(disclaimer) I realize that this is entirely unoriginal and will probably generate lots of pointless board traffic, but I'm bored and at work... (/disclaimer)

What are everyone's favorite visuals? I was just wondering 'cause there's a whole ton on there, and I find myself sticking to just 2 or 3 of them. Specifically-

1. marquesas (the mirrored oscillascope-like thing)
2. ShapeScape
3. Analog VU (although it'd be nice if the needles movement was less spastic)

On a somewhat related note, props to the empeg guys for synching up the visuals so well with the music. Often when I use Winamp, the visuals seem like they're not quite on with music, and this is defintely not a problem with the empeg.

-Adam

Edited by omarkhayyam on 06/08/01 05:54 PM.

Funnelweb is really fascinating if you give it a chance. It does lots of different interesting things, but you have to leave it up for a while in order to see all the different random things it does.

However, I do tend to leave my Empeg on Marquesas a lot. I think it's a stylistic thing- the Marquesas images match the shape of the faceplate nicely.

___________
Tony Fabris

Hi.

Hmm, I wanted to make a poll out of it, but that one only allows for one selection and one vote per person. Oh well, I will create a poll on my website and announce it here as soon as it is available.

cu,
sven

proud MkII owner (12GB blue/green/smoked, #080000113)

Sven-

Sweet, that'll be much better than my solution of just asking people to write in on the bbs .

-Adam

"It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care..."
-office space

I've always thought that the Marquesas looked like how the Simpsons characters mouths move when they talk... I dunno, maybe it's just me

Dave Clark
Austin, Texas
12g Blue MK2
S/N was 80000329 -> now 90000970

Funny you should say that. I've always thought it looked like a mouth, too, and at a LAN party once, someone complained about that "thing that was making faces at them".

I have had a related idea for a visual that could perhaps be implemented as a WinAmp plug-in, or maybe even as an Empeg visual (are you reading, Toby?)...

It harks back to my childhood, when a local PBS station had some sort of classical music concert programming. I don't remember the program's name. But I remember that durnig the end credits, they would have the faces of two mimes on the screen. They would play a classical recording, and these mimes would "mouth" the sounds of the orchestra, each one taking a group of instruments. For instance, one would mouth the "pom pom pom" of the basses, and the other would mouth the high melody parts. It's kind of hard to describe, but it was hilarious to watch in a cool/creepy sort of way.

I figured you could do that pretty easily in software, with beat detection and such. Split up the frequency bands into 2-4 "mouths", create a few bitmaps representing the frames of animation, and you're set.

___________
Tony Fabris

About 90% of the time I have mine on SpectraKit128. Funnel web is interesting but I have found that I can't have it on StarDust when I am driving. Far too distracting.

Greg

Well... It largely depends on my mood at the time but I suppose my faves are:
Scope, Shapescape, Marquesas, Funnelweb, and Spectrometer32-128 (is this too many??). This doesn't include those that just make me give out a little giggle as soon as I see them but tend not to leave them on.

A visual I'd really like to see, and one i'm surprised isn't in the car player already (seeing as Hugo et al obviously come from an electronics background and having played with oscilloscopes i'm sure) is a Lissajous visual with the Left channel controlling the x and the Right channel controlling the y. I used to do this when I was a teenager playing with my old valve oscilloscopes. Kept me quiet for hours . Did I read once upon a time on this bbs that there was going to be a visuals API so that third parties could write their own? That would be nice (as long as it was easy ).

Anyway they're my favourites.

beaker
32 gig (various colours)

Well, probably just you - to me it looks like mirrored smoothed spectrogram

I agree with Tony - it does fit nicely into the overall shape of the unit, and corresponds to the sound content in obvious way.

What I would like to see is voiceprint-like spectrogram (like the one in WinAmp default visualization library). Due to display constraints, it would probably look more like old 'waterfall' sonar displays used in submarines: vertical axis would be time (say, 10-15 pixels per second, for 2-3 seconds range), horizontal frequency (say, 6 pixels per octave, two channels). Toby?

