XBox has it's own full blown VLM!

[cyric100]

It's MY VLM and I'll do what I want to!

Quite right too

More worryingly, the statement brought to mind the song "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to". Disturbing.

[wanders off to cry about not being near enough to witness any VLM-3 effects]

[Fuseball]

(I have a three hundred pound box which gives me a reasonable facsimile of 99% of all guitar tones I've ever heard, most of the remainder being the creation of Kevin Shields

That Kevin Shields effect is done with reverse gated reverb and a swarm of distortion boxes if I recall.

Fascinating and valid points in your posting, Acronym. What I love about playing with VLM (esp. VLM-2 at Retrovisions) is that it is playing with the texture of light, much as playing with the texture of sound, rather than the melodic structure of a song, is what fascinates me about music.

VLM-3 reminded me, when I briefly played with it at the Warp Rave, of the joy of twiddling the knobs of analogue synths and pulling the light/sound into strange new shapes.

I eagerly await the day that aesthetic choices are as much a part of game/software design as they are a part of music. Perhaps Unity will be the first glitch game.

[Yak]

These are the same people who'd slam a painting by van Gogh because they can see the brushstrokes in the paint. Or comment on the visibility of the pixel. Or the lack thereof.

"This is a crap apple. The atoms are the wrong shape."

\
(:-) - Yak
/

[Snakey]

"This is a crap apple. The atoms are the wrong shape."

You put it SO much better than anybody else ever could.

Goat... I remember the bliss of 320x200, when I could look at the screen really closely to determine just how a particular graphic style was achieved...

Yup. IMO 320x240 is all you really *need* for games on a TV. "Standard" TVs don't go much higher than that anyway. 640x480 is slightly overkill, anymore than that is plain crazy! But try telling that to the kids of today.... mumble mumble...

[Yak]

However, this is rapidly changing: first with the 'glitch' idea, of minimalist dance music where the weird effects caused by the breakdown of the algorithms in these devices were not suppressed, but rather exploited as the centre of the music - see Pan Sonic, Autechre, the Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, and so forth and so on - which then crossed right into the mainstream with Radiohead's "Kid A" (the title track being almost pure glitch). You can also find traces of the same aesthetic, shamelessly, in R'n'B and mainstream American pop - rhythms and textures totally unattainable without modern digital effects.

Glitches can be cool. There is a whole class of effects in VLM-2 which comprise of blobby, almost liquid-style effects that ooze around as the generator pattern underneath moves. Those effects actually come from "overdriving" the colour scaling - the hardware doesn't clamp at the maximum colour value and instead wraps around to a different colour value, but does so in such a way as to accidentally produce these rounded, liquid-like edges, antialiased too. And in VLM-3 there are overdriven feedback effects that can be made to look like pure video white noise - but through which you can cause structure and smoothness to "break through"... I love experimenting round the edges of the operational parameters of a machine and seeing what happens if you push in just the right places. And then exploiting any good weirdness that happens to fall out .

\
(:-) - Yak
/

[djp]

Glitches can be cool. There is a whole class of effects in VLM-2 which comprise of blobby, almost liquid-style effects that ooze around as the generator pattern underneath moves. Those effects actually come from "overdriving" the colour scaling - the hardware doesn't clamp at the maximum colour value and instead wraps around to a different colour value, but does so in such a way as to accidentally produce these rounded, liquid-like edges, antialiased too. And in VLM-3 there are overdriven feedback effects that can be made to look like pure video white noise - but through which you can cause structure and smoothness to "break through"... I love experimenting round the edges of the operational parameters of a machine and seeing what happens if you push in just the right places. And then exploiting any good weirdness that happens to fall out .

Hmm...

I get the feeling that this chap, might just produce the VLM to end all VLMs' one day, if he hasn't already.

[ophion]

Hmm...

I get the feeling that this chap, might just produce the VLM to end all VLMs' one day, if he hasn't already.

