This thread was sorta started in Bug Reports somehow... but none the less...

WE NEED A MATRIX VISUAL! If i even had an incling of how to start coding this i'd be all over it. Here's a recap of what i'm picturing...

You could have the streaming layers of 1's and 0's and symbols, darker layers int the back as in the screen saver type thing, and to make it active the layers could shift forward in on the z axis with the beat, the layers in front moving farther forward and being brighter...bouncing, overlapping. oh man.. DAMMIT all..why didn't i learn to code!



|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

Just to chime in here...

The Matrix screen isn't just 1's and 0's. It's random characters of letters, numbers, and Japanese symbols. If I recall correctly, some of them are even reversed left-to-right. There are some Windows screen savers based on The Matrix which would show you the kinds of characters it displays. There's a very specific, recognizable font that it uses and it'd be cool to get an approximation of this font for the Empeg version of the visual.

___________
Tony Fabris

It would also be cool if the characters in the visual are directly related to the MP3 bitstream. I.E. the bitstream would be dumped visually in the form of Matrix characters on the screen.

Mk2/40GB/Blue

I.E. the bitstream would be dumped visually in the form of Matrix characters on the screen.

Heh. "You get used to it. I don't even see the code. I just see Green Day, Pearl Jam, Britney Spears..."

___________
Tony Fabris

Ehr, okay ... hint ...

xlockmore at ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/tux/bagleyd/xlockmore ...

Matrix screensaver on board and since it is linux stuff the source can not be far away... Including the needed font and logic .

Well it is not a font as such but it is in the code ...

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

You should look closer at the actual matrix visualizations, and you'll see there is no z axis aspect to it. It is a stream of symbols flowing down, with an occasional bright "drip" trail representing something quite unusual. So my suggestion is to use the x axis to represent frequency, and have drips occur based on frequency and the speed of these drips determined by say bpm and the occurence of a drip affected by a peak in the frequency. That way it's visually correlated to the audio.

If a matrix is done to represent the mp3 bitstream then it won't be correlated to the audio and will not be as cool. imho.

Calvin

Yea,i realize there's no z stuff in the actual visual, just a picture i had in my head of how it would respond to the music, but now that i think about it the way you describe, that would be much cooler. Brighter drips corresponding to a large bass hit or high treble hit...niiiice. It would be nice however to have a visual with multi "layer" z bouncing as the tux visual does with one "layer". =] okay, who's gonna pull this off?! Prolux???? *wink wink*


|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

I would also like to see a matrix visualization. I like the idea of the bitstream determining the characters.

Although I don't care if it represents frequency, a matrix visualisation should represent the bitstream and not necessarily the frequency content. Just because its a visualisation doesn't mean it has to look like the music.

Alex Lear

Well, the I kind of agree, I mean the problem with it acting like a spectrum analyzer is that the basses are often far more active then the higher tones. If I understand correctly what some suggested this would mean the matrix visual would focus on one side of the display most. I would like it to be a little more evenly spread, perhaps more in the trend of the eventview visual which looks more balanced over the total display width.

But maybe the people at empeg can do both .

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

It depends on the kind of music you listen to. I think the rational behind the matrix visualization is that it is a simplified representation of another representation. The reality occuring in the sub-representation is filtered down into actions and events and these are then represented on the drip screen. It's semi-relevant here because of sub-representation on the empeg is a song, not the original song but a representation of the song. So the visualization should show a filtered down representation of the song. If the song is mostly bass, then it should be represented that way on the visualization because that is a characteristic of the music. So if you're listening to an orchestral track that is wide spectrum then it should be represented exactly. In the movie, presumedly you can look at the screen and see a "blond, brunette, redhead..." walking about because the screen shows a simplified representation of a representation. It shouldn't be normalized to show blonds, brunettes and redheads drips all over, just where they actually exist. And you shouldn't show a representation of the mp3 itself, because that would be nonsensical. You'd want to look at the drips and say "electric guitar, drum solo, vocals..."

Calvin

Calvin

Oh please, please please! This would be very cool!

Oh please, please please! This would be very cool!

