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Music Media

Visualization Plugins & G-Force, Oh My! 69

Posted by Hemos from the making-things-pretty dept.
Feedmag is running a story about Andy O'Meara, the guy behind G-Force, as well as some other aspects of the visualization for plugins for *Amp, XMMS etc. Playing around with the visualizations is a huge amount of fun, and it's interesting to see what types of music produce different visuals. And unlike psydelics, it's legal.
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Visualization Plugins & G-Force, Oh My! More

Visualization Plugins & G-Force, Oh My!

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  • /me checks his list of XMMS plugins... Well I'll be damned, there it is.
  • Salvia Divinorum is perfectly legal, and I've seen it for sale a lots of plantstores, including home depot once. Check erowid.org for information on it.
  • You left out Waterfall [aigeek.com], my spectrogram viz plugin.

  • Let me share a Nasty Thought I've had concerning the current intellectual "property" environment and music visualizers.

    The media conglomerates are advancing the position -- unfortunately with a lot of success -- that any use of "their" music not explicitly authorized by them is prima facie unauthorized and therefore illegal.

    If we were to regard this view as legitimate, then when you purchase a CD, you have received a license from the media conglomerate to listen to it, and nothing else. You have not been authorized to perform it publicly (such as at a party), you have not been authorized to extract snippets for critical commentary or to incorporate into your newest rap parody, and you have not been authorized to use it as the data source for a visual transformation engine. Ergo, using a visualizer is a copyright violation.

    Further -- if we, again, are to regard the media companies' view as legitimate -- the images resulting from a particular CD played through a visualizer constitute a derivative work, since they are derived directly from the original copyrighted musical work. As such, the specific visual presentation also falls under the media conglomerate's copyright. When you bought the CD, you only obtained a license to listen to it; therefore, the resulting derivative images covered by the same copyright require a separate license which you don't have. Ergo, watching the visualizer is a copyright violation.

    Reductio Ad Absurdum? I'd desperately like to think so. However, recent court cases concerning intellectual "property" make me very, very worried that we are perilously close to such absurdity.

    Schwab

  • Nobody wins and nobody looses.
    This is not a game - it is life.

    I have got ASS.
    --
    Raphael Wegmann

  • Did anyone else besides me first think this was about that '70s era Japanese animation about the five kids that flew in a blue spaceship which could turn into a phoenix?

    Bummer. I wish they'd bring that back.

  • Tripex [tripex.co.uk] &nbsp For the goatse.cx weary, its http://www.tripex.co.uk

    A great plugin, I love it.

    ---
  • I don't know if Jeff Minter was behind it, but I have an Atari Video Music [atari-history.com] from the 70s that's very trippy.
    --
  • It's not a bad thing to empty your mind
  • My favorite vis plugin is AcidSpunk (WinAmp and Sonique versions exist). In my experience, it's shown significantly less repitition in visual patterns, and it's -much- better than WhiteCap, Geiss, or any other vis plugins I've tried at fitting appropriate images to music - it really does explode at the climax of a song, and so on.
    Just my $(2x10**-2)
  • Why couldn't he use a different name for his pluggin? I saw the story, and my first thought was that it had something to do with some Nvidia product. It's as moronic as naming your home grown video codec Divx when it was also the name of a lame system for renting movies.

    If you can't come up with something that sounds cool, just pull some word out of your ass like Intel does (Itanium), but try to be a little unique.

    Guess this is why we have trademark laws.
  • His plugin "G-Force" existed BEFORE nVidia's video card "GeForce".

    If thats true then he's less lame.

    Aside from the fact that he was first with the name, your comment might have some relevance if the two products were actually spelled the same way - which they are not.

