XP,2k3) machine with an OpenGL 1.2 compliant graphics card. Doesn't render anything amazing like yours though, just a boring console and a programmable UI.

My "hello world" application does not need any graphics and compiles and runs on just about everything

jheriko

31st October 2006 16:02 UTC

Originally posted by kostyap
I would recommend you to refrain from assumptions like that.

Its not an assumption. As a trivial example: if you have a fixed view point for instance, you can neglect considering the back halves and occluded areas of models without doing any bfc/occlusion tests. If you allow the user to choose a view point you can no longer do that without resorting to expensive tests which are often not possible to perform in real-time without expensive pre-calculations (hence generally useless in this situation).

Also I'm not doubting your scripting language, evallib already exists and compiles to reasonably fast code (no MMX, SSEn instructions...) in memory. All I'm saying is that there is a world of difference between rendering something to the screen without allowing it to be programmable and allowing it to be programmable. As mentioned above optimisation becomes much more difficult since your program knows much less 'ahead of time'. More importantly though is that rather than creating single instances of some object and using them you have to write code that manages multiple instances, creating, destroying, rendering from them (inheritence is nice here) etc... which isn't difficult, but its time consuming. You need to scan directories to look for files, create and maintain lists/trees in memory etc... None of this is necessary or even desireable for a stand alone plugin with fixed options.

A simple example of this is texturing. With hard coded scenes there is no reason to give any general mechanism to link together the various components of textures, you can just assign which ever one to which ever texture unit you like, and then use them as you like within shader code. Its faster and easier to write this way, at least it is how I would do it for a stand-alone demo. Its also very little work to add specific optimisations for a specific texture.

In a more general model though it is preferable to have some kind of script which defines the texture components, blend modes, which shader it needs to be rendered with etc... this means having to find all of these files out of a directory, parse them and store the data in some structure for fast and easy access, you also have to write more generic rendering code so that a texture appears on the screen. For all of this to be useful there needs to be some kind of UI for selecting a texture file and some mechanism for applying it to an object. Then there is allowing custom shaders for textures and working out which texture will end up in which unit etc.. This all boils down to needing some base class (without OO function pointers or whatever) for any component (triangle render, line render, spectrum, moving particle etc..) using textures. The bottom line is that you usually end up with a much bigger 'mess' of dynamic allocation, inheritance and data structures that you would need in a non programmable vis.

If we decide to make it scalable as well it becomes even messier since many routines will need to be written multiple times for different targets to allow the program to exploit the better features of newer hardware.

Ideally you would end up with something like the Quake 3 .shader or Doom 3 engine .mtr files.

You can of course do all the above with a static renderer and get benefits and since I haven't seen yours yet I can't comment on it specifically.

Originally posted by kostyap
My "hello world" application does not need any graphics and compiles and runs on just about everything

I guess I should have been more detailed about what the program does. "Hello" World doesn't really compare to even an empty window (assuming Win32). Here, this one runs on *nix and Win32 consoles:


#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    printf("Hello World\n");
    return 0;
}

Sorry if I have offended you btw, I seem to do that easily without realising when I get overzealous about stuff.

jheriko

31st October 2006 16:17 UTC

Sorry: mashed quote instead of edit...

EDIT: About polygons and creating the geometry in a pixel shader. Out of interest, does it raytrace per-pixel?

jheriko

31st October 2006 17:14 UTC

Just checked out your vis. It seems that all of the presets do the same thing but with different textures to me... I prefer the light mode a lot, the other mode is way too busy and the colours make it plain ugly some of the time. Also in light mode you can see the differences between presets more clearly. I'm also slightly shocked to see it so flat and 2d, I was expecting 3d and awesome lighting. TBH this looks like an incredible waste of resources.

AA would be nice btw, it looks very jaggy here.

Also checked out r4, it seems quite nice and very powerful but it lacks the key feature that makes AVS, which is allowing the bulk of the programming to be done through a drag and drop interface. although r4's language is nearer to c than evallib, which is nice. the r4 ui is also terrible, they wasted right click by having it do nothing :p I am probably going to play with it still.. but yeah.

Relying on the sound card settings is quite annoying too. If the user can configure it then so can the software, enumerating windows and sending keyboard events is useful.

kostyap

31st October 2006 23:02 UTC

Originally posted by jheriko
EDIT: About polygons and creating the geometry in a pixel shader. Out of interest, does it raytrace per-pixel?

THERE ARE NO POLYGONS. How many times do I have to spell it

jheriko

1st November 2006 09:25 UTC

Originally posted by kostyap
THERE ARE NO POLYGONS. How many times do I have to spell it

Go back over this thread and actually read what you have said and what I have said. You needed to say it once. After the first time that you explicitly mentioned this I asked a question relating to it.

