Isadora 3 - Status Report from Mark

Bill Cottman

Thank you. 🏋🏾‍♂️

Clement

Hi everyone,

The new features sound good !

Will V3 be compatible with versions of Mac OS X older than Mojave ?

We can see on the table screenshot that tests were made on Mac OS 10.11, did you test 10.9 as well ? Do you recommand to leave this OS and which one is better according to you (for a MacBook Pro Late 2013) ?

Thanks, all the best.

Clement

Woland

@clement

Upon release, Isadora 3 or later will be required for Isadora users working on MacOSX10.14.x (Mojave), but Isadora 3 will also function on MacOSX 10.12.x (Sierra) and MacOSX 10.13.x (High Sierra).

Please see this thread, which is primarily about Isadora 2 not being compatible with Mojave, but also contains the information I stated above.

Isadora 3 is not being tested on and is not designed for MacOSX 10.9.x, nor is MacOSX 10.9.x officially supported for Isadora 2.

mrtz

Dear Mark,

Some days later: thanks for your helping words after the show! I am now back in Berlin and did some comparison with activity monitor. The four Full HD 1920x1080 ProRes 422LT movies are using much much more CPU power (like 120% vs 50% CPU processing percentage) than HAP, HAP Q and even 264 encoded movies. There is a process called ”VTDecoderXPC Service” that takes a lot of CPU processing percentage, that is not shown at all when using HAP or 264. So for now I think I will use HAP Q and HAP.

With regards to the $1500 PC you mentioned ”that leaves Apple in the dust”: Can you please tell us which brand and model it is? If it is a Mini PC, is there one capable of 4 full hd outputs for projectors and a 5th one for a controlling screen?

And one final question: I used a Radeon Vega 56 in a Sonnet 650 eGPU for the show, the four outputs worked but I had the impression that the card was not faster than my internal Macbook Pros Radeon 560X at all, maybe even a bit slower.

However, I remember you said that Isadora cannot use the eGPUs additional power at the moment. But then I thought: it is not that the eGPU did not work at all, as the four outputs worked, it´s more that it just was not as fast as I had expected. Will Isadora 3 be able to take more advantage of an eGPU?

Thanks,

Moritz

bonemap

Hi

I too am going to ask if we can get some indication of what pc model and configuration is being eluded to?

Best Wishes

Bonemap

davidcoll

Super exciting! If I could just draw your attention to another possible product that could be good to support among Kinect, Orbbec, and realsense eventually: https://lightform.com/how-it-w...

bonemap

@davidcoll

Isadora May be able to do this out-of-the box IF we get a point cloud mesh integration along with the new depth sensor implementation. It would certainly be a game changer for Isadora users interested in this kind of work.

Best Wishes

Bonemap

DusX

@davidcoll said:

another possible product

The lightform camera is a independent computer, with supporting software for setup/configuration. It does not work in the same manner as these other cameras. It is unknown at this time if Isadora would be able to receive the depth image from these self contained systems.

NickBottom

This is fantastic news. All great new features.

Edalia

This all sounds fantastic! Keep up the good work and I look forward to playing around with it all when it's done.

Unfenswinger

@mrtz said:

Dear Mark,

With regards to the $1500 PC you mentioned ”that leaves Apple in the dust”: Can you please tell us which brand and model it is? If it is a Mini PC, is there one capable of 4 full hd outputs for projectors and a 5th one for a controlling screen?
And one final question: I used a Radeon Vega 56 in a Sonnet 650 eGPU for the show, the four outputs worked but I had the impression that the card was not faster than my internal Macbook Pros Radeon 560X at all, maybe even a bit slower.
However, I remember you said that Isadora cannot use the eGPUs additional power at the moment. But then I thought: it is not that the eGPU did not work at all, as the four outputs worked, it´s more that it just was not as fast as I had expected. Will Isadora 3 be able to take more advantage of an eGPU?
Thanks,
Moritz

