Thread: ALEXIS demo video

check out a program called total recorder, it would allow you to record directly from the system allowing for better quality of both audio and video feeds.

otherwise looks pretty cool...

wow. I really like the knight-rider-esque front page with the GPS map in the middle.

Wow, well this certainly has come far.

It may be the video quality, but the screens reminds me of my old TRS-80. Doesn't that intro with the anime chick doing her HAL impression get really annoying after a while?

The intro is the interesting part, is that a sequence of 'canned' snippets, or rendered on the fly? For example, could she report error messages and other informational things? I think the repeated hearing of that intro would get annoying, but the idea could be cool, provided she isnt too repetitous.

The UI didnt look very touchscreen friendly? Is this desinged for a car environment?

Can I hack it to get her naked

... *Always* build software for hardware that isnt ready yet, its the only way to stay ahead.... Look back over the past 20 years at how MSFT's Flight Simulator program always required more horsepower than whatever machine you had, even if you had the newest coolest system... Obviously dont design something for 10 years out, but it should stretch what you have today otherwise we dont go forward.

I am hoping the alexis sequences are created on the fly and not canned, that way it has a lot more potential.

Originally Posted by trancified

The only problem I can see is what kind of system resources do you need to run it? Otherwise it looks awesome.

Originally Posted by mobileh1

It may be the video quality, but the screens reminds me of my old TRS-80. Doesn't that intro with the anime chick doing her HAL impression get really annoying after a while?

Well, the introduction can be bypassed easily using the long button at the bottom of the screen, but eventually, the idea will be to have it rendered on the fly, to reflect current system status. This will work out, only if I can find a way to integrate that image animation program.

The intro is the interesting part, is that a sequence of 'canned' snippets, or rendered on the fly? For example, could she report error messages and other informational things? I think the repeated hearing of that intro would get annoying, but the idea could be cool, provided she isnt too repetitous.

At present, it is "canned" (good term by the way), but I do intend the program to be able to verbally report errors on the fly, whether there's an image associated with it or not. Likely there will not be an animation for error reporting during use of the interface itself, because the user shouldn't be looking at the screen at the time. That's why there is verbal feedback.

The UI didnt look very touchscreen friendly? Is this desinged for a car environment?

Believe it or not, this is designed from the start to be touchscreen-friendly, and is most definitely designed for the car environment. I know the video doesn't show things very well, but I firmly believe this system will work quite well, even on the 7" screens that are so popular now.

Can I hack it to get her naked

Depends on how good your photoshop skills are, but the image won't be permanently embedded in the program. Right now, the animated image is nothing more than a pre-made Real Video file, but I am considering dumping the animation in favor of something that can be more readily replaced by the user, according to their preferences.

Originally Posted by trancified

The only problem I can see is what kind of system resources do you need to run it? Otherwise it looks awesome.

That's something that is really hard for me to determine at present, since I am doing the development on a relatively powerful machine. The ALEXIS hardware core isn't working at the moment, so I don't have a way to test it "live" yet.
One problem I ran into with the stock hardware config that I originally built was that although the interface seemed to work just fine, playing video of any sort within the program seemed to really kick its ***.

I think I'm not going to focus on video playback for a little while, at least until I get more important functions running properly. I'm pretty sure that without video playback, the program would work pretty nicely with even 900mhz and 256mb RAM, using onboard video.

Originally Posted by mobileh1

... *Always* build software for hardware that isnt ready yet, its the only way to stay ahead.... Look back over the past 20 years at how MSFT's Flight Simulator program always required more horsepower than whatever machine you had, even if you had the newest coolest system... Obviously dont design something for 10 years out, but it should stretch what you have today otherwise we dont go forward.

I am hoping the alexis sequences are created on the fly and not canned, that way it has a lot more potential.

Unfortunately, they ARE canned at the moment. I'm working on a way that they could be created on the fly, but I'm not sure if that's feasible, let alone possible. For starters, the TTS engine alone tends to really put the hurt on the system when active. I can work my way around it to get it working so there are realtime-generated warnings and system messages, but to animate the image to match that as well would not only take up limited system resources, but might also take more time to complete than it's worth, considering the potentially crucial nature of some of the possible system messages.

I would like to be able to at least generate a one-shot, on-the-fly animation for the intro system status sequence though. That would be cool.