    Its very relevant, cretin. The only difference between the two names is a - in place of an e. It would be very easy for someone who doesn't follow video cards, is a bad speller, or doesn't look closely to get the two mixed up. Like Divx and DiVx (or whatever capitalization the gay lamer uses).
  • "Sure, we all did acid back in the sixties"

    uhuh.. who is this "we"? IIRC, "we" also did acid in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and I'll be damned if I dont hear my college friends saying "we all do acid nowadays".. not to mention the big E, peyote, marijuana (even though to tell the truth I never felt any psychodelic effects from pot), and so on..
    So before you start preaching about what "we" did and what "our children" shouldn't be doing, at least give credit were credit is due..
    And isn't it funny that what "we" used to do for fun, peer pressure, etc.. is what we want our kids *not* to do, just like our parents didn't want us to do those "evil drugs" and just like their parents didn't want them drinking that "evil alcohol" and so on, ad infinitum..
    Now I'm one to say that drugs are bad <smirk> and that they'll damage your brains <smile> but what, exactly, do you think your kids are gonna do when you say "dont do it"?
    I think you know the answer to that, since "we" all did exactly the same thing when our parents told us not to...

    my $0.02

  • The correct link: (Score:5)

    by joshwa ( 24288 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @07:21PM (#287140) Homepage Journal

    http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id =1690 [feedmag.com]

    left out a trailing zero...

  • Hmmm... Wasn't Jeff Minter the first guy to really really really do this stuff on home computers? Yet there's no mention of ColorSpace, Trip-a-Tron, Virtual Light Machine, or any of the other things he's done.

    Mind you he wasn't the first person to do this kind o' thing - Walt Disney gets that credit for Fantasia.

    Simon
  • Well, Hemos saw fit to mention XMMS in the blurb, leading me to believe that GForce is actually available for XMMS or that even XMMS is mentioned in the article.

    Nope, not even a mention of XMMS (or Linux, or UNIX) in the article or on his site.

    Thanks for getting my hopes up!
  • Nutmeg itself isn't all that great but if you really want to flip out, take about 20 grams (yes, that's a lot) and stuff them in horse capsules and swallow all of them. After you start feeling a little drowsy, take a few hits of acid. You'll peak for about 10 hours and trip for about another 24-36 hours. It's weird, after 12-24 hours, you can actually sleep and then wake up still tripping.

    Nutmeg actually has some of the precursors to making MDMA (ecstasy). It's related in a lot of ways to the same benzene ring family that most psychedelic amphetamines come from including Peyote (yes, peyote is a psychedelic amphetamine).

    If you really want more information, check out this book by Alexander Shulgin, PIHKAL [yahoo.com] (Phenethylamine I Have Known and Loved). Alexander Shulgin has probably synthesized and tested more psychedelics than any other chemist.
  • Don't start crying just yet. There is an XMMS port at http://www.mnsi.net/~bgjenero/gforce/ [mnsi.net].
  • How about an xmms plugin reasonably close in coolness to a winamp viz plugin that doesnt suck up 100% of my cpu time and crash after 5 minutes. I have a GeForce2, the latest drivers and XFree, etc, and have no other problems with hardware accleration but I havent seen any good viz plugins at least on xmms's website.... any ideas?

    siri

  • Well, aside from that alone...

    Say that you play an uncopyrighted or copyright expired work in a music player and use a vis engine to display visuals on the screen. You will avoid the legal muck mentioned above about unauthorized usage of copyrighted music.

    Quickly, though, I understand where the author of the parent message is coming from. Let's say that MTV plays a video for a certain artist's single on a certain rotation... but then all of a sudden, some independent producer has the cohoneys to film a music video, unauthorized, for that single on his/her own and then submits it to MTV... and MTV likes it and puts it in the rotation. In nearly any event, the record industry would hit the mattresses on that one. I regard visualizations the same way... if anyone ever recorded a really good visualization for a song, bought a license to play the song on TV, and then played the visualization plus the song, there would be hell to pay. I think it's fair use as long as you have a sampling license, but you know that won't ever be permitted anyway. Just like they have posters in every university saying MP3s are illegal. But anyway, that's not the point of this...