It would be cool if this BBS had a "Hall of Fame" like Slashdot's. As well as "Longest Thread" and "Most Views" (and probably separate top-tens for "Longest Non-Tuner Thread" and "Most Non-Tuner Views") we could have "Longest Interval Between Two Consecutive Posts In A Thread".

Peter (who got a green front for his Mark 2 specifically in the hope that someone would write a Matrix visual)

in the hope that someone would write a Matrix visual

Someone?

Is there any hope of people being able to write visuals that plug into the player software? It seems like it *should* be possible, but I assume that everything is compiled into the one executable at this point? I mean, even those Sony decks let you upload videos to be played with the music :-)

Matthew

Maybe eventually. We've looked into it, but it's non-trivial, and the Rio Car is EOL, so the odds of getting allowed enough time by the powers-that-be are slim.

Hi Roger.

Well, the RioCentral isn't EOL'd, right? And the empeg car player and the player executable on the Central share a lot of code, irght? So wouldn't a plugin visuals API for the Central also work for the car player (with relatively little extra efford)?

cu,
sven

No. There's not much commonality in the visuals code. Besides, I can't see Marketing actually wanting to support 3rd party visuals on the Central.

dose the central accully have visuals?

Yep. Some pretty good ones too. Toby was quite excited by having all that screen space to work with.

The wonderful thing about not reading the date on a post you have just found using search is that you can bump a thread back up from oblivion. Welcome back to the light, Matrix Visual

The wonderful thing about not reading the date on a post you have just found using search is that you can bump a thread back up from oblivion

Word.


I've been here for a year or so, and I never saw this thread before...

Good find!

One quick note on a Matrix-style visual - I burned in a very nice grid pattern into a 17" Viewsonic CRT by running a Matrix screen (uh destroyer?) on it for a long, long time. (I know, I know...) This being said, if anyone does implement such a critter, please have it creep left-right, up-down so that we don't do the same to our irreplacable empegs.

-Zeke

Yeah, not much of a screen saver if it burns the screen instead, huh?

Tell me about it. I remembered reading somewhere that 'modern' CRT's don't burn in. RIGHT. Luckily the monitor was on a box I don't use much.

-Zeke

i used an old crt, back when i was in highschool and a dedicated box to run the matrix screen saver 24/7 and i never got a burn in, hrm.. i had it going pretty fast thou.

...i had it going pretty fast thou.

Just long streaks then huh:)
Oh and my thoughts on the Matrix vis is yes it's cool but being the empeg has such a short vertical height screen would it really look as good as it does on a tall monitor, I mean the characters would have to be pretty small.
Now I'm thinking, while watching Hijack flash the screen in NEG when I push a remote function, that some visuals look pretty good in NEG mode my wish would to be able to switch to NEG vis mode toggled if I like.
Just a thought.

BTW look at vis Timeshade if you squint it kinda looks like a Matrix vis in reverse.

My empeg "digital" animation that was never accepted (or denied) by RioCar for some reason... I drew this in MS Paint!

Hey, that's one I use on my boot screen now and have been for some time.

Hmm, just checked, and I think I see it. It's one of a few animated logos not rendering properly in the java applet the site uses. I need to get enough time one day to get Java up on the server so I can convert the .raw files to .gif for the previews, as that would be more reliable on both the server end, and the browser end.

I didn't want to approve or deny any of the uploads until I can get this sorted out. Anyone want to hire me as a full time geek? I could really use the free time :-)

Tom, I've met you. You are a full time geek.

I'm using this animation on my deck too, i've been using it for probally 6 months now. I love it, great work! MS Paint? really?

wow, thanks guys! Glad to see people are getting use out of it.

Yeah, I wrote a bunch of 1's and 0's in MS Paint and then copied and pasted them to fill up the 128x32 space randomly. Then I'd moved it down one "line" and randomly create the next top line until I slowly moved the empeg into place, saving each frame as I went.

I've found that with flash, you can creat really nice graphics, just save as a anime gif, and import into jemplode or that other program, and your done. The first graphic i created, i made by hand in photoshop. Then i started messing with flash, and found its alot easier to do all the frames without drawing them one by one.

HTH

Wow that took some time and patience.

Can you tell I have a lot of spare time at work? hehe