This site relies heavily on Javascript. You should enable it if you want the full experience. Learn more.

Beta39 Release Candidate

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 flux

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.

joreg, Wednesday, Nov 13th 2019 Digg | Tweet | Delicious 29 comments

tmp 08/10/2019 - 11:40

small bug: the enabled pin of the keyboard (devices window) node has no effect anymore

bo27 08/10/2019 - 12:00

Milestone!

Elias 08/10/2019 - 14:54

@tmp thx will be fixed in final release

david 08/10/2019 - 18:41

Finally the current status of VL in beta. thank you guys!

sunep 08/10/2019 - 20:01

I really like the new installer and that I can choose to install the addonpack.

Awesome!

But as always, more wants more!

How about having an option to install contributions. A bit like vpm built into the installer.
It would be really cool.

u7angel 09/10/2019 - 08:47

very convenient it is, i hope this solves the installation terror in the beginner courses.
thanks for this.

from a professional point of view, there is only one question. we ship our projects with vvvv and all dependencies like packs. that's kinda difficult now since the packs folder is not a part of the vvvv folder anymore. is the intended workflow to add those packs with the root patch ? or would it be possible to have a config file to set the packs folder path ? that would be awesome. maybe even add that to the config.exe to minimize this breaking change.

microdee 09/10/2019 - 12:28

@u7angel: the old packs folder in vvvv directory still works

u7angel 09/10/2019 - 12:59

@microdee, ah ok, thanks for the info, that's cool

AKa-visuals 11/10/2019 - 00:28

Very nice release, i was waiting a lot the pbr integration, i just miss a reflection or enviroment map, to really make it more high end,,, any ideas?

miik 11/10/2019 - 14:30

Great release!

Just a little thing, if I "save as" a patch in a different direction, make a new patch and again "save as", it would be great that vvvv remember that direction.

tonfilm 11/10/2019 - 16:33

@AKa-visuals currently we're not planning to add more features to the PBR shader because it will make the useage more complicated. if you want to have all of those features including shadows just use superphysical or so.

joreg 13/10/2019 - 01:10

@miik good point. added that in RC3, please check and report!

domj 18/10/2019 - 15:03

Consider adding a checkbox option to add Windows Defender exceptions into the installer - it affects the startup times for me and I know I'm not only one.

tonfilm 18/10/2019 - 19:09

@domj good point, upcoming installers (beta and gamma) will add a windows defender exception for the vvvv app folder and vvvv.exe process. thanks for the hint!

KX 28/10/2019 - 14:46

Hello joreg

I tried to install the new RC6 and it was a powershell error code:2, the same happened with RC5 as well.
Somehow in my system (WIN 10 upgraded pro) was not default set path of the powershell... maybe it's gona happend with others.

many thanks
Zsolt

joreg 28/10/2019 - 14:53

@KX thanks for that report. was there anything you could do about it to still install, or it just doesn't work at all?

KX 28/10/2019 - 15:07

@joreg the istall was finished, but it was two times code 2 error popup before the final page

KX 28/10/2019 - 15:15

@joreg
I just reinstall again withouth path
here are the schreenshots:

joreg 28/10/2019 - 15:22

can you please clarify what you mean with "reinstall again withouth path"?

KX 28/10/2019 - 17:32

yep, I removed the "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\" from system environment variables to get the same error (for the screenshot).
I needed to add this path there, because it was not defaultly set by Windows.

tonfilm 30/10/2019 - 18:45

@KX thanks for the detailed report. the installer now looks for the powershell.exe path on it's own. would you be so kind to give RC7 another spin and check whether it works now without having the PATH environment variables set?

KX 31/10/2019 - 21:28

@tonfilm it's worked superly fine for me without the path. thanks!

velcrome 01/11/2019 - 12:08

quote:
fix for C# node input pins that access an empty spread

what does this mean?

Elias 03/11/2019 - 14:46

@velcrome Apparently somewhat after b34 a regression was introduced that when accessing an empty node connection through a plugin it might have caused a division by zero.

velcrome 07/11/2019 - 17:17

do you mean access by index? as in

var slice = FPin[0];

afair vvvv always tries to zmod the index with the spread count, so this always failed when the spread count is in fact 0, with an error message as you said ("division by 0").
what's the behaviour now, if the old behaviour has been "fixed"?

or is this even what you meant?

Elias 08/11/2019 - 10:56

It didn't even get so far. I think it crashed before any plugin code was executed.

microdee 13/11/2019 - 18:40

that "fix" was instead of the "division by zero" exception you'd get an "index was out of range of spread" exception or similar

parabola 17/11/2019 - 19:49

Awesome!
Here are my 2cents...

If you try to Alt+2 on a dx11 renderer vvvv crashes instantly

and when i close a patch that have some vl on it, it always says that some vl files are not saved

joreg 19/11/2019 - 18:08

@parabola thanks for those:

confirmed: alt+2 boxing a renderer crashes on x64 but not x86. this one reached us too late for b39, noted.
not saved .vl files: please try in final b39 release. may still occur occasionally but should be a lot less