Patcher People!

It’s been a while since the b38.1 release. But finally we’re getting ready to release an update to vvvv beta. Here is the release-candidate, meaning it has all we wanted to add for beta39. We only want to give you a chance to test this with your current projects so we have a last chance to squash any new bugs, you may encounter.

 Fancy shading with the new PBR effect contributed by fluxuser

Here are the highlights of the upcoming release:

General

• We get rid of the term ‘alpha’ and replace it with the term ‘beta-preview’ to be in line with gamma and gamma-preview
• Finally we ship an installer! Just a few clicks and you should have vvvv beta running. ** Optionally installs the addonpack for you. ** Still we left good old setup.exe there but renamed it to config.exe, since you don’t necessarily need to run it anymore to set things up ** We’re also planning to offer an offline-installer, but only for the actual release (not every preview) ** We’re also keeping the .zip downloads
• For convenience, by default new patches now save to %User%\Documents\vvvv\beta(-preview)\Sketches. Like this you can quickly find your recently created patches via a new main menu entry: Recent Patches
• We’ve added two shortcuts to the main menu: ** Show Installed Packs: opens explorer pointing to the \packs directory ** Download Contributions: opens a browser pointing to the contributions page
• vvvv beta now supports RCP out of the box, which allows you to expose IOBoxes to control them remotely. See the helppatch of Rabbit (RCP) for details.

New nodes

• WebSocket (Network Client)
• PBR (DX11.Effects), PBRInstanced (DX11.Effects)
• PBRTextured (DX11.Effects), PBRTexturedInstanced (DX11.Effects)
• MaterialPropertiesPBR (DX11.TextureFX)
• Lights (DX11.Layer PBR)

New in VL

If you’re also using VL already, good for you, because here you’ll find even more goodies you will benefit from:

• Shiny Tooltips
• IOBoxes 2.0
• Regular Expression nodes
• Pingroups
• If you’re looking for the Manage Nugets menu entry under Dependencies: this has been moved to the Quad menu
• and quite some more as we’ve listed in the gamma preview changelog

Besides those, it is important to understand that with VL you also have access to numerous more libraries that have been released recently. A lot of new packs these days come as nugets. For an overview, see VL packs on nuget.org and you can use them all in vvvv beta, via VL…

Download

vvvv beta39 x64 RC11 vvvv beta39 x86 RC11

Changelog for Candidates:

RC11

• fixes on bumpy Damper
• fixed SVGWriter

RC10

• fixes issue with girlpower\VL_Basics\ParticleSystem not loading

RC9

• Press IOBox now releases when left button is click while right-pressing
• Fixed a bug in OSC nodes
• Dampers can now be used in loops
• fixed image tooltip
• fix on tooltip layout
• some color operation improvements
• can now create a node while linking by simply starting to type

RC8

• updated to latest VL
• removed a few unnecessary Damper versions
• fixed time step calculation of Damper (Fast)

RC7

• Installer finds path to Powershell.exe on it’s own
• VL close dialog lists unsaved documents
• some minor fixes on VL Damper nodes
• fix for C# node input pins that access an empty spread

RC6

• SaveAs inside VL editor back again - node references in v4p should now get updated correctly
• Fixed a few crashes of VL serializer when dealing with object fields
• PBR nodes should show up in nodebrowser again
• SelectNodesDontScroll added

RC5

• Regions now show timings again
• Node tooltips now show timings for the current instance
• Image download from GPU will again happen in AsImage node to avoid breaking changes and potential crashes in existing patches
• installer adds vvvv folder and process to Windows Defender exceptions

RC4

• changed AppData location for nugets to \beta(-preview)_{architecture}\nugets
• removed AppData location for packs again (to be reconsidered after b39)
• in VL outboxes are working again
• installer checks and installs DX9 and VC++ Redistributables correctly

RC3

• Ctrl+P now creates new patch pointing to active patchs directory
• fixes problem with AsImage (DX11)
• fixes problem with saving a new patch to \Sketches

RC2

• adds options to register .v4p and .vl from the installer
• fixes an issue with the installer popping up config.exe unnecessarily
• fixes Ctrl+G
• fixes Keyboard (Devices Windows) Enabled pin
• fixes global references to .fxh includes for dx9 effects

So please give this release candidate a spin and be sure to report your findings, preferrably in the forum using the “preview” tag, or also just by posting a comment below.