G-Force gold 7.3 disappointment

[TMBrod]

A few days ago I wrote back-channel to JayPro (below) and he wrote back (below that):

the discussions on the G-Force Forum are too tech-literate for me. I'm ashamed to post my whine. You invited e-mail. That should be private :-[

G-F 7.1 was God-force itself to me. when I cranked up 7.3 last night I was shocked to see all the glory of creation replaced/ overlain by frenetic squiggly double/triple- visioned visualization lines. It's the first upgrade (of many) that has set me back.

I ventured into foreign territory and changed smoothing in the Prefs file to 1.25 (PSmo " As this value increases, the more mag(0..1) is smoothed (ie, peaks and valleys will be less jagged). Approximately doubling/halving this number will double/half the amount of smoothing."), which helped a little but I hope i didn't lose something essential . I certainly don't want to "smooth" out the time function, so the visualization of the higher audio frequencies blur [it's hard to know how to say this. I mean I want to have good "real time" movement of the visuals to the music].

I'm looking for a G-Force which moves with the music but instead of looking like a cross between a fireworks display and a mad oscilloscope, looks like the cosmos in the glory of perpetual creation, like the G-F of yore.

JayPro replied:

First of all, I'd like to apologize for my lengthy delay in responding to your letter. That said, I do have a few things that might be of both interest and consolation to you.

First, you are under no obligation to keep any waveshapes or other effects that aren't to your liking. Simple as that. In response to your looking into editing things via the Prefs file, I really don't think it's necessary to do so based on much noodling-around that I myself have done in that regard. Nor is it a bad move on your part to experiment along those lines.

IMO, the easiest thing to do is while you're in the program to toggle the bracket keys ([]). This will either increase or decrease the response level to the waveshapes, i.e. make them change their look based on sonic input. The unfortunate thing IMO is that many waveshapes are predesigned by their authors to dance to softer music; so therefore if you've got some serious loudness happening, you'll hafta manually ratchet things down as I just illustrated.

I've long been a proponent of the idea that G-Force can be as individual as the user. Some like serene vistas accompanied by smooth lines and pastel colors; whereas others like the whole gamut from that to explosions of color and activity. I favor the latter myself. Anyway, I would start by going thru your effects folders and "triaging", i.e. chucking (if you wish to) those configs you find tacky, chintzy or kitschy. Meanwhile try experimenting with "[]" to see how that can effect what you see without delving into perhaps unchartered file-editing waters.

BTW..don't feel embarrassed if the whole language bit seems a bit perplexing. Feel free to vent on our website forum and ask around.

PS I meant to say that some waveshape authors designed their babies to react to louder genres and the like. *That's* where you might hafta tune down the response via the bracket keys.

OK, then...

1. the "[]" trick works pretty good. Changing the frame rate FPS=24 helps a little too.

2. so what's the difference between stand-alone 7.1 and 7.3 (I missed 7.2)? In the folder, I note Particles now are under WaveShapes, and the DeltaFields are Flowfields. Yes, but why does there seem to be so much WaveShape activitiy dominating, and the Flowfields tend to be more central (less tending to spread out across the whole frame)? A serious loss of cohesion to the eyes!

I like the WaveShape activity visualizing the music, yes, but flowfields are what appear to create the ecstatic experience of God-Force (the eternal creative becomingness).

3. I've read and re-read the documentation on PSmo and FSmo but haven't got an intuitive feel for the difference.

4. Looking into the configuaration folders leads to a new question (but tied in to JayPro's advise to "go thruough your effect folders"): is there a way to play the scripts, so I can know what they look like?

And Andy says in "Birth Cone" script that one can "enable 'show config names' '(N by default)' ". In running G-force stand-alone with "verbose on" and hitting key "L" I can see the components. Is this the successor to "N"?

5. How much at risk of getting MORE spam am I now at for having joined this forum?

thanks for the help, Tom Brod

[TMBrod]

I see responses don't come flooding in on this forum.

This morning I did some more close watching of G-force, verbose on. I saw 26 flowfields, 3 of which I liked, 10 were like-dead (blank content except changing color fields). 13 were OK. disappointment heavy. I noticed that many of the merely OK ones seemed to be relatively horizontally centered and limited. As if those that did spread out laterally (a preferable condition--though I'd rather have the screen full of beautiful forms) may have been overriding some default (constrictive) condition.

Is this helpful to get any lurkers activated?

Tom Brod

[Rovastar]

v7.3 do you version 2.7.3?

? What you mean half teh Flowfeilds were dead? Did you get the names of them witha screenshot.

There are hundreds of FF's you cannot hope to like them all.

[TMBrod]

v7.3 do you version 2.7.3?