    The point is, there's yet another muck to get through... the license of the visualization itself! That's right, just cause you have it and downloaded it for free does NOT mean you are authorized to use it outside of your bedroom. I realized this when I came up with a concept for a TV show on my college's TV station. Basically, I had become pretty good at using Geiss (plugin for Winamp), and I could output to TV, so I recorded a few tapes of the video + sound and showed it to some friends... they liked it a lot (especially when they were rolling) and I figured it might make a good TV show. It was not to be (the station never gave the concept a chance, and disregarded the demo tape) but it would have been a gamble anyway - the Geiss license says that Ryan Geiss, the author, owns all the images produced by the plugin, and requires royalties for public display (cut and pasted from the license file):

    TERMS OF USE / COPYRIGHT INFORMATION / PUBLIC DISPLAY

    Geiss is 100 percent free for personal use. No registration is required.

    Any commercial use of this program, however, requires the consent of the

    author. For large ventures this will involve a licensing fee. Be wary

    that every image or video sequence generated with this program is the sole

    copyright of Ryan M. Geiss and can not be reproduced or displayed in public

    without permission.

    ... After reading this, I did e-mail Geiss asking about the whole college TV station thing, because it would have been a non-profit private showing for the university... something that may fall under fair use (as it does in some cases with some things). Dishearteningly, he never replied. I didn't pursue it further after I knew the idea for the TV show tanked. Since then, Geiss got a job with WildTangent and doesn't develop Geiss anymore AFAIK... which is a shame because, as good as it was, there was some potential for enhanced functionality specifically dealing with scripted effects for displays. And, IMO, Punkie is better...

    I'm not sure if the other visualization plugins have such restrictive licenses, but I know this one is unbearably harsh for anyone who wants to use it for public viewing or distribution. I'm not saying the idea of the license is unfair, but... I mean, come on, the damn thing only runs decent at 640x400x8, and you can't tell it what to do without having your hands on a keyboard (highly inconvenient for a DJ), I'm not paying a huge license fee for THAT. Or at least I'm pretty sure that the price I'd be willing to pay for an hour's worth of that (about $30) for 1000 people is a lot less than he's thinking he should get for it. The license should be spelled out in more certain terms, just so I can get an idea of what I would have to pay before I go out on any ventures.

    So, check the fine print on the licenses for your plugins before you start playing them at DJ parties and raves. Just because you downloaded it for free doesn't mean it is free. And there are some very unsure concepts here about what the legality is of a copyrighted visualization + a copyrighted recording. It's a shame that the art may get lost in the process...
  • I have one those as well - I picked mine up at a "fill this bag for a dollar" yard sale - managed to get both it and an 80's cd player in the bag. The cd player didn't work - but the Video Music did. One of the knobs was cracked on the part that grabs the shaft of one of the potentiometers, but that was easily fixed with superglue.

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • >> Note that O'Meara says his deal with Apple convinced him he could make a living as a programmer, but now he talks more like he's forced to cease all development of GForce now that he's on active duty, and he's "profoundly depressed." <<

    Yeah, poor baby. He signed a contract so the US Navy would pay his way through college and now he's upset that they actually want him to hold up his end of the bargain. The guy produces some truly spectacular stuff, but all his moaning about how he's getting screwed just makes him sound like a crybaby. Personally, I think the Navy's getting screwed.

  • Re:exit poll visualization (Score:3)

    by bnenning ( 58349 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @08:16PM (#287149)
    72% of the people who voted for Bush believe that Lieberman's religion made him a bad choice for V.P.

    This is wildly off-topic, but the poll says no such thing. The poll says that 8% of voters think that Lieberman's religion made him a worse candidate, and of those 8%, 72% voted for Bush.

  • So I've been looking for a plugin like xplsisnjasp for sometime. Can I BUY something like the parport hardware device that they have listed?

    I'd like to learn how to make these things, but for now, my solidering expertise sucks, and I'm not that good at constructing little electronic devices, so making one on my own isn't an option right now. I'll pay money for one of those things!