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Without a doubt Funnelweb
then InfoTex OTT
last but not least Anna Vu
for 3 but looking forward to more in future.

#695 empeg-car Mk2/Green/Amber/Neon Red/Clear/Smoke-12Gig needs tuner,2.x, VR

"No buyers regret"

Sure, I'll bite. Car: Anna Vu (which seems to model real VU meters quite well) Home: FunnelWeb FunnelWeb is very easy to get sucked into. Therefore FunnelWeb is BAD in the car. I'll occasionally indulge in one of the Oscilloscope variants, especially when I'm demoing the unit to someone.

-Zandr
Mk.I #0150 10GB
RioCar #010101243 10GB (96GB here I come...)

Ok Alpha testers, are there visuals BETTER than funnel web in 2.0?

Murray 06000047
I don't think, therefore I am not.

Ok Alpha testers, are there visuals BETTER than funnel web in 2.0?

I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

___________
Tony Fabris

I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

...and then we'd have to kill him.

Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Go on Tony, tell us...

...think about it, what can they do? It's poor business practice to let alpha testers kill your entire customer base... at least I hope it's poor business practice!

Geoff
---- -------
Got one of the first Mark 2 empegs...

c'mon Tony, you only have to say yes or no. We're going to find out sooner or later.

Murray 06000047
I don't think, therefore I am not.

Surely whether there's a better visual is subjective anyway?

What I can say is that Toby's done a whole bunch of work to make all of the visuals look better in v2.0, as anyone who turned up to the Amersfoordt owner's meet could tell you. And they're not (all) under NDA...


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Greetings!

Now that sounded like approval for Tony to give a little more detail. I know in previous threads that a heartbeat visual was mentioned.

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (96GB Smoke)

[Note: IANAL]

Not really. Tony is under NDA. He can probably tell you about things that we've already disclosed publicly.

But that's complicated by the fact that he doesn't necessarily know what we've not disclosed.

Better for someone who's not under NDA, but was at one of the meets to answer the question.

But in answer to your question, there is a "Casualty" visual.


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

There's the 2.0 version of Funnelweb for a start

Rob

OK, to simplify this, anyone can talk about any visuals that were shown at Amersfoort and/or Woodside, whether they're under NDA or not.

Rob

Oh, I knew I could probably talk about the ones that were shown at Woodside. I was just trying to be funny.

Here's what I'll say about the visuals:

There are some new ones, and the existing ones have had a few enhancement tweaks. Whether or not any of the new ones are "better" than Funnelweb is a subjective call. Funnelweb is interesting because it keeps changing and doing different things. The new 2.0 visuals are more straightforward and don't have that constantly-changing kind of behavior. I know that a couple of the new ones are kind of hypnotic. Toby has done some interesting work with applying the "ghost-trail" effect on certain existing visuals, too.

___________
Tony Fabris

For as far as I can remember from Amersfoort:

1 - Heartbeat
2 - Infotex Rotating
3 - Tux in his car
4 - Clock
5 - Show/hide info line (not really a visual, but an effect)

Guess I should have paid more attention then, but hey, it was at the first meet the visuals were actually shown more thoroughly. At the second meet it was all about the tuner and other nice things...

Oh yeah, changed 'Toilet floor' to 'Lavatory floor'. Checkerboard instead?

Edwin de Vaan
mk2 rev.7 # 080000263 (queue 1232) 6+20Gb blue/red

Hello everyone,

The 2.0 visuals are mostly enhancements to the existing set, although there are a couple of new ones.

I appreciate your feedback about favourite visuals, and your ideas for new visuals - Please keep it coming. I'm hoping that 2.0 will allow favourite visuals to be specified and therefore more easily accessed as the number of visuals keeps growing.

