Feature Requests

RPM_VR4 · 11-19-2006, 07:29 AM

I am giving RC4.1 a try after having used RR Freedom for a bit.

These are the things I love about CF that RR lacked:

1) Music and Music Videos in the same playlist. RR has separate players for video and audio. CF's video preview in album art works perfect.

2) Fully configurable through the UI (and much easier to setup).

3) Favorites functionality / Multiple playlists. Being able to star/unstar a song or video and then load all stared content in a new playlist is awesome. Those are by far the 2 most original ideas to come out of CF and they are totally awesome.

These are the things I miss most about RR (some of them show-stoppers for CF in my book):

1) Right-side hideable scroll bar with page/letter popup. This is a totally awesome feature of Freedom and is way better than holding your finger down for a second to letter seek.

2) Progress bar. Trying to hold a button for FF and then having it go way too slow for music and way too fast for videos sucks! The progress bar allows me to see my progress through a song (so I can easily tell when the song is about to end) and to jump instantly to any point in the song with a single click. Please put this on your to-do list David.

3) Horrible support for embedding apps. I really want SKINbedder built in to CF. RR doesn't have this either, but at least it can easily make a skin that sends hot-key without having to code a plug-in.

4) Milk-Drop. You need to support WinAmp vis plugins or take the open-source from milk-drop and make that native. If I can't have MilkDrop then I might as well have no visualization at all.

5) Ton's of useful features: GAS Price Finder, Vehicle Maintenance Log, Draw, Calculator, Weather with cool full-screen maps, GPS Speed/Heading/Next-Turn on main-title bar, etc.

6) Reliability. RR has tons of problems when it is not configured perfectly. It is very difficult to debug all the many problems you are bound to encounter and find a work-around for each one. That said, once you have something working, it seems to work reliably. CF on the other hand likes to randomly display LOADING for a long time, or take a really long time to start up after re-boot, or run a 1 FPS for 10 seconds, or totally lock-up/exit. The problem is it's random, not reproducible, so I can't debug it.

...I look forward to a future release.

SOS · 11-19-2006, 04:15 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by RPM_VR4

I
These are the things I miss most about RR (some of them show-stoppers for CF in my book):

1+2, nice to have for some, but the feature is there, just not to your liking.
3, havent played much with this, but really don´t have that much need for apps in my car.
4, well i guess that´s important for people who like to show off??? I never did understand what so important about visualizations, does the music sound better with it?
5, again a lot of nice to haves, and a sure they will come one day, RR probably didn´t have them from day one.

6) Reliability, yes I too do not quite feel that´s there yet.... but hopefully it will.

Quote: Originally Posted by RPM_VR4

...I look forward to a future release.

RPM_VR4 · 11-19-2006, 05:26 PM

1) The scroll functions a lot different than CF's letter seek, but I suppose it is kinda there. just not to my liking.

2) This isn't there at all. FF sucks! It is nothing like a progress bar.

3) Well, I do need a lot of apps in my car: Google Earth, iGuidance, Sling-Player, Orb, Skype, TMO-Datalogger, GPS-Secure, ODB-I app, Air-Con/Window/Door control app, etc.

4) I'm trying to sell a product here. When we did the SEMA show in Las Vegas, there were at least 5 people that stood there watching milkdrop embedded in RR on our 50" plasma for like 30-min. They said they have see many of the WMP visualizations but never really set and just watched them like they did MilkDrop. They had never seen anything like it. I agree. I think your response comes from people who a) have never experienced watching milk drop full screen on a fast video card with good trance music, or b) have never experimented with drugs

5) True, in fact most of those things RR didn't have 3-6 months ago. CF has been in development for well over 2 years now. It has some plugins, but none of the super cool stuff like GAS Prices. You need to be able to support good features very soon after they hit the market in another product.

6) At least it has been getting better not worse. I hope newer releases are just more consistent with any problems that may still remain, it's this random problems thing that's killing me.

sivart321 · 11-19-2006, 11:04 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by RPM_VR4

2) Progress bar. Trying to hold a button for FF and then having it go way too slow for music and way too fast for videos sucks! The progress bar allows me to see my progress through a song (so I can easily tell when the song is about to end) and to jump instantly to any point in the song with a single click. Please put this on your to-do list David.

3) Horrible support for embedding apps. I really want SKINbedder built in to CF. RR doesn't have this either, but at least it can easily make a skin that sends hot-key without having to code a plug-in.

4) Milk-Drop. You need to support WinAmp vis plugins or take the open-source from milk-drop and make that native. If I can't have MilkDrop then I might as well have no visualization at all.

5) Ton's of useful features: GAS Price Finder, Vehicle Maintenance Log, Draw, Calculator, Weather with cool full-screen maps, GPS Speed/Heading/Next-Turn on main-title bar, etc.

6) Reliability. RR has tons of problems when it is not configured perfectly. It is very difficult to debug all the many problems you are bound to encounter and find a work-around for each one. That said, once you have something working, it seems to work reliably. CF on the other hand likes to randomly display LOADING for a long time, or take a really long time to start up after re-boot, or run a 1 FPS for 10 seconds, or totally lock-up/exit. The problem is it's random, not reproducible, so I can't debug it.

...I look forward to a future release.

I agree with alot of this...

These things are just some of the reasons why paying for CF down the road scares me. At this point, David is having a hard enough time getting a solid release that doesn't give its users headaches. What is worse, is the speed (or lack therof) that he releases updates and new features. To be competetive (with so many other FREE options) the timeliness of things needs to be improved. We need to see that the core usability issues are being solved quickly, and that he actually is able to work on those advanced features and plug-ins that truly WILL bring some main stream appeal.

I am not sure how he can do this, but it needs to happen. There is alot of potential with CF with it's superior look and feel... the problems (to me) are all related to speed, functionality, and reliability/buginess. I don't know if he needs more people to help code, or if he needs to opensource some stuff to allow others to help speed up the process... I just think something needs to be changed to really prove this product is worth peoples time and money.

I hope my concerns are clear and constructive... I do not mean to bash your methods or your product at all...

veetid · 11-20-2006, 02:02 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by sivart321

I agree with alot of this...

These things are just some of the reasons why paying for CF down the road scares me. At this point, David is having a hard enough time getting a solid release that doesn't give its users headaches. What is worse, is the speed (or lack therof) that he releases updates and new features. To be competetive (with so many other FREE options) the timeliness of things needs to be improved. We need to see that the core usability issues are being solved quickly, and that he actually is able to work on those advanced features and plug-ins that truly WILL bring some main stream appeal.

I am not sure how he can do this, but it needs to happen. There is alot of potential with CF with it's superior look and feel... the problems (to me) are all related to speed, functionality, and reliability/buginess. I don't know if he needs more people to help code, or if he needs to opensource some stuff to allow others to help speed up the process... I just think something needs to be changed to really prove this product is worth peoples time and money.

I hope my concerns are clear and constructive... I do not mean to bash your methods or your product at all...

An open source project has a lot more resources for adding features and working on the application. Centrafuse is becoming very stable, a memory leak in RC4.1 cause issues but previous versions worked fine...

All these features will be added through the SDK once the application is finished...

A good portion of technical people will use open source projects, but that is not our target...

Releases have been coming every 2 weeks with major updates and improvements and they will continue... The speed of releases has increased drastically over the last few months...

Feel free to use open source programs, we support them for the market as a whole...

closing this thread because it is going off topic for what these forums are for...

david