  • I'm assuming the link is wrong?...'cause a brief skim of the article didn't seem to have anything to do with visualisation plugins...
  • I tired ALL the xmms visualisation plugins last month. Here is the low-down, with some random notes I made at the time. Hope this is useful for someone.

    # Bezier - Boring, crashes.

    # Blur scope max. Promising, fixed res, slow, hangs XMMS sometimes. Config is also slow ...

    # Blursk. Very Nice. Bug: Need to restart if resized.

    # Bump scope. OK. Bump mapped scope with moving light. Can run "full screen on play" but assmues geometry nd breaks X a bit.

    # Synastehsia-xmms. V nice. Same "full screen on play" problem as Bump scope.

    # Emmisions. libxstars is kinda OK, maybe hack it a bit. Runs on root window!

    # G-force. Good. Scales well. Config text goes to screen :-(. BUG: closing window kills XMMS. Try DGA patch ?? Needs very latest 'make' to compile

    # Infinite. Nice circle based scope thingy. Good, stable. Scaling a problem.

    # Iris. Most strange, quite good. Stable, good config tool.

    # Goom. Nice. Resolution config a bit buggy? Doesn't run fullscreen. Closing the window breaks it.

    # Jess. Nice, wierd effects. Crashes on start? Enable button broken? Fixed res. Worth a look at code. Apparently color-cyclable (press return. Perhaps this should be in a config window).

    # Nurbies. Not sure what this does, but the GL stuff crashes my XMMS. Makefile is broken - 'libdir' is hard coded. Try this on a GL box.

    # Plazma. Fairly simple colour stuff (turn the scope off). Has promise. Crashes XMMS hard if window closed.

    # Rainbow. Very boring coloured rectangles. Makefile broken as for nurbies (same guy)

    # Neato. Broken install.

    # Tazma. Depedency farce (OpenPTC, hermes, lots of other broken graphics stuff).

    # WMDiscoTux. "Dancing" penguin (nods head and flaps feet). A bit shit really.

    # Xmms-speakers. Broken Makefile (libdir). Puts speakers on your XMMS. Crap.

    # XPLSISNJASP. Control h/w via parallel port. Promising but untried. Could be crap.

    # Zon. Won't compile.

  • There's a company in Canada making a PS2 product that has a lot of visualization stuff in it (yes, I work for them altho not on this product). http://mgi.moderngroove.com

    Also as a related note, I didn't see if anyone answered but most of the traditional wavelength vis. programs use integer math instead of floating point (a la geiss) so you're mostly stuck with raw clock speed and a fast 2d RAMDAC to get performance out of them. It might mean that a thunderbird will spank an equivalent p4 (this is all very broad speculation).
  • The correct URL for the story is: http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id =1690 [feedmag.com]

  • O'Meara must be doing well now... (Score:3)

    by Noer ( 85363 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @07:38PM (#287155)
    I'm surprised that article didn't mention O'Meara's recent deal with Apple. G-Force is the default (and, currently, the only) viz plugin for iTunes (which is especially weird since there were many viz plugins for SoundJam, from which iTunes is derived). Anyways, O'Meara must be doing well from this deal - at least, I hope he is.

    On a side note, something that I think would be interesting (though I don't know how possible) would be a visualizer that used some of the algorithms that have been developed for musical comparison (the same sort of algorithms that are being used to identify mp3s of copyrighted songs, for example). Looking at the structure of the music, rather than just a spectrum analysis, might allow some really cool visualizers :)

  • Back in the 60s? I wasn't even alive then. Hell, I did acid in 2000, and I'm still happily sitting at my desk all day browsing the web and making 6 figures. I don't know what you want your kids to be, but my life isn't all that bad, considerring how messed the country is at the moment.
    How is it a druggy like myself can do better than 50% of the country? I would almost be willing to argue that the psychodelics gave me a more clear perception of reality, since they allowed me to experience surreality in its purest form. But I wouldn't recommend anyone do psychodelics if they don't know themselves through and through. If you have any emotional problems, relationship problems, life problems, etc. then don't do drugs because they only make those problems worse.