? What you mean half teh Flowfeilds were dead? Did you get the names of them witha screenshot.

There are hundreds of FF's you cannot hope to like them all.

Yes 2.7.3 Indeed.

"Dead", I meant no movement, no form, just a plain wash of color (or changing color). Below is a list of very inorganic or dead flowfields I saw yesterday in the 30 configs.

But I do wonder if anyone can address my other questions.

I LOVE TO BURN; ON OFF ON OFF; WHIRLPOOL AT THE WAVES; DAVE F CYCLONE COUDS; WATERFALL OF LIFE; JBSL; PHANTOM MIST

Thanks for your consideration. I think I'll download the file again in case it came in corrupted (though doubt). tom brod

[Roger Bigod]

The flowfield that can be seen is not the True FlowField. Flowfields put nothing on the screen. They only rearrange stuff from waveshapes and sprites. Some of the waveshapes show nothing when there is no sound. So if you are watching in standalone mode, there will be times when the screen is black for a while. If this is the problem, moving the problem waveshapes into another folder is a possibility.

You can do the same with flowfields, if they are the problem. Andy is in the position of trying to please as many people as possible. But he has set things up so that things can be customized with minimal tweaking.

[TMBrod]

The flowfield that can be seen is not the True FlowField. Flowfields put nothing on the screen. They only rearrange stuff from waveshapes and sprites. Some of the waveshapes show nothing when there is no sound. So if you are watching in standalone mode, there will be times when the screen is black for a while. If this is the problem, moving the problem waveshapes into another folder is a possibility.

Thanks Roger. I didn't realize that (with full consciousness) about flowfields only moving waveshapes and sprites (it was beginning to dawn on me only today as I continued to watch it closely). but I have been using Windows Media Player in the background while watching stand-alone G-force and have had sound playing during the configs I was watching.

that said, I'm interested in the notion of putting waveshapes into another folder. How is that helpful? and what specifically did you have in mind?

that question dovetails with one of my original questions:

4. Looking into the configuaration folders leads to a new question (but tied in to JayPro's advise to "go through your effect folders"): is there a way to play the scripts, so I can know what they look like?

If there is no way to "play" the scripts, how would one know what any flowfield or waveshape looked like/behaves except waiting for that one to come up randomly in the G-Force program (and watching each config with the Verbose toggled on)?

Hello Andy, are you there?

[Roger Bigod]

When the application needs a new flowfield, it looks in the FlowFields folder. So removing a file from that folder hides it. You can toss it permanently or just move it to a folder with a different name.

Hit the H key to see the possibilities for playing with configs in a limited way. You can turn off the slideshows, force changes and back up, using keys on the left end of the keyboard. In this mode, the application will choose new configs randomly. For totally fascist control of what configs are up every second, you can write a script specifying the configs to present. But you can find out if your problems are with flowfields or wave shapes just by futzing around with the keyboard cntrols and looking at some combinations.

[TMBrod]

Hit the H key to see the possibilities for playing with configs in a limited way. You can turn off the slideshows, force changes and back up, using keys on the left end of the keyboard. In this mode, the application will choose new configs randomly. For totally fascist control of what configs are up every second, you can write a script specifying the configs to present. But you can find out if your problems are with flowfields or wave shapes just by futzing around with the keyboard cntrols and looking at some combinations.

I spent a couple of hours last night with gold 2.7.1 on my laptop PC and gold 2.7.3 on my iMac (earlier in the week, I did it with two laptops). there's no doubt in my mind about the difference: the earlier version shows sweeter configs. With framerate, line width, response scale and preamp scale equivalent. It's hard to find the words to describe the difference. 2.7.1 has a unitary flowing feeling and 2.7.3 is more fragmented and particular.

Maybe it is the specific particles,etc that are randomly loading. I can't quite tell. I did some "control X" scripting (nice feature) of comparison configs. I could never duplicate the entire config completely, donno why. But, I must say, they looked remarkably alike on the two screens (shockingly, disappointingly, the PC produced sharper, cleaner manifestations than the Mac, which is a different issue than the one I'm working on).

I can report with confidence that when the configs were generating randomly I noticed that a Julia B flowfield on the PC w/2.7.1 was georgeous and one on the iMac w/2.7.3 was merely nice but particulate. They went by too fast for me to write down the waveshapes, so I don't recall the different names.

Next, to write a Control x script for each machinge that includes some favorites like Julia B, Pointsetta, Gedengi and/or Dave F- Wave World. I'll report back.

In the meantime, could someone like Andy or Jay run the two versions side-by-side and opine whether the configs are being manifest differently in the two versions?