You have a GPU you know does 4 outputs and to get your 4+1 make sure the CPU you buy has an integrated GPU as you could then get your +1 output from the motherboard video output. The other option is to run 2x GPUs the second could be a really inexpensive one solely for the control screen.

eGPUs are a bit of a waste of time as the TB3 bus speed is the limiting factor compared to a GPU attached to an internal 16x PCIe bus obviously if you are driving 4 screens at a decent frame rate that's a fair amount of bandwidth required plus overhead. You have to be careful too as these eGPU TB3 ports share the same PCIe bus, e.g. the new Mac mini has 4x TB3 ports but I'm told they all share the same 4x PCIe bus which makes a mockery of actually having 4 ports.

Armando

Massive work mark. I Can't wait to test it with my massive new config. I9 pc with Blackmagic Decklin 4k extreme 12g!!

Shigezo

These all new features are my dream!

I can see a lot of possibilities now, good job team!

DBO

@mark

It' look grate. I'm impatient to try.

Whishing you good job to achiueve this release.

Best rgard

Oliver

timeg

Thanks Mark. This is so exciting. there are features here we briefly talked about years ago now coming to fruition. I'm already planning my own projects but am also going to set up an immersion/interactivity research lab here in Shanghai based around this. The new pricing structure should also help broaden this into a full blown course. BRAVO!!

kurt

reading depth map images from Kinect 1, Kinect 2, Orbbec Astra, and Intel Realsense cameras which can be paired with the new NiTE Body Tracking actor

Exciting. @Mark, how did you get around NiTE's licensing restrictions, which prohibit using it with non-Primesense devices and prohibit redistributing it?

mark

@kurt said:

Exciting. @Mark, how did you get around NiTE's licensing restrictions, which prohibit using it with non-Primesense devices and prohibit redistributing it?

Uh, well, I guess I wasn't aware of that particular restriction. From that license agreement:

You shall not (and shall not permit third parties to): (a) integrate the NITE with any products other than the Authorized Hardware; (b) distribute the NITE in any manner; (c) use or make available the NITE pursuant to an open source license; (d) modify the NITE;

There are other drivers out there (libfreenect2) that allow you to use NITE with Kinect 2, which is not a Prime Sense device, which is in violation of clause (a).

Obviously Processing, NI Mate and others are distributing the library, which is in direct violation of the clause (b)

I would guess that this github is in violation of clause (d) because it includes NITE.

In other words, there Prime Sense (which was bought up by Apple) don't seem to be enforcing this or going after people. They don't even have a website anymore (the URL www.openni.org reroutes to Apple.) But, now that I'm aware of this, we may simply have to ask people to install NITE themselves if they wish to use that part of the system.

We will investigate further.

Best Wishes,
Mark

bonemap

@kurt said:

how did you get around NiTE's licensing restrictions, which prohibit using it with non-Primesense devices and prohibit redistributing it

How can this be considered evidence of a current license? It appears to be linked to a the Internet Archive's capture of a discontinued Openni website dating from 2014. There appears to be no directly accessible current/active reference to the functioning Openni.org enterprise or the licensing agreement that is referenced in the archive.

It appears a bit harsh to sign up to this form and drop what appears to be a redundant licensing clause without pointing to current information or specifications.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

best wishes

bonemap

kurt

That's the most up-to-date NiTE licensing information available, since Apple took down the website.

I just don't want to see TroikaTronix sued by Apple's less-than-magnanimous legal team — that would be bad for all of us.

mark

@bonemap said:

It appears a bit harsh to sign up to this form and drop what appears to be a redundant licensing clause without pointing to current information or specifications.

Well, I appreciate knowing this actually. We have to take care with these things. I mean, it super easy to install NiTE on MacOS using Homebrew, and just a tiny bit more tricky on Windows (though it could probably be handled by a script.) If we force the users to install it then I think we're safe. (Homebrew, by the way is another indication about this: https://github.com/totakke/hom...)

Still, I'll write on the github for the Processing plugin I mentioned above and see what they say.

Best Wishes,
Mark