Learn to read and learn some terminology whilst you are at it. Then you might understand the sentence of mine that you quoted and mis-interpreted.

kostyap

1st November 2006 09:42 UTC

Originally posted by jheriko
Go back over this thread and actually read what you have said and what I have said. You needed to say it once. After the first time that you explicitly mentioned this I asked a question relating to it.

Learn to read and learn some terminology whilst you are at it. Then you might understand the sentence of mine that you quoted and mis-interpreted.

I think we are polluting the thread with our lengthy conversation. If you are interested in discussion we can do it either over email kostya___REMOVE___IT___@rogers.com or you can try live chat using MSN Messenger (my ID there is poukhov_kostya___REMOVE___IT___@hotmail.com)

jheriko

1st November 2006 10:32 UTC

Sorry for polluting your thread.

kostyap

1st November 2006 11:13 UTC

Originally posted by jheriko
Sorry for polluting your thread.

Why do you act like this? Two of us shoved ton of messages in this thread with virtually nobody else participating. There is no point keeping this conversation in here IMO. If you want to continue I gave you coordinates for contact. If you want to play offended then well, there is nothing I can do

PAK-9

1st November 2006 13:39 UTC

A few points:

1) You are posting in the AVS forums; this forum is essentially dedicated to discussing preset editing. I appreciate that you just wanted to post about a visualisation in a place where you thought people would be interested, but you have to appreciate that everyone here is interested in scriptable, easily modifyable visualisations (and we put up with a huge amount of failings in AVS for it) so the reception is unlikely to be highly enthusiastic.

2) Just because they make millions of high end graphics cards doesnt mean everyone has them. If you take a straw poll I think you will find a small minority of people actually own cards that new. I also agree with J that there is nothing in your vis that seems to require such a high end card, and if there is, it should be scalable. Its not good enough to just say "I want them to be seen as I made them" because you're basically saying "fuck the end user, you either watch it like this or you dont watch it at all". If you want people to watch your vis try to appeal to the biggest possible market.

I dont mean to dump on your efforts, it all looks very nice, but as I have said we are more about making visualisations here than watching them.

kostyap

1st November 2006 14:14 UTC

Originally posted by PAK-9
A few points:
1)You are posting in the AVS forums;

You should probably notice that I did not post in "AVS Presets" subforums but in general one. And if these forums had section for something like "Third Party Vis" then I would post there.

you have to appreciate that everyone here is interested in scriptable, easily modifyable visualisations (and we put up with a huge amount of failings in AVS for it) so the reception is unlikely to be highly enthusiastic.

Did not you read what I said? If people like the concept then I'll add preset building interface. If not then why bother.

I also agree with J that there is nothing in your vis that seems to require such a high end card

The best way would be for you to prove your point and replicate some of the presets in AVS at high resolution with with all details.

because you're basically saying "fuck the end user, you either watch it like this or you dont watch it at all". If you want people to watch your vis try to appeal to the biggest possible market.

What I am saying is that there are plenty visualizers out there and each one has it's own weaknesses and strengths and there is no need for them to replicate each other. There is enough space for everything I think. As for scalability I could throw it back to you: if I put AVS full-screen on HI-Res monitor and throw some fancy formula's it just does not work, I can assume then that it is not scalable either. See there are small cars, trucks, race cars etc. What you are saying is that everyone should have the same car.

... as I have said we are more about making visualisations here than watching them.

Then you are not an end user for sure. You are preset author, the same as I am. I just decided not to use AVS for my presets. And I want my presets to look the way I made them. You probably want the same for yours.

PS. You can grab new version from website. This one optimized more and "light" mode should run on lower cards. Still requires shader model 3 support

PAK-9

1st November 2006 18:46 UTC

Originally posted by kostyap
Did not you read what I said? If people like the concept then I'll add preset building interface. If not then why bother.

I appreciate that but you are going to get a completely bias view in the AVS forums because as I said we all use AVS pretty much solely for its customisation.

Originally posted by kostyap
The best way would be for you to prove your point and replicate some of the presets in AVS at high resolution with with all details.

I never said that AVS could do what your vis is capable of, I just dont think it necessarily requires an absolutely tip-top gfx card.

Originally posted by kostyap
What I am saying is that there are plenty visualizers out there and each one has it's own weaknesses and strengths and there is no need for them to replicate each other. There is enough space for everything I think. As for scalability I could throw it back to you: if I put AVS full-screen on HI-Res monitor and throw some fancy formula's it just does not work, I can assume then that it is not scalable either.