Regarding 'Lavatory floor' -> The name has already been changed once because the word 'Toilet' could apparently be offensive to certain Americans. The word 'Lavatory' still brings across the concept of being so drunk that the toilet floor is swaying from side to side as you try to make it to the bog to vomit.
Checkerboard is just boring, and implies some relation (at least in American) to the game of chess, whereas the board does not have enough squares.

Toby.

Would the word "khazi" be suitably unoffensive to Americans?

Peter

I can't believe you're pandering to us lousy Americans and changing it to lavatory floor. sheesh. I want to start a petition to leave it "toilet floor"!!! heh


|| loren.cox ||

It could be worse -- we might have changed it to bathroom floor, but we weren't going to pander to US sensibilities to quite that extent.

In the UK, a bathroom is simply a room with a bath in it, rather than a euphemism .



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Seeing as people are opening up about visuals, how easy will it be to create your own, which I believe is a function of 2.0?

I'm sure it's been covered before but what would be great would be the running demos from the old arcade machines like Battlezone, Asteroids, Space invaders. No doubt there is some kind of copyright issue on those.

___________________________

Steve - 18GB Mk II Sssmokey

how easy will it be to create your own, which I believe is a function of 2.0?

A plug-in architecture is something they are considering for the future. However, to my knowledge, such a feature will not be present in 2.0

___________
Tony Fabris

In reply to:

---

A plug-in architecture is something they are considering for the future. However, to my knowledge, such a feature will not be present in 2.0

---

Well, I'll go the foot of our stairs! I was convinced that I had read somewhere on the board that this would be a feature, but I've just done a quick search and turned up nothing. Ooops, almost started a rumour there

___________________________

Steve - 18GB Mk II Sssmokey

They have talked about it being a possibility in a future release, but I don't think they promised it for The Software Formerly Known As 1.1.

___________
Tony Fabris

So I won't be seeing any Atari classics on there for a while then

___________________________

Steve - 18GB Mk II Sssmokey

In reply to:

---

Well, I'll go the foot of our stairs! I was convinced that I had read somewhere on the board that this would be a feature, but I've just done a quick search and turned up nothing. Ooops, almost started a rumour there

---

I thought that too. That's why I mentioned it in my post earlier in this thread,. thinking that someone with more knowledge about the features of 2.0 could add their comments

beaker
32 gig (various colours)

Ok Alpha testers, are there visuals BETTER than funnel web in 2.0?

I'll tell you, and I won't even kill you. Maybe just rough you up a bit...

There are a lot more visuals in 1.1/2.0. And the re-do of Hula Hoops is incredible.

tanstaaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Well, since NDA isn't an issue, I'd *like* to offer a definitive opinion, but I just can't decide between the new Tommy Lee/Pam and the updated Tonya Harding.

Jim

As a possible request some kinda posi/nega maybe with info tex to the beat or not or how about individual pixels moving eventually to form the letters across the screen. Pixels in a fireworks type visual?
Toilet floor is fine with me as a name and another great visual, hell I like most all of them though.

#695 empeg-car Mk2/Green/Amber/Neon Red/Clear/Smoke-12Gig needs tuner,2.x, VR

"No buyers regret"

Adam wrote: Adam> What are everyone's favorite visuals? I was just wondering 'cause Adam> there's a whole ton on there, and I find myself sticking to just 2 or Adam> 3 of them. Specifically- Adam> 1. marquesas (the mirrored oscilloscope-like thing) Adam> 2. ShapeScape Adam> 3. Analog VU (although it'd be nice if the needles' movement was Adam> less spastic) I like Ana Vu just the way it is :-). I think it's cool to have Vu-meters in the car; I don't know anyone else who does (other than the good folks here, of course). My favourite visual here at work is the "Blur Scope" for XMMS: the most current trace appears brightly, and the half-dozen or so previous traces fade away underneath.

Roger wrote:

> In the UK, a bathroom is simply a room with a bath in it, rather than a euphemism.

And you think "lavatory" isn't a euphemism? My Latin is hardly existant, but even to me that sounds suspiciously like "washroom" ;-).