Topic: Days after SELEM

[James]

I'm still kind-of in a fog.

I have not put all my stuff away yet.

I'm going to go over some code I wrote on the stage at SELEM and make sure it all works OK and release a new version pretty soon.

Then, I want to start on some cool ideas I had before.

This is some really intense shit.

I guess I don't really wonder why I do it.

I love it.

James. 

[ImageLight]

Hey James,

I picked up a little white fan during the clean up of SELEM stage area.  Steve thought it might be yours. If so, I'll ship it to you.

Mark

[James]

Nope. That's not mine.

Thanks anyway.

James.

[Fanny Pack]

James, you cracked me up with all of the stuff you brought to SELEM.  It was like you were moving in. 

[James]

...Laughing very loud.... 

Tell me about it! 

I had a lot of neat stuff planned. I figured I might as well take it all with me. It does me no good in Akron, Ohio!

I still haven't put it all away yet. I'll just leave it all packed up for next year!

James. 

[James]

I got a big kick out of seeing LaserBoy on 300EVIL's RGB.

He showed the raster stuff that came with his laser controller and it looked crappy!

Then we showed some LaserBoy "Spiralvision" and he thanked me for showing him that black IS a color!

He also noted that he could never get a simple circle to look so good.

I said, I know! There are reasons for this! 

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

I saw your spiral raster stuff going and was very impressed.  It was actually one of the coolest things that I saw.  DrLavas demo of ILDSOS was also very cool.  It finally dawned on my what he meant by velocity modulation and that he was actually modulating the laser power.  That must have taken a lot of experimentation to get to work right.  LazerJock's scanner also impressed me with the automatic lumia, grating, and blu-ray.  He definitely sold me on adding TTL/DMX support and to finally put together an RGV scanner.  I have all the parts, I just need to put them together.  Dean's bitmap images he showed me were also very cool.

I expected to be blown away by the Pangolin stuff but I wasn't.  But, I blame that on no one really showing it off I guess.  I did notice that the image quality was good.  But the content of the shows wasn't really exciting to me.  I expected to see some badass abstracts and live stuff but it didn't come while I was there.  I think that the beam brush device will be cool but it's too pricey for me.

Oh yea, I was also impressed by LaserJocks rum and Adam's martini thing he made.  I was in another dimension after those.

[Lazerjock]

Oh yea, I was also impressed by LaserJocks rum and Adam's martini thing he made.  I was in another dimension after those.

"LIGHT" Weight   

[Fanny Pack]

Oh yea, I was also impressed by LaserJocks rum and Adam's martini thing he made.  I was in another dimension after those.

"LIGHT" Weight   

Well, I didn't mention that I had a cooler of beer in my Jeep that I had been tapping into all afternoon and evening. 

[meandean]

James, you cracked me up with all of the stuff you brought to SELEM.  It was like you were moving in. 

  Yeah, and I had to wag all that stuff back to Akron in my old Buick without destroying his projector (which has no
protective guards- I hope it still works).

[James]

I also got a GREAT deal of personal satisfaction when it was so clearly demonstrated that there are HUGE differences in the ways each of us come to create, manage and understand our respective software offerings.

If you ever ask me a specific question about ANY aspect of how the code in LaserBoy works, I will either tell you, or admit that I don't know. And If I don't know..... NO ONE KNOWS!

I am very proud of the fact that I wrote the whole thing! I understand the intricate relationships that exist between all of its parts.

I DO NOT rely on ANY external libraries for 3D math, graphics, or any of the things that make an application look or feel familiar.

Everything that you see going on inside the LaserBoy window is all done in LaserBoy code, put together in a bitmap memory object (also in LB code) and put into that display window. This is why it is so easy to port to any OS.

Take a look! You have the code!

James. 

[drlava]

Laserboy IS cool, James in some cases it's a lifesaver.  I used it just the other day to look at some 3D frames exported from LDS format to ILD with ILD SOS.  You really get a better feel of the frame when it can spin in 3D space.

[James]

I think the next BIG phase of LaserBoy development is going to be directly communicating with the sound card.

I've been lazy, dragging my feet on this issue for way too long.

All I really need to do is write some code that talks to DirectX and some other code that talks to whatever the common audio layer is for GNU / Linux / BSD / OSX, etc... and then write a wrapper that makes both of those things look exactly the same to LaserBoy.

No biggie! 

Once I do that then I can play in the same space as you guys with the live rendering. I can also use LSBs in the waves to flip the TTL switches on that USB board!

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

DirectX?  Say what?  Why do you need to do that?  What are you trying to achieve?  If you just want to output audio you can use the Win32 APIs.  I actually started a C++ Win32 version of a streaming sound card driver but abandoned it when I got a good deal on a Moncha DAC.  Point is, DirectX isn't needed and only adds overhead.  One of these days I am going to finish it and add it to Spaghetti but since the EzAud driver works so well I don't have a lot of motivation for it at the moment.  If you want to use DirectX for video, then you don't need it there either.  But it does give you a lot more power since it talks directly to your video card.  But, the DirectSound stuff doesn't so it doesn't give you the same performance benefit.  I use DirectX for the ILDA drawing windows in Spaghetti and the performance boost was VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY awesome.  (Basically, allowed SPaghetti to go from about 40% CPU usage to 5% CPU usage on my PC).  Word.

[James]

See there! I don't really know squat about Win32.

I guess I should start my development in Linux, where I know how to get to everything. Once I get together some kind of sensible working system, then I'll talk to you about getting the same performance in Win32.

All I really need is a memory address and a binary write function that does not return until it's ready for another bucket full of multi-channel samples. Obviously, I also need a way to read the sound card settings and change the ones I can. I need to be able to open the sound device with 2, 4, 6, or 8 channels.

James.