I take your point that vis' all have strong and weak points but personally I do feel that there is a sufficiently large home market out there for highly gfx intensive visualisations. Your argument that AVS isnt scalable is spurious, AVS is bordering on obselete, having not been updated to take advantage of any significant modern technologies, however up to the point it stopped being updated it scaled down very well, I believe AVS runs pretty well on any system down to about 166Mhz. Plus despite not taking advantage of modern technology, AVS still runs on essentially ANY system made in the last decade.

Originally posted by kostyap
I want my presets to look the way I made them. You probably want the same for yours.

If you want people to see your presets exactly how you made them then dismantle your entire computer system, take it over to people's houses, reassemble it and show them the vis' on your system. I know, its an extension to the ridiculous but the point is you have to compromise somewhere, and asking people to have really high end gfx cards is asking too much imo

kostyap

1st November 2006 19:05 UTC

Originally posted by PAK-9
I appreciate that but you are going to get a completely bias view in the AVS forums because as I said we all use AVS pretty much solely for its customisation.

Well it does not hurt to try;)

I never said that AVS could do what your vis is capable of, I just dont think it necessarily requires an absolutely tip-top gfx card.

"Light mode" should run on nVidia 6600GT and ATI X1650XT and those are very far from being "tip top".Besides i am in no way counting on any immediate success in consumer market. The main goal of me building it was that it complements my other products that are used all across North America in commercial environment. As for consumer market I can simply wait for a year and these cards would be just a basic. Another use of that vis is that it can also work in non real-time mode and create super high quality images with the resolutions like 10000 pixels. As soon as I finish that part I am going to start selling those.

AVS still runs on essentially ANY system made in the last decade.

That is advantage but it is also rock tied to your feet. You can also notice that while AVS hogs CPU like crazy my vis practically does not consume any CPU time. It was very important for me since when embedded in my other software there are like 20+ simultaneous independent audio-zones along with video and some other stuff.

I know, its an extension to the ridiculous but the point is you have to compromise somewhere, and asking people to have really high end gfx cards is asking too much imo

Well I am not asking them. Those who have it (and there seems to be plenty since I keep receiving reviews) can use it. Those who do not have it can certainly survive without my vis;) Anyways in a year or two all that gfx power that I require now would be just a starting point.

PAK-9

3rd November 2006 09:52 UTC

Originally posted by kostyap
20+ simultaneous independent audio-zones

wow, does it also contain Super-Awesomeo(tm) and Ultra Soundycool Technology(tm)? (j/k)

Originally posted by kostyap
Anyways in a year or two all that gfx power that I require now would be just a starting point.

...unless you update your vis. Given that you have paid little attention to scalability in this version I see no reason to believe you will consider it in future versions either.

Anyway, enough discussion. As with AVS, if you enjoyed making it, thats all that matters.

kostyap

3rd November 2006 13:53 UTC

Originally posted by PAK-9
wow, does it also contain Super-Awesomeo(tm) and Ultra Soundycool Technology(tm)? (j/k)

No but it has arse wiping plugin

...unless you update your vis. Given that you have paid little attention to scalability in this version I see no reason to believe you will consider it in future versions either.

Assumptions again. I have this unit deployed commercially and I am not going to abandon existing installations. It has built in scalability mechanisms so I'll be safe in the future in this regard. I just decided tot take the cards mentioned as a starting point since I can not really do what I want with the lower level cards.

Anyway, enough discussion. As with AVS, if you enjoyed making it, thats all that matters

True to an extent;)

jheriko

6th November 2006 09:42 UTC

Originally posted by kostyap
No but it has arse wiping plugin

If you don't want to be mocked, don't make up terminology as you go along...

Yathosho

6th November 2006 10:31 UTC

i don't see why the discussion is running so hot here. avs is fun, but the interest in it certainly went down a lot in recent years. media-players like itunes and even wmp have overtaken winamp long ago. it's sad, but it's a fact. for me it's only natural that a good visualization software has higher hardware requirements. the competition is high and that's good. a lot of people just buy latest graphic cards to run the latest quake or unreal, a lot of people enjoy special-fx in hollywood movies. of course technology is not all, it takes creativity also. for avs there are a lot of crap presets, that look very alike. even these are quite popular within winamp users. in avs there are also some extremely skilled preset makers, that hardly get the deserved attention. because people prefer to look at hires visualizations, even if the creativity in the presets might be lower than some high-end avs. the opening of the avs source came years too late, and now nobody is interested in adding some new features (only simple options have been added so far) or even optimizing the code. hell, i don't know what i'm even talking to, i just think that both plugins talked about here have their founded legitimity to exist. would be nice to see that skilled work together, rather than just calling the others development worse. it's not easy to get together.