    P.S. I also have written a lot of deltafields, colormaps and editted a few particles and waveforms for G-Force. That program kicks ass and can do some amazing things. Its unfortunate that Andy doesn't want to continue work on it. But in my opinion G-Force 2.0 is a finished product.
  • Don't let this article distract you from the license. Always remember to read the license. G-Force is not GPLed code. It is open source and legal to view and use for your own personal pleasure, but you can not publicly display it.
  • Uh...you might want to think about the fact that you're reading a lot into a piece of journalism and you weren't present for the interview. Based on my correspondence with Andy O'Meara that Wired article didn't quite sound like him. For anyone who has been quoted before in a newspaper or magazine you know how they edit your words to make them fit the story they're trying to write.

    The other thing to consider is that it would be normal for anyone to feel a little depressed when a whole new world is opening up that you never imagined was possible and you cant do anything to take advantage of it. 4-5 years previously when he was first entering college being in the armed forces for 5 years probably didn't seem like that big of a deal. Now he can't do anything about it. It *is* a depressing thought.

  • As far as I can tell from the site, G-Force does not provide support for XMMS *at all*. In fact, it does not even run under Linux at all, only under Windows and Mac.
    I'm sure it's just that you needed to pad out the story there, but at least make up something that doesn't directly contradict something that's on the guys' site.
  • I wondered why this looked so familar then I realized Wired also had a story [wired.com] not too long ago about the dude as well.Geiss [geisswerks.com] is also another great WinAMP visualization plugin as well.

    Backyard Boxing online? [stevesbackyardboxing.org]That's unpossible!
    ICQ:47685501
  • 8th paragraph:

    And while it sometimes seems as though there are almost as many visual plug-ins on the market, G-Force in particular has established itself as one of the leading "visual enhancers" for the MP3-listening public. (Apple recently bundled it as the default plug-in for their acclaimed iTunes product.)

  • Some legal phsycedelics Nutmeg Peyote (in some cases) Mushrooms ummm...maybe mroe I don't know.
    ----------------------------------
  • A friend of mine found out that Clary Sage oil had psychadelic properties when combined with alcohol, so he slipped some to another friend of mine when he was knackered. Friend B had a great conversation with a little green man, but later when he and I (friend B that is) tried to reproduce the effects it just tasted fscking disgusting. The alcohol still got us quite drunk tough.
  • even though to tell the truth I never felt any psychodelic effects from pot

    You didn't take enough. Take 15-18 drops on honey oil(liquid hash). First time I did that, I experienced "pure vision". That's seeing without perspective(sp?), but it took about 3-4 hours to came down from the high.(usally, 1-2 hours and i'm good).

  • Whoa, I've never saw pinwheels and kaleidoscopic visions on pot, but on shrooms, try to look at yourself in a mirror. It's too fucking weird, like kaleidoscopic vision like but with an organic glow. But shrooms makes my tummy hurt.

  • I knew a guy that used to have some box that (if I remember correctly) output it's own weird sound sequence for headphones and had blacked-out glasses with LEDs mounted in them that flashed in all sorts of patterns. I think it was supposed to be a relaxation device.

    Now if someone would build blinking LED sunglasses into a portable MP3 player (or as an addon), we'd be set.

  • My favorite WinAmp plugin has to be the Christmas Dancer. Bar none.

  • That's one of the ones that I was specifically thinking of... Of course, there are hundreds of others.

    Belladonna is another one, that is also quite common growing ditchside in the continental United States. Of course, Belladonna has nasty side effects such as:
    chmod ugo-rwx /dev/vagus

    I don't think that any music visualization software yet devised can shut down any of the cranial nerves, but who knows?

    sorry to all you Slashdotters who are getting distracted by our little sub-thread

  • First, the term psychedelic doesn't really mean anything, and it is pretty hard to define what exactly a psychedelic is.