I'd have to agree with that. I have tried Cthugha, Winamp/XMMS plug-ins, etc. I hate all of them. Jeff's are the only ones with consistently good style and responsiveness. Too bad looking at VLM-2 made me sick. I mean, the whole point of the thing is looking at it. I have no trouble with motion sickness with first-person games, etc., only with that strange, blurry-chunky Nuon stuff. It made my wife sick too. And our guests. Anyway, the point was that no one else seems to really have a handle on light synths.

Actually, if my memory is not failing, there was a fairly cool Amiga one with custom hardware available only as an expensive kit (meant as DJ gear). Or maybe it used a Falcon; hmm.

[shobet_mawr]

Glitches can be cool. There is a whole class of effects in VLM-2 which comprise of blobby, almost liquid-style effects that ooze around as the generator pattern underneath moves. Those effects actually come from "overdriving" the colour scaling - the hardware doesn't clamp at the maximum colour value and instead wraps around to a different colour value, but does so in such a way as to accidentally produce these rounded, liquid-like edges, antialiased too. And in VLM-3 there are overdriven feedback effects that can be made to look like pure video white noise - but through which you can cause structure and smoothness to "break through"... I love experimenting round the edges of the operational parameters of a machine and seeing what happens if you push in just the right places. And then exploiting any good weirdness that happens to fall out .

Hmm...

I get the feeling that this chap, might just produce the VLM to end all VLMs' one day, if he hasn't already.

[polyhex]

VLM-3 reminded me, when I briefly played with it at the Warp Rave, of the joy of twiddling the knobs of analogue synths and pulling the light/sound into strange new shapes.

This reminds of a short mpeg video I saw from MIT a couple of years ago, can't find it again now . It was a basic light synth that presented parts of the music and the actual instrument playing it as an image/effet type .. e.g there was this 303 type bass line represented as this amoeba shaped shaded blob, the user was clicking on it stretching it and throwing it about causing the tuning and filter cut off to change...

Looked very interesting..... mmmm

[aureole]

Gosh, in one of the first pieces of coding I can remember doing at school I wrote this function on the Archimedes that drew a line between two points with sperate trajectories. Rather than filling solidly the area they subtended, a flaw in the anti-aliasing made these beautiful fractal-like patterns in the trails. We pus some limited controls on the points and then spent ages with each of us controlling them. I'd forgotten all about that untils this thread. Spooky.

I bought a N504 solely for t3K and VLM2 (and 'cos I didn't have a DVD player too I guess). Neither has, in any way, remotely disappointed. At all.

For the record, everyone I've sat and played the VLM2 - techie and non-techie - has had a lot of fun. Especially :



I can't imagine wy you'd think it's chunky or in any way bad. I'm sure theres' still effects in there I have yet to exploit and explore...

VLM3 is actually a quantum leap again in quality and innovation of effects and also, in the degree of interactivity and control. And that's being said from a perspective of about three months ago. It's deinately going to be pretty and fun and enough to justify my impeding GameCube purchase, regardless of what the game attached is like (that's meant in a good way, btw). [/img]

[Stuart B]

Hello! I'm new!


Have to confess I'm a VLM virgin, not having had a jag or nuon player to faff about with.

I have been known to faff about with lightshow programs tho, download Cthugha yonks ago. However, if anyone wants colourful responsive weirdness (with fractals thrown in every so often too!) I can heartily recommend MilkDrop, as a winamp plugin I think it's the business (tho with winamp 3 you need to use the classic vis plugin to get it working)

Like I said though, I'm a VLM virgin

[tryptamine]

[/img]

They're heeere...

[Dave]

You framerate whores are so funny.

All you had to do on your copy of T3K was turn off the background effect - the game rocked along at way beyond 30fps once you did that... poor dumb bastards.