PAK-9

6th November 2006 13:02 UTC

Its getting a bit off topic but I think the music visualisation (home) market basically doesn't exist. I remember when I first saw geiss thinking it was seriously shit hot, but even then I probably spent less than an hour in total ever sitting and watching it. Music visualisation is such a background entity that I imagine people are unwilling to pay for it, I know I certainly wouldn't.

As I have mentioned earlier in the thread the sole reason AVS has a community is the customisability of it. Milkdrop is customisable to a lesser extend and it has a proportionally smaller community. You could argue that the biggest music vis community is the demo community where the visualisations are entirely bespoke and innovation is cherished. Naturally community size is not a direct measure of how 'good' a visualisation is, but it arguably reflects popularity and mass appeal of that type of visualisation. Given those metrics, AVS fares well in comparison with other 'better', closed source visualisations.

I would go as far as to say the ONLY reason I use AVS is because I enjoy making presets. I enjoy watching other peoples presets as well, but most of the reason I enjoy looking at them is because they are often presenting something I have not seen AVS produce before, thus inspiring me further. AVS is a toy to me, and I think the home market for a dynamic visual toy that responds to music is bigger than the home visualisation market can ever be.

kostyap

6th November 2006 15:42 UTC

Originally posted by PAK-9
Its getting a bit off topic but I think the music visualisation (home) market basically doesn't exist.

Well www.soundspectrum.com seems to be doing just that for many years - selling their G-Force visualizer to home user market

PAK-9

6th November 2006 19:06 UTC

It saddens me that people are actually suckers enough to buy such a breathtakingly unspectacular vis program. Whitecap from the same company is actually a superior vis because of its scripting system which was pretty good I used to think. I doubt they make much money selling visualisations like that (not that I would really know) however all that really proves to me is that there are a lot of really stupid people out there willing to pay for things that are inferior to things they can get for free.

Behold the testimonials:

"I have spent the last few hours getting acquainted with G-Force, and I must say that for the money this is a real bargain. If my math is correct, there are over 10 million different combinations as I figure, which makes this the most worthwhile investment I have ever seen for a computer. GO G-FORCE!..."

- Bernard P.

Thats only $0.000003 per combination folks!!1 Somebody buy this guy a fractal generator for christmas so he can cream his pants.

jheriko

7th November 2006 10:16 UTC

Originally posted by Yathosho
for me it's only natural that a good visualization software has higher hardware requirements.

I understand that point, but this particular piece of software is does basically nothing, and it does it slowly, AND it requires the latest hardware.

As for the discussion running hot? I'm just bitter because nobody has done very much about Fridge and I don't have the time to spend writing much for it... makes me wish I hadn't wasted so much time when I wasn't working...

Whats more is that kostyap has a bad attitude, rather than giving nice thought out replies he has snapped out irrelevant and arrogant comments without reading the post before properly (or at all) and without much correct terminology or knowledge. There has been little or no explanation or justification, mostly just rude comments.

ASD5A

7th November 2006 18:35 UTC

Originally posted by PAK-9
I doubt they make much money selling visualisations like that (not that I would really know) bla bla bla

btw: if i remember correctly microsoft used g-force for the xbox, so i assume the company made good money with the license

Yathosho

7th November 2006 21:19 UTC

itunes uses g-force

kostyap

8th November 2006 00:43 UTC

Originally posted by ASD5A
btw: if i remember correctly microsoft used g-force for the xbox, so i assume the company made good money with the license

XBox uses Neon vsualizer made by llamasoft. Windows Media Player and Itunes use G-Force

PAK-9

8th November 2006 13:37 UTC

So the sales team at G-Force got their software bundled with WMP, the default player shipped with Windows, and iTunes, the default player shipped with macs or bundled with iPods. Two media players that by their ancillary nature have almost no requirement to be any good, and by extension (if not more so) their visualisations.

Congratulations to their sales team for some good business sense but its hardly the voice of the consumer. The customers they get to their website are almost certainly ignorant users of WMP and iTunes who are unaware that other media players exist let alone other vis's. It might as well be a captive market since the customers are trapped in a padded cell of their own stupidity.

I conceed that within the original context of the discussion, yes, G-Force has probably made lots of money for the company; but not through any particular virtues of the visualisation software.

Maybe I'm wrong about the home vis market, dunno.

Originally posted by jheriko
I'm just bitter because nobody has done very much about Fridge and I don't have the time to spend writing much for it... makes me wish I hadn't wasted so much time when I wasn't working...

