Who sebescudie, joreg
When Tue, Mar 3rd 2020 - 19:00 until Thu, Mar 5th 2020 - 21:00
Where SUPERBIEN, 14 rue Crespin du Gast, (M Ménilmontant - Rue Saint Maur), Paris, France

D'accord Paris,

while I'm in town for a vvvv meetup on March 1st and a presentation at Ircam on March 6th, I thought we could fit in some workshops. So together with local hero sebescudie of SUPERBIEN we'll run two workshops. Here is for you to choose:

Getting started with the all-new vvvv gamma

Are you a creative coder, interaction designer, media artist, maker or scientist and want to add a new tool to your toolbox? Are you afraid of coding and want to try visual programming instead? Have you heard of vvvv before but never found the time to get started? Or are you just lazy and want to get your things done more efficiently? This workshop is for you!

vvvv is a visual programming environment that allows you to realize ideas involving things like 2d/3d animation, computer vision, MIDI, OSC, DMX, Kinect, Leap,... quickly without the need to write any code. But if you want, you can also write C# code for it and use any .NET library with it!

In this 3 hour hands-on workshop we'll give you an idea of how it feels to work with vvvv. You'll learn the fundamentals that you need to be able to follow further workshops or take the next steps on your own.

vvvv gamma for vvvv beta users

If you're a user of vvvv beta and want to up your game by learning about VL and moving on to vvvv gamma, this workshop is for you! Here we'll assume you're familiar with the terms of vvvv and know how to handle a 3 button mouse.

We'll take you by the hand and try to convince you that VL and vvvv gamma are your best friends moving forward. You'll learn about the basics and benefits of using an object-oriented approach to solve certain problems and get an overview of all the improvements vvvv gamma offers over what you're used to with vvvv beta.

Oui oui, hope to see some of you there. And please spread the word to anyone who could be interested in this!

Previously on vvvv: vvvvhat happened in December 2019

Meanwhile,

work continues as per the usual on our quest to release a smooth vvvv gamma 2020.1 within Q1. Previews are coming out about once a week now. Most recently we introduced another improvement for help patches.

We have a progress report on VL.Xenko out and in parallel, we're also working on a ContributionManager for vvvv beta, which is ready for a test-drive now.

Into numerology? You may be interested in last year's numbers and figures.

And if you're up for meeting your fellow patchers in real-life, make sure not to miss our upcoming intro workshops, meetups and patching circles in Berlin. Here is the stream of our most recent meetup where we heard news from ur-patcher sunep.

Contributions

A new one:

• Gamma Launcher by sebescudie

An update:

• VVVV.Audio by tonfilm

And there's been some action in the work-in-progress section on the forum:

• VL.Devices.uEye
• VL.Devices.Kinect
• VL.Skiad3d
• Drag'n'Drop Stuff on a Renderer

Gallery

And also make sure to check out this little gem by Juan Hurle: Fractal Armor

Jobs

Some more on dasauge.de

That was it for January. Anything to add? Please do so in the comments!

Moments later,...

...we're announcing the immediate availability of the vvvv gamma 2019.2 series of previews, finally including one of the more anticipated features in vvvv history: Executable Export.

This means we are now in the final stage of the preview leading up to a proper initial release after the waves introduced by the new features in this series have been smoothed out.

What's new compared to the vvvv beta series

Tutorials and HowTos

A growing number of video tutorials is available on youtube.

Pricing

We've announced the pricing model of vvvv gamma in a separate post. Until further notice, the previews of vvvv gamma are free of charge but due to its preview-nature we don't recommend using it in commercial scenarios yet.

Download

Here you go: vvvv gamma 2019.2 preview 236

Changelog:

Upcoming

236 18 02 20

• added ShowOrigin setting
• More type inference fixes
• Fixed primitive types not having any super types like IComparable (was reported in chat by sebl)
• Fixed type constraints on higher order region with one single patch not properly generated should the name of the inner patch have changed
• Fixed "auto connect to signature" of patches like CreateDefault which have a fixed set of pins
• Fixed output pin groups of type Dictionary<string, obj> not working anymore when pin on application side was annotated
• Fixed compiler crash when having a generic type annotation in a patch
• Fixed CLR array types not being mapped to type symbols
• Removed Spread.Pin/Unpin - same functionality is available through much safer TryGetMemory/Pin -> MemoryHandle.Dispose path
• Fixed pixel format being swapped from R8G8B8 to B8G8R8A by SKImage.FromImage node
• Fixed null pointer when trying to navigate into patches of completely broken documents
• Fixed higher order regions not working when definition added an inner pin
• Added a few convenience nodes for resource providers useful when opening and polling devices. Even though not yet released they already look promising for devices like Kinect or Astra.
• Fixed minimal changes on solution made by compiler getting discarded (pin order somtimes not updating on application side)
• Fixed pin group builder (ModifyPinGroup) changing the model when it shouldn't
• Fixed repeat loop not working on inputs of type T where T : IReadOnlyList