You’re right about that. I still haven’t put enough time into T3K as I did with T2K. It takes a bit longer to get into just because it is a bit more difficult than T2K is. None the less, I love the game. The frame rate is near the low end of my tolerable spectrum (My range is from about 24fps – 60fps. If a game can go beyond that, I’m delighted!), but it doesn’t keep me from not wanting to play the game. I don’t think Jeff could have pushed the Nuon any harder than he did with that game. God, I don’t even know how much time I blew playing T2K. My poor Jaguar controller…

And Dave, you've got a serious case of Trollishness going on. Slam the VLM-2 in Yak's house?

DTJ, let me explain something. VLM on the Jaguar CD blew my socks off. I had never seen anything like that before in my life. In fact, half of the time I used it, I was watching the VLM. The other half of the time I was playing Battle Morph . VLM was as original to me as when people first saw something like Pong when it was initially released. Very cool shit, and something that I wanted to see more of.

After VLM, I found out about Geiss, and eventually Milkdrop (both by Ryan Geiss). They were of a different style than VLM, but very neat. They incorporated more polygons into them than the original VLM did, and had some original effects. What these two light-synths did to blow my socks off was that they could run at a fluid frame rate at around 85FPS on my machines, and at a high resolution (1024x768). Everything was SO much more fluid and crisp than VLM. Considering the advancement in technology between releases, that was pretty much a given.

I didn't get to experience VLM2 until just last May. I purchased a Samsung DVD-N501 (which I LOVE), and popped in my copy of T3K that I had purchased almost six months earlier. I was a tad afraid that I might not be able to get a copy when I did decide to go and get a Nuon.

Any who, back to VLM2. It was neat and all, but it didn't blow my socks off as much as VLM did. To me, it was very much like the original VLM with better beat detection, but it simply looked much more blurry to me. With Geiss and Milkdrop, it was like I was watching a DVD. Now, I was back to VHS. This difference in picture quality really irked me.

Now, don't go out and start saying stuff like resolution doesn't make a difference. IT DOES! People have been buying higher-resolution computer monitors and televisions for years now. People spend hundred's of dollars on high-end Monster Cable for superior picture and sound quality. As I already pointed out, people buy DVD’s over VHS tapes today due to crisper picture quality. My Xbox is hooked up to my 27" JVC TV with $100 Component Monster Cables. I've never seen such a good picture on a television before! RCA-Cables have a much fuzzier look than the Component Cables do. You get more of the small, distant details with the high end cables when compared to the low-end ones.

My point is, resolutions do matter to people, and they matter a lot. This is all part of personal preference, and I can't help it if some people (a lot of them actually) have different tastes than you DTJ.

I'm only talking about this on a 27" television or on a computer monitor since these are the two main means from which I have experienced light-synths from. Something like a large projection screen is an entirely different story. Projection screens tend to be much larger, and less detailed. You’re overwhelmed by the size of the image rather than with the detail of the image. It's like comparing fireworks on television with fireworks in person. They’re both two totally different experiences.

No offence to Jeff or anything, but I could really care less about the interactivity in it. I had more fun watching it than playing with it. I liked being able to program your own effects in the original VLM, but I mainly just watched it rather than tinker with it. I'm sure that Unity will float my boat more when it comes to interactivity with music. Rez, which really isn't too deep interactive-music wise, really made me smile. Even if Unity was just a clone of Rez, I'd be delighted. That game blew me away. I can only imagine what Unity will be like.

I don’t hate VLM2. It’s very neat and all, but I like VLM better, and I like Geiss/Milkdrop better.

VLM-2 rocks; just because your imagination lets you down routinely doesn't mean you have be such an asswipe.

Just because someone has a different opinion than you DTJ doesn't mean that you should go around calling them babyish names like "asswipe." Didn't you learn this in pre-school?

[Elizian]

Hello! I'm new!
Have to confess I'm a VLM virgin ...

Welcome, Stuart B, the the fluffiest forum in town

[mode=Beavis & Butthead] *snicker* He said virgin *snicker* [/mode]

[Dr. M]

Welcome to the fluffiest forum on the Internet

Time for bed (an early night tonight!)