Responses to Isadora v2.1

crystalhorizon

Thanks Graham!

So the 3D renderer is cpu only?

Skulpture

Yeah - but check out "virtual stage". It may help.

crystalhorizon

Yes, Virtual Stage does the trick! Thanx!

Skulpture

Welcomes :)

There are a few actors that you may find hidden. They are not gone but we are strongly suggesting that people try to avoid using them in new projects because of the CPU limitations.

jhoepffner

Hello,

Concerned about subtitle work, I make a try with global values.

I have one suggestion, it would be good to have the possibility one actor where you can choose which value you enter and with value you input, instead of list who can be very long (I use sometime subtitle text with 120 entries).

I try to do it increasing the name, but is difficult to manage the entries.

I send my first try.

jacques

96cf38-sous-titres01.izz

mark

@crystalhorizon

Yes, use the Virtual Stage. It will run about a thousand times faster than the 3D Renderer because everything stays on the graphics card.

Best Wishes,

Mark

Unfenswinger

Congratulations Mark. It looks like a stunning update and the roadmap looks very intriguing with the significant hush hush new capabilities on the horizon!

Many thanks.

DusX

@jhopffner I suggest you break the list up into sub section with logical naming. One great thing about these globals is the way you can group them by name. It allows totally name spaced use in user actors, and let's you break up large lists. Another useful thing is you can use them to pass large sets of data between javascript actors via JSON.

DusX

@Marci I had found a bug were a single main() was called dozens of times per frame because I had 20+ inputs. Each time an input was change the main () was called and processed for this single updated value. The method worked well enough for simple scripts, bit would slow down isadora with complex scripts with many inputs. It now runs in a Controlled manner, allowing the inputs to be updated as expected by the patch before executing. My tests all show this to be running much faster and more reliably. If you had not noticed the problem I mention, you should not notice any difference. How ever moving forward this change will alow you to push harder.

mark

Dear @jhoepffner

I think your idea of being able to select from the group is a good one, and relatively easy implement. We'll add it to the list of requested features, and see if we can get that into v2.2 which will arrive by the end of December.

Best,

Mark

Marci

@dusx had definitely noticed it - figured it was by design so I'd been getting round it by setting a global var to store current time and last time, and if the difference wasn't at least a specified time gap then skip running the main loop. Glad it's been tamed!

DusX

@Marci
Perfect work around!

But yes, its much easier to to deal with now, and opens up more CPU time.

Armando

I saw your a little sad post on fb. You are dong a big piece with dawn and releasing 2.1. Don't even think how you can do it. Big fat round of applause to Mark and the amazing team. I want to stress that. Thanks!!!

Armando

And a second post to say: what in the world is the point list?Is it what I have been asking about? Like the Nodes object in max? Where do we connect it? Have absolutely no clue. Did I miss a new feat ?

mark

Dear Armando,

I can write you personally about the "perfect storm" of things that came together on that particular day – it was more than Izzy and v2.1.

But with regard to the Point List, all I can say is "Oops." I have a handful of plugins that are for my private artwork, and normally they are all automatically deleted when I build the installer. The Point List actor relates to one of those private plugins. It should have been deleted too. (There was another one noticed by @Nick above.)

I'll ensure it is deleted from the build and re--upload the installer.

Best Wishes,

Mark

jtoenjes

I tried to comment on the "Version 2.1 is available" announcement, but seems like comments aren't working there? Anyway, my suggestion going forward is to completely rewrite the manual section on Serial In data parsing. Although it is quite thorough, it is possibly the most confusing bit of manual reading I have ever done. I am having a REALLY hard time figuring this out. Thanks in advance, Mark. Otherwise I love v.2.1.

John

jhoepffner

I agree with the comment on serial manual… I now begin to be able to use it for Arduino reception and command but a rewrite would be very helpful.

But serial communication is not easy too…

mark

Dear @jtoenjes + @jhoepffner,

Yes, well, the problem with serial communications is that there is no standard at all. To be able to handle nearly anything, the interface is necessarily complex. That's really the first problem.

Take a look at [this serial protocol document](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAAahUKEwjs8P-nuvnIAhXMOz4KHXhTC-o&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.basecamelectronics.com%2Ffiles%2FSimpleBGC_2_4_Serial_Protocol_Specification.pdf&usg=AFQjCNH2bLDfYxH6PQFCFzj8ectmU_ibzQ) I found on the web. The parsing system is designed to allow you to work with something as complex as what is specified here. But even reading the document, for someone who is not a programmer, is pretty difficult.

Probably a set of clear examples for the most common situations – the primary one being receiving data from Arduino – would go a long way to solving this problem.

You could help us by perhaps sharing some examples of data streams you had a difficult time figuring out how to parse. If you have that information handy, that would be most helpful

In any case, @Primaldivine is working on a major update to the documentation now. I will see what we can do before v2.2 in late December.

Best Wishes,

Mark

(@DusX, could you ensure this isssue is recorded on our feature request list? Thanks)

jhoepffner

Mark,

I prepare a workshop in Paris with example in Arduino, Live, Processing and Unity. I am writing a manual in French but I will translate it in English for the other half of the world… :-)

– communication Isadora/Arduino though Serial, OSC and DMX

– communication Isadora/Live through soundflower and midi

– communication Isadora/processing through OSC and Syphon

– communication Isadora/Unity though OSC and Syphon

French version will be ready for november 15

English first translation december 15, earlier if I found english speaking help…

All the best,

jtoenjes

Yes, examples would be very helpful. Actually I was finally able to get what I wanted from the example that Jaques posted awhile ago in response to someone wanting to get input from 8 sensors into Isadora. So, some simple examples of common scenarios would go a long way to making things clear. Thanks!