211 07 02 20

• Don't use BOM in UTF8Encoding
• Backend generates new lines on its own without having to rely on super heavy NormalizeWhitespace function. This should get rid of very long compile times when traversing deeper into a library. Debugging the generated C# code with Visual Studio will only work properly when running with -debug and -nocache flags
• improved type unification cleverness and stability
• Helpbrowser: chat language buttons added
• AppExporter "Export" button gives immediate feeedback

0193 31 01 20

• fixed pin-reordering in signatures as reported here: https://discourse.vvvv.org/t/2019-2-0081-pin-reordering-buggy-behavior/18132
• Removed private flags between our package dependencies as it caused msbuild to skip copying certain assemblies coming from VL.CoreLib as well as making our packages smaller.
• Fixed parts of patches being grayed out and when traversing inside becoming all good - compiler was missing one iteration in recursive blobs -https://discourse.vvvv.org/t/lazy-type-inference/18066
• improved support for helppatches
• Reworked error handling of CreateDefault and RegisterServices operations
• Extended the general renaming code path to handle all cases and removed obsolete rename commands
• The Micorsoft Build Tools 2019 are now optional. If not installed the Export menu entry will be disabled
• Removed the .vl suffix on generated executable and fixed Run button

0169 22 01 20

• Couple of fixes in type unification algorithm - fixes for example VL.Devices.RealSense
• Exporter uses nuget restore to figure out what assemblies are already referenced by packages. Fixes export of VL.OpenCV as well as reported issues like https://discourse.vvvv.org/t/export-application-problem-superfluous-system-reactive-reference-2019-2-0125/18145 https://discourse.vvvv.org/t/app-export-failure/18107
• Fixed pins not highlighting in valid cyclic connection attempts like FrameDelay
• Fixed wrong VL factory being used in exported apps - type names used by serializer were different
• Fixed target code when not implementing an interface yet - https://discourse.vvvv.org/t/exception-when-implementing-an-interface-2019-2/18122
• Do not try to restore packages without a version on export - fixes export of VL.DBSCAN which has buggy reference to non-existing VL.CoreLib.VVVV
• Fixed missing or wrong assembly references in exported projects.
• Fixed default value of delegates in generic patches. CreateDefault operations will be auto-generated for all delegate types.

0140 09 01 20

• Fixed ToObservable (Switch Factory) - used by many reactive nodes - not calling the factory after the element type changed due to a hotswap
• Added HighDPI awareness to App.config for exported apps
• Fixed stack overflow when patching a CreateDefault - system will now generate an error as long as the output is not connected
• The default value of a record will again be cached in a static field
• Fixed serializer serializing auto-generated fields
• OSCMessage (Split) now returns timetag
• CTRL+Shift+F now also finds interfaces
• updated VL.OpenCV to 0.2.133
• fixed problem with pin-editor for serializable types like Rectangle
• Splash screen shows up in taskbar and has proper icon
• Counter Clamp/Wrap/Mirror reset under/overflow correctly
• NodeBrowser now has a TextBox that can select/copy/paste
• Fixed regression that bang and press IO boxes would sometimes stick to true

0081 16 12 19

• Fancied up the helpbrowser
• Fixed problem scrolling in menu dropdowns: https://discourse.vvvv.org/t/main-menu-ui-scroll-with-mousewheel-within-dropdownmenu-lists/18083
• Fixed a crash in UI when creating a frame https://discourse.vvvv.org/t/creating-frames-throws-exception/18067
• Fixed crash in UI when trying to retrieve the default value of an imported generic typehttps://discourse.vvvv.org/t/2019-2-0026-cannot-create-iobox-tuple-t-t/18061
• Fixed apply node lifting being applied to nodes which already had an apply pin (like Console.WriteLine)
• Fixed crash when referencing an assembly like Bridge which tries to replace the whole mscorlibhttps://discourse.vvvv.org/t/gamma-x-2-nuget-import-error/18038
• Fixed regression that the "valid pins are ..." warning wouldn't show up when implementing an interface
• Type annotations on pads which point to a field will now truly be ignored and also cleared - was reported in chat by björn
• The version of the currently used package will now be written to disk. Allows to introduce converters for libraries at a later stage.
• Fixed regression that the Serializable attribute wasn't set on emitted classeshttps://discourse.vvvv.org/t/issue-with-serialization/18064
• Fixed regression that source packages (provided through command line arg --package-repositories) wouldn't get higher priority than installed oneshttps://discourse.vvvv.org/t/2019-2-0026-weird-behavior-of-package-repositories-arg/18077