    That being said, there are plenty of legal 'psychedelics' although that doesn't mean that they are exactly safe or to everyone's taste.

    There are about several million different species of plants, most crawling with various alkaloids, glycosides, aromatic oils, etc. Somewhere in some of them are psychedelic compounds. You just have to know where to look.

  • Stir away...your comment (and the ATPase inhibition in my system) has got me thinking...

    What is the number one derivative effect that people get from music? Emotional affect, right? Music introduces us to many new emotional states. Can those emotional states be seen as copies of the music? How much longer after listening to a piece of music am I allowed to feel happy? Do I have to mail the Pixies' record company money for all those times I lifted up my spirits by humming "Wave of Mutilation"?

    How bout if I do a little dance to the tune of the music? Do I have to get permission to do that? What if I am not encoding the rhythm of the song but instead just happen to be dancing what I am feeling?

    anyone else want to think up any more ridiculous examples, be free to go ahead...

  • This seemed to be an appropriate place to ask all the posters out there... What hardware is good at handling plugins for *amp with high framerates. I have a killer machine with 256 megs of RAM and a PIII 800mhz... and perhaps the most important part I have a GeForce 2 GTS w/32 megs. Even with all these goodies at resolutions above 800x600 (and even there) the framerates are terribly low for winamp AVS and wildtanget apps. I was wondering if anyone out there had framerates 50 fps+ on these plugins. Any ideas... could I hype somepart of my system up for this somehow... help.
    #set prompt = $user.$group @ `hostname -s`#
    root.wheel @ reality#

  • Even if that poll result is accurate, it doesn't have to mean that it's an anti-Semetism thing. Lieberman is a very devout man, and there are a lot of people who don't want a "holy roller" of ANY type in office. I wouldn't vote for Lieberman or anyone else with religious convictions as strong as his, no matter what the specific religion was. Moderation in all things...

  • His plugin "G-Force" existed BEFORE nVidia's video card "GeForce".
    Aside from the fact that he was first with the name, your comment might have some relevance if the two products were actually spelled the same way - which they are not.

    -OzJuggler.

  • The article also delves into the possibility of using some brain-scanning sensors to provide extra input into the music visualiser.

    Can I just say that this is at best a double-edged sword and at worst is downright dangerous!

    At best, you are trying to use the state of someone's mind as a clue for the most appropriate way to represent the flow and feel of the music. This is fine when the listener is in a happy mood and listening to a happy song. But! What if they are in a sad mood and trying to cheer themselves up by listening to a happy song?! Is the visualiser going to sense the "unhappy" characteristics of their brain and render their effervescent dance track in sombre blues and browns? What about a song like "Blue" by Eiffel 65, which has fairly sad lyrics if you ever read them, yet the whole song is presented in a really happy and bouncy way. Definitely some ambiguity there - and difficult to see how meaningful the visualiser would be.

    At worst, you've got a situation where the visualiser output is interpreted by the brain, which supplies info to the visualiser which sends back into the brain and pretty soon you've got a potentially nasty feedback loop happening! Not a good situation to be in if you're listening to heavy metal or a particularly disturbing Eminem song!

    The moral of the story? - Keep It Simple Stupid!
    Besides, I have enough trouble stopping evil corporations from controlling my thoughts, let alone a psychic WinAmp! :-D

    -OzJuggler.

  • I just gave it a try and it does look pretty damn nice. It tended to focus on simple primary colors and boxy sprites in some modes, but most of the time it was smooth. A close rival to G-Force.
  • WOW. That was a sweet hidden feature. It made my winamp exit as soon as the song ended though... is it supposed to do that?
  • WOW AGAIN! I tried some other pink floyd songs out too, looks like quite a few of them (Like Brick in the Wall part 2) have lyrics displayed along with the songs as well.
  • Winamp's builtin AVS is slow as molasses in my experience. Go with Geiss, Gforce, acidspunk - pretty and fast. As for 50+ framerates at 800x600..... good luck. I usually run at 800x600 or lower at lowest color depth and aim for ~30fps with an athlon 850. Also, i'm pretty sure the graphics card doesn't come into it since none of those plugins use 3d. RAM is probably similarly irrelevant beyond some smallish point. (and wildtangent, for the record, sucks my nuts.)
  • I first dled whitecap the beta version back in 98 and I was so impressed. I had never seen anything so cool before on a mac. The quality of it even as a beta put my bro's winamp plugins to shame. I told everyone I could about it. Whitecap is an amazing 2D visualization, then and now even more.