This has been a great opportunity to learn something about G-Force, but it sure is chewing up time alloted for other projects. Tom Brod

[JayPro]

Tom;

Maybe I can explain it thisaway:

The big changes began IIRC with G-Force 2.5 when Andy integrated metafiling, thus allowing comingling of waveshapes with those thiings that used to be called particles. If you do a search on Metafiling in the forum, you may find some posts of interest that I made concerning what metafiling does and how it can be applied to differentiate between "true" waveshapes and particles. Then again, you may know about metas; so I'll apologize in advance for being pedantic or condescending. At any rate, it is interesting to see how the concept applies to waveshape effects.

With respect to any differenceswithin operating systems I honestly can't vouch for one over the other. Perhaps one *does* look crisper in one environment than the other. I can grant benefit of the doubt on that point. And to be honest I don't have the patience to test G-F on the dog-day-afternoon slugabed POS that is my copy of Virtual PC 6.

I hope this helps...

[TMBrod]

Tom;

Maybe I can explain it thisaway:

The big changes began IIRC with G-Force 2.5 when Andy integrated metafiling, thus allowing comingling of waveshapes with those thiings that used to be called particles. If you do a search on Metafiling in the forum, you may find some posts of interest that I made concerning what metafiling does and how it can be applied to differentiate between "true" waveshapes and particles. Then again, you may know about metas; so I'll apologize in advance for being pedantic or condescending. At any rate, it is interesting to see how the concept applies to waveshape effects.

No, I don't know about metafiling. I'll check it out.

With respect to any differenceswithin operating systems I honestly can't vouch for one over the other. Perhaps one *does* look crisper in one environment than the other. I can grant benefit of the doubt on that point. And to be honest I don't have the patience to test G-F on the dog-day-afternoon slugabed POS that is my copy of Virtual PC 6.

But surely "there is one among you" who has the capability to run 2.7.1 and 2.7.3 side-by-side (any format, there's not THAT much difference between my PC and my iMac). Most of my patients have commented, without any prompting, that G-Force has changed, that it does not look as "full" or "holistic", etc etc.

Tom

[Rovastar]

But surely "there is one among you" who has the capability to run 2.7.1 and 2.7.3 side-by-side (any format, there's not THAT much difference between my PC and my iMac). Most of my patients have commented, without any prompting, that G-Force has changed, that it does not look as "full" or "holistic", etc etc.

Tom

Well seeing that they are maybe only max 10 people here that visit regular I am not surprised that no-one has completed your quest.

If you show screenshots (or even better video) of the same configs (flowfeilds, waveforms, colourmaps) in both versions than I will have a look myself and then maybe this can be resolved.

What about copying all teh existing configs to a seperate folder and only have say 1 or 2 configs for each ff, wave, colourmap that is the same both versions.

If you are comparing the same configs and you are still think there is maybe we can get somewhere. BAring in mid that most configs have a random element every time they are run/reloaded ('' to reload') .

I personaly think that you have you dislike some of the newer configs that are in 2.7.3

I noticed no changes in performance when upgrading from 2.71 to newer versions.

[TMBrod]

If you show screenshots (or even better video) of the same configs (flowfeilds, waveforms, colourmaps) in both versions than I will have a look myself and then maybe this can be resolved.

Thanks very much. I must prepare for a talk I'm giving this weekend on neurofeedback (it WILL include a G-Force demonstration), so probably I will not get to it for a little while. But your offer is appreciated.

I personaly think that you have you dislike some of the newer configs that are in 2.7.3

I noticed no changes in performance when upgrading from 2.71 to newer versions.

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[Desmo888]

I have not been able to see a difference between the two most recent versions. I can say that there are a number of the "Extras" that do not work.

As far as "full" or "holistic"; you may just be chasing something intangible. Perception plays a big part with this program. Easy to have a "moment" and then never experience it again.

Andy has written something extraordinary with G-Force Don't try too hard, enjoy, be appreciative! The program has only gotten better since its early versions. I think the best practice here, at least for you, is to run the version you like.

[JayPro]

Desmo;

I believe your observations about the configs n the extras archive are because of the fact that they don't have Meta vaules assigned to them.
I'll be more than happy to elaborate on hem soon; but as I have things to do today, I'm afraid I won't be spending too much time at the forums.
Feel free to leave questions and the like and I'll get back to you.

[TMBrod]

Desmo;

I believe your observations about the configs n the extras archive are because of the fact that they don't have Meta vaules assigned to them.
I'll be more than happy to elaborate on hem soon; but as I have things to do today, I'm afraid I won't be spending too much time at the forums.
Feel free to leave questions and the like and I'll get back to you.

EXTRAS ARCHIVE???? Is this a hidden clue to the mystery.

And HOW ABOUT "meta values"? Where can I learn about them?