So you're bitter that everyone else has the same attitude towards fridge as you? :weird:

kostyap

8th November 2006 22:45 UTC

Originally posted by PAK-9
The customers they get to their website are almost certainly ignorant users of WMP and iTunes who are unaware that other media players exist let alone other vis's.

I think that there is an attitude in here. It may be difficult to talk to people that call their potential customers ignorant. I suspect it could be the other way around. And I am pretty sure that many home users tried Winamp with Milkdrop for example. Many of my friends do use Winamp. They usually run Milkdrop though rather then AVS. When I asked them why they told that in their opinion Milkdrop looks better and has authors that produce better looking presets.

jheriko

9th November 2006 10:04 UTC

Originally posted by PAK-9
So you're bitter that everyone else has the same attitude towards fridge as you? :weird:

My attitude is slightly different. I've written *some* code for it over the past year or whatever... ;)

PAK-9

9th November 2006 13:36 UTC

Originally posted by kostyap
I think that there is an attitude in here. It may be difficult to talk to people that call their potential customers ignorant...

They aren't my "potential customers", I have no interest in selling visualisations to the public; I'm just presenting my take on the market and that product in particular. If I was interested in selling visualisations it would be in the customisable visualisation vein which would be pitched at a slightly different market. I can imagine producing visualisations for the commercial sector as being fairly interesting on the other hand (which I sort of gathered you are associated with in some way).

Originally posted by kostyap
...I suspect it could be the other way around...

Sure, I'm fairly ignorant about the music visualisation market; I dont pretend to be an expert.

Originally posted by kostyap
And I am pretty sure that many home users tried Winamp with Milkdrop for example. Many of my friends do use Winamp. They usually run Milkdrop though rather then AVS. When I asked them why they told that in their opinion Milkdrop looks better and has authors that produce better looking presets.

As I stated before, most people use AVS purely for the customisation and community; Milkdrop is superior to AVS in many ways for the sitting-and-watching visualisation user. The AVS/MD comparison isnt really relevant to my comment about ignorant G-Force users though because those people have actively chosen a particular vis instead of just lumping one they got by default.

kostyap

9th November 2006 13:44 UTC

Originally posted by PAK-9
(which I sort of gathered you are associated with in some way).

That's correct

Rovastar

10th November 2006 21:30 UTC

I wasn't going to get into this discussion but I just wanted to put a few things straight.

iTunes uses a really old version of G-Force as their visualiser. It has been there for many years 4+.

WMP use their own inhouse ones (at the moment anyhow) from mostly years and years ago. Andy/Soundspectrum/G-Force did not do anything for WMP player. (Although they did do something for Media Centre.)
Besides G-Force would not meet their strict technical requirements for visualziation products within WMP (or the XBOX360 for that matter)

Originally posted by PAK-9
Sure, I'm fairly ignorant about the music visualisation market; I dont pretend to be an expert.

Don't worry about it most people are not and least you don't pretend to be an expert. ;)

kostyap

10th November 2006 21:49 UTC

Originally posted by Rovastar
I wasn't going to get into this discussion

Here comes guru. Hi Rova. How it's going? Looking forward for new presets from you for R4 or whatever else you use.

MaTTFURY

11th November 2006 14:22 UTC

I downloaded it aswell, I think this a very boring program without any usable options, at least if you're going to develop something, give it more than preset changes that actually change..

kostyap

11th November 2006 14:32 UTC

Originally posted by MaTTFURY
I downloaded it aswell, I think this a very boring program without any usable options, at least if you're going to develop something, give it more than preset changes that actually change..

If it is boring because you can not write presets yourself it is fixable if enough people show interest. If you find that the concept of how images are created is boring then we just have different ideas and there is nothing I can do about it. You have plenty of alternatives

MaTTFURY

11th November 2006 14:36 UTC

I think plenty of people are showing interest *hint*...

kostyap

11th November 2006 14:57 UTC

Originally posted by MaTTFURY
I think plenty of people are showing interest *hint*...

Really? I must've missed something or misinterpreted. Did you personally find it boring because it does not offer preset writing interface or because you just simply did not like the concept? In any way I am contemplating release that will let people write presets. It'll take me 1 to 3 month depending on how much of my time my other commitments will take away.

MaTTFURY

12th November 2006 02:41 UTC

Boring if its not user interfacable, i.e. you can't do anything with it and I'm happy that you've taken an interest to make something useful of your knowledgable programming skills.

Originally posted by kostyap
New Visualizer released. In case you got heavy videocard nVidia 7800GT and higher or ATI 1800 and higher check it out at http://www.exsotron.com/ 7800GT and higher :igor:
i have only 6600gt