    Here's a link to andy's home page check it out. [55ware.com] Keep up the good work Andy!

    -vm

  • experimenting with neurofeedback devices that measure brain waves themselves, and translate them into computer-generated images and sounds
    From what I have heard, feedback loops using brainwaves to create patterns (audio or visual) can cause an epileptic fit..
    Staring at Geforce for long periods of time if photoepiliptic, can be a bad idea, although to know if you are susceptible to such things, it is good to find out when sitting down, not when e.g. driving down tree-lined avenue on sunny day - another common photoepileptic trigger).
  • What I'd really love would be a visualization engine on a memory card for the PSX or PS2. Then I wouldn't need an extra computer just to play tuns and run visualization on my TV.
  • Their visualization is on a disc with their music. What would really be neat would be a visualization on a mem card so you could play any audio CD and get visualization on the screen.
  • too bad no one can spell psychedelic.

  • not only can we not spell here at /., we are unable to interpret statistics as well.

    Where are the grammar and stats nerds around here?


    Whoops! I trolled again!

  • I remember a cool cartoon when I was a kid (late 70's i think) that used the term g-force. What a great show. To bad I cant find it on the tube anymore. Perhaps the names been borrowed from this show?

  • I'll be the first to say it (Score:5)

    by the real jeezus ( 246969 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @07:29PM (#287188)

    For the naive among you, this isn't better than acid. However, it certainly is better on acid.



    If you love God, burn a church!
  • someone mentions that the link is wrong, and you guys mark it offtopic. god, you all fucking rock. i tell you kids, you fucking rock.
  • Definitely, my college friends and I have spent many a time smoking pot then going straight for the visualization plugins. xplsisnjasp [linux.hr] is especially good for this (and sober use, too) since with a little bit of electronics, you can light up your whole room (I have eight strings of Chrismas lights attatched to it with a series of relays.)
  • Hmm, the linked article has a lot in common with the intended one. I can just imagine gforce on my geforce, pumping out psychidelic exit poll visualizations... The democrats have this one by a swirl, even though it was the good old party that pioneered the open polls that combined with the open source to make these displays possible.

    With the exit polls dancing to the spaced out '60s rock, all I need to complete the picture are some 'shrooms, and to wake up tomorrow and have someone tell me that George Junior winning was just a bad trip.

  • well maybe AcidSpunk is cool, i don't know, but WhiteCap certainly kicks somes ass! And from what I've read was one of the original vis plug-ins. Way better name in any case. -mantis
  • Unfortunately, like psychadilics, good visualizations have a tendency to keep you and anyone else in proximity drooling at the screen, trasfixied and zombified. I lost many years of my life that way.
  • And unlike psydelics, it's legal.

    I don't think we should joke about illegal narcotics. Sure, we all did acid back in the sixties, everybody was doing it. However, in the current age of zero tolerance, I don't want my child using drugs or staring at a computer screen full of crazy swirling colors!

  • Re:O'Meara must be doing well now... (Score:4)

    by sakusha ( 441986 ) on Monday April 16, 2001 @07:47PM (#287195)
    Yeah, he talked about the deal with Apple in a separate article at WIRED, which has an entirely different take on O'Meara's situation.

    http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42870,00 .html

    Note that O'Meara says his deal with Apple convinced him he could make a living as a programmer, but now he talks more like he's forced to cease all development of GForce now that he's on active duty, and he's "profoundly depressed."

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