0026 10 12 19

• Fixed loading of VL.Devices.RealSense
• Fixed empty error message on faulty type annotations
• When generating a C# project, local source packages without a nuspec will not get includedhttps://discourse.vvvv.org/t/exporting-fails-to-build-due-to-dependency-it-isnt-using/18043
• Fixed regression that nodes on auto-connect would show warning as well as their pins of unused fragments wouldn't connect to the default patch anymorehttps://discourse.vvvv.org/t/gamma-2019-2-connect-to-signature-does-not-work-in-this-region-even-outside-a-region/18048

0015 06 12 19

• Patch drawing is antialiased and icons are showing again
• Fix for drawing transparent PNGs
• Fixed regression that delegate regions wouldn't create their pins anymore
• Emit exception will show first error now as it's message
• Fixed specialized operations not being marked as unused if there containing type was - seehttps://discourse.vvvv.org/t/gamma-x-2-breaking-not-opening-old-patches/18036

Compared to the 2019.1 series

Features

• Export to executable
• Faster startup and less memory consumption due to precompiled libs
• Recursive operations and datatypes
• Runtime errors: marked node is now always correct
• Generated C# code can be debugged using Visual Studio
• Help patches (where available) open when pressing F1 on a selected node

Breaking Changes

Unfortunately this preview introduces some breaking changes. This means that projects that were working fine with 2019.1 previews may no longer work correctly with 2019.2 previews! If you encounter such a situation and cannot resolve it on your own, please get in touch via forum or chat! Here is a list of possible problems you may encounter:

• Existing patches may need additional type annotations due to changes in the type unification
• Execution order of nodes may be different if it wasn't explicitly expressed before
• Generic type parameters in an interface patch will now always belong to that defined interface (and not any of its operations)
• Not really breaking, still a change: Runtime errors: no values in tooltips when in pause state

For technical details please see the blog post about the New Roslyn based backend.

We'll update this blogpost with new preview-releases regularly. Please check back often and report your findings in the chat, forum or a comment below!

Yours truely,
devvvvs.

Fantastic!

is probably not exactly the word you'd use to describe vvvv's 2019 numbers. If you can't handle bumpy roads, please set your Damper to ~2s before reading on... Not sure what this is all about? Check out last year's numbers of 2018 to make yourself familiar with this vvvvery tradition. Then pull yourself together:

Webwise

While we still don't have any new numbers from vvvv.org itself we do have what the forum tracks. It shows us different statistics regarding user engagement over time that are generally, how can I put this... not improving recently. The most uplifting I found was this:

According to the description of the graph, this indicates your stickiness in % and 30% is to be aimed at. Even though overall fewer things are happening on the forum you keep sticking around. Who could blame you, after all, it is rather cozy around here. Here is another one that doesn't look all too bad:

Ignore the red ones (crawlers) but see the rather constant number of logged-in users (dark blue) and the curious spikes at the end of December from anonymous users (light blue). Are these already the harbingers of numbers to expect when we finally will have an official 1.0 of vvvv gamma out? (hums) Dreams are my reality...

Not really numbers, but still interesting, here is a listing of top forum search terms in order of your priority:

Downloads

* x86 and x64 combined

What can we say? Only 1 release was really lame. But was it? Ok, yes, it was, but the way I'd like to whitewash these numbers a bit is that they are only reflecting vvvv beta, when obviously most of our work (to some of your's concern) went into VL and vvvv gamma. And inconveniently we don't have any numbers for vvvv gamma downloads at all. But then again those wouldn't be high numbers also because as you know we're still keeping a rather low profile with vvvv gamma, mostly advertising it to you as long as it is still in preview. So anyway, nothing to be particularly proud of here. Moving on...

Licenses

Phew, not as bad as the declining number of downloads would have suggested. Certainly not an upwards trend but still the 4th best result so far. So let's see what this number is composed of:

Mkay, so according to the number of individual commercial users we're basically thrown back to 2012. Quite a bummer but to be expected when you put most of your resources into R&D for the shiny new product that just still isn't there yet to make its own money. We were certainly hoping to keep a few more of you with our advances in VL but we know that before making any new friends, VL needs to grow out of vvvv beta and get a 3d engine...

That was it? Far from! This year we held by far the largest number of workshops for onboarding new users. These included a series of 8 free introductory workshops and 8 full-day workshops on various topics in Berlin. Further, we toured Kiel, Linz, Timișoara and Moscow. Also, we held 10 meetups and 3 patching circles in Berlin, one meetup in Hamburg and one in Moscow. Finally, we even held a dedicated Teaching Patching mini-conference to better understand the needs for vvvv in education.

All these activities will see a continuation in 2020 and culminate in NODE20 in October. Until then, the road to NODE is filled with some precious gemstones:

• The first official release of vvvv gamma that you can finally own for money, already available for preview
• Initial release of 3d engine for vvvv gamma, still work-in-progress
• Polished libraries to support your basic needs
• More workshops and learning opportunities

Is 2020 finally the year of the future of visual programming or is the world not ready for VL yet? Stay tuned, spread the word and become part of a truly wonderful new numbers blog post next year! You know what to do...

We wish you what!
Yours,
vvvv.