bongo wrote:Yeah, I am guessing that when in slideshow mode there's some preprocessing that goes on in anticipation of the FlowField change. What I'm wondering is if there is some way when making manual changes to FlowField that I can set parameter(s) to do this preprocessing. I realize this will create a lag before the new FlowField appears, but so long as the transition took place smoothly, i.e., without a freeze, that for me that would be preferable to having the change happen immediately beginning with a freeze.
For everyone's info, allow me to interject some terms and definitions to improve communications...
Preprocessing - taking in a raw config file or script file and (a) removing comments, (b) performing macros (ie, using #defines), and (c) performing escape codes (ex, a blackslash at the end of a line joins it with the next. Since preprocessing is just on a small text file, it's very quick--essentially negligible.
compiling - turning source code, expressions (ie, the mathematical expressions found in configs), and the like into machine code, meaning chains of byte-codes that tell a CPU (or virtual machine) to do specific, step by step tasks. In other words, hardware only knows how to execute chains of byte codes; source code has no meaning to a CPU.
Altivec, MMX, SSE -- modern CPU features that allow faster mass computation. Unless software is architected from the ground up intending to use these features, they are difficult to harness. G-Force and WhiteCap presently have no CPU acceleration (but this will change w/ the introduction of VectorC -- see below).
computing a FlowField - for each pixel on the GF frame, evaluating the equations given in a FlowField config. there's a lot of pixels, so this is an intensive operation. it's normally chopped up into small pieces over 10-30 seconds so that the slowdown is not very noticeable.
The "current" virtual machine / expression evaluator - this is what GF and WC currently use to evaluate expressions. It's effective, but high overhead (for things like computing a FlowField). No hardware acceleration is possible. VectorC is scheduled to replace it w/in 6 months.
VectorC - a subset of C created by yours truly indented to be compiled by a special SoundSpectrum compiler that will result in a complete removal in the overhead associated with the current virtual machine in G-Force and WhiteCap. It will also be able to use CPU hardware features for higer performance. VectorC programs have other features/benefits that I do not wish to reveal at this time.
LightCycle - the codename for soundspectrum's encapsulation of 3D hardware (ATI, GeForce, etc) to significantly improve the performance and visual quality of GF, WC, and "project x".
Andy
