Thread: New Front End: Velocity - Calling Flash Skinners

this could be my frontend, but i miss some essential features:

- built in GPS support (no maps, only the raw gps data for volume control etc)
- embedding of external applications

although it seems to have a fast interface, its slow on my carputer (500 MhZ only), but it maybe its the default skin...i have 100% cpu load with velocity and 30% with roadrunner (and roadrunner isnt made for flash skins...)

thanks for your work!

I won't qkslvr!

Reflex, thanks for the feedback.

Is the skin you're using the monkey one? I can't remember which I have included. The monkey skin is overkill as you wouldn't normally have such heavy animation normally, but I would also imagine that 500MHz is approaching the lower limit of CPU required.

as soon as I resume work, I'll post an updated skin with less load, and would appreciate some more feedback.

cheers

Originally Posted by sama

Is the skin you're using the monkey one? I can't remember which I have included. The monkey skin is overkill as you wouldn't normally have such heavy animation normally, but I would also imagine that 500MHz is approaching the lower limit of CPU required.

yes, its the monkey skin. and i think 500 MHz should be far enough for my needs - winamp uses only 7% of the cpu, destinator runs also fine and my road runner flash skin is very simple...even video would work, but i have to look at the street...

Originally Posted by sama

as soon as I resume work, I'll post an updated skin with less load, and would appreciate some more feedback.

i will have an eye on your good project - the design is really great and looks very promising...

edit:
Will you release the source? I would code some stuff 4 it...

ok, i've changed the monkey skin and deleted the monkey and his shadow -> 10% CPU load while playing on my 500MHz machine... great!

Hope 2 hear from you soon, sama!

That's great news!

I've set the CPU priority of flash to the lowest setting, which means all other tasks take priority. So although it's at 100% load, it's only using what's left from the other bits to do it.

I will not be releasing the source in the foreseeable future, though that's not set in stone. I am hoping that I can dedicate enough time for me to do the required work on the framework and code, and that developers can freely write plug-ins etc in their chosen language. However, if I find at some point that I'm not able to maintain it, and it has a good user base, then I will open the source and stick it on source forge.

What kind of coding are you thinking of doing?

sama, thanks 4 your fast answer! i've looked at your other projects and i am pretty impressed!
what do you think of my latest idea?: digitize the car current and analyze it with a neural net - if somethings "wrong" then notify the driver.

- well, you have 40fps in your sample skin and the priority settings of flash dont have much influence on my machine...i only use 4fps

- i dont like 100% cpu load in car - it takes more power and gets hotter - i also run maybe a navigation, rss or phone program

- i would add the things i am currently missing: gps, and external applications (navigation programs) and of course my skin (its only black and white without animations...)

- if you dont release the source and dont have time, maybe i will write another one (in c# or java), based on your idea (i like the event based flash communication), but with (active)winamp as sound plugin - it should be not too difficult

hello

sticking the car state into neural net is a good idea, if you can tame a neural net to do what you want it to do! A neural net is a curve fitting function. To get it to work you need to configure the number of nodes and their weightings. Every time you change parameters, you have to retrain the net. Alternatively, you could have a mapping function. This assumes you know all the "wrong" states you want to train it with, in which case you're better off building a mapping function, where you provide the parameters and it tells you if anything's wrong.

- Yep, the skin animation will take up time, and I can honestly blame flash for improper use of hardware acceleration etc! Hopefully with flex we can get that optimised a bit, but I'm sure that with a 500MHz CPU, you'll have to make some visual sacrifices over function.

- I agree about power and heat. I think lo-fi and hi-fi skin versions are in order here, which is up to the skin developers. There is no reason why we can't have a non-flash front end. I've been thinking of making an RR skin parser.

- if you can help with the GPS plugin, that would be most appreciated! My windows programming skills are non-existent, and I would rather put my efforts towards the framework and completing the mplayer plugin than to learn it.

- The velocity core is fully functional, that is it translates between flash and external plug-ins. So if you want to write a winamp media plugin, it's possible to do that now. The winamp plugin will not be multiplatform of course.

- i think it is possible to train the nnet for possitive results - why i must know the wrong states?

- currently, i am satisified with the 500 MHz, cause i dont need transitions or animations, i just want an ergonomic and fast skin.

- a rr skin parser for non flash skins? hmmm, i see the future in flash skins, even if they dont have eye candy and are fast Its much easier to handle and to create, i think.

- for what do you need windows skills, when programming the gps functionality? just reading the serial port and parsing the nmea format should do it...and then the media bean should communicate with the gps bean to adjust the volume according 2 speed. I assume the beans can communicate to each other, so that this is possible?
Maybe you mean the navigation part, but 4 that i would just embed some external program...

- i think the winamp plugin doesnt make sense 4 velocity, cause you have already a player and id3 parsing i think.

If you have an interface description, i can help with some coding...

I think it would make an interesting project for sure with the nets. They are notorious things to work with I can tell you that. I tried for a few months to

the gps coding I need done is to integrate one of the external apps. It would be a wrapper around a gps program that:

1. collates external program data into access bean (for labels/directions etc)
2. exposes methods of external gps program so flash can send events (navigate to/fullscreen)
3. overlays the main gps display into a specified position and size (this would be part of the external methods)

The code can be written in any language, and the protocol to talk to velocity is via TCP/IP.

Something like a c++/c# wrapper around an SDK, which delegates control to velocity is what I have in mind.