Has LSX been abandoned?

[taggalucci]

Would Pangolin have a customer waiting over a week?

Um, well yes they do, and have on more than one occassion. But I wasn't in a hurry. Bill seems to do all license related stuff himself. And when there's expos and stuff on, license file deliveries slow down big time.

Not that this in any way justifies crap customer service. If you take money for a product or service, that immediately sets service expectations. Andrew (Dr Lava) has let his customers down on more than a few occasions, and his whole drop off the face of the earth routine is a bit old.

Although I have been intrigued by LSX and the video to laser software, I'm now very definitely going to stay well away.

[colouredmirrorball]

Come to the dark side and check out Spaghetti. With user input I will add new features. I don't think there is much in LSX that I couldn't add with some persuasion. And I answer emails regularly.

While Spaghetti is a great and user friendly product, I do doubt this... Do you have a copy of LSX? The only similarity between Spaghetti and LSX is that it is timeline based. Can you use math in Spaghetti to create stunning abstracts? Can you write expressions that manipulate the location and colour of points as a function of their index, and/or their X, Y, Z or angle coordinates? Does Spaghetti have live input from the mouse, MIDI, OSC and on-screen sliders that you can use anywhere in said expressions (or functions), that can vary these in *real time*? Those are some of the very basic and important key functions of LSX.
Now all of these abilities are rather complicated and require some time to get used to, and some users might never really discover them.

If you implement those in Spaghetti, then I'll be amazed. Not because they are so hard to program, but because I just can't match them with (my perception of) the philosophy of Spaghetti.

[james]

Can you use math in Spaghetti to create stunning abstracts? Can you write expressions that manipulate the location and colour of points as a function of their index, and/or their X, Y, Z or angle coordinates?

You can do this stuff in LaserBoy if you know C++ and know how to compile from source code!

You can do math with some very complete concepts that are in the form of classes. Take a look at LaserBoy_frame_effects.cpp and LaserBoy_frame_set_effects.cpp. You can write your own! There is also a frame set constructor that takes a pointer to a function that defines a whole frame set based on math.

There is no real-time and there is no time line editing though...

James.

[colouredmirrorball]

You can do this stuff in LaserBoy if you know C++ and know how to compile from source code!

You can do math with some very complete concepts that are in the form of classes. Take a look at LaserBoy_frame_effects.cpp and LaserBoy_frame_set_effects.cpp. You can write your own! There is also a frame set constructor that takes a pointer to a function that defines a whole frame set based on math.

James.

That looks neat... but I don't really know C++ (only the very basics) and I don't really have time to figure it out. Meanwhile LSX makes it so that I can just take care of the math without needing to consider things such as learning yet another programming language, optimisation, or sending frames to the DAC, and it allows me to work in a nice interface where my tamperings are visualised in real time, while providing some useful tools for live events (such as the mouse position being used as a parameter, some sliders that can be controlled with DMX, MIDI or OSC, and a touchpad window).

[JohnYayas]

While Spaghetti is a great and user friendly product, I do doubt this... Do you have a copy of LSX? The only similarity between Spaghetti and LSX is that it is timeline based. Can you use math in Spaghetti to create stunning abstracts? Can you write expressions that manipulate the location and colour of points as a function of their index, and/or their X, Y, Z or angle coordinates? Does Spaghetti have live input from the mouse, MIDI, OSC and on-screen sliders that you can use anywhere in said expressions (or functions), that can vary these in *real time*? Those are some of the very basic and important key functions of LSX.
Now all of these abilities are rather complicated and require some time to get used to, and some users might never really discover them.

If you implement those in Spaghetti, then I'll be amazed. Not because they are so hard to program, but because I just can't match them with (my perception of) the philosophy of Spaghetti.

I'm not attempting to trivialize LSX or say Spaghetti is a drop in replacement for it. But, keep in mind that I built Spaghetti from the ground up. There is no philosophy behind it that I can't change because I AM the philosophy of Spaghetti. If you are happy with LSX then by all means stay with it. My post was aimed at those who are not happy with it or with Andrew and might want to try something else. I stand by what I said in my post.

[colouredmirrorball]

I'm not attempting to trivialize LSX or say Spaghetti is a drop in replacement for it. But, keep in mind that I built Spaghetti from the ground up. There is no philosophy behind it that I can't change because I AM the philosophy of Spaghetti. If you are happy with LSX then by all means stay with it. My post was aimed at those who are not happy with it or with Andrew and might want to try something else. I stand by what I said in my post.

I better clarify myself before we end up in long pointless arguments... I meant that I believe that Spaghetti's philosophy is to be a easy to use program that allows users to create shows in an easy way, while still providing some powerful tools and neat effects. (If I have this wrong then correct me, it's just my perception.) This is while LSX offers some features that are very neat to work with, but that might scare some people off that aren't, say, good at math. You made it seem like those functions were easy to add to Spaghetti, and would fit in well, and to be honest, I thought that quite funny

That aside, I happen to have quite some fun with programming abstracts in LSX right about now, but that doesn't mean I have abandoned Spaghetti... I always tend to recommend Spaghetti to people who just want to create decent laser shows, and LSX for the ones who want some more advanced functions, and who aren't afraid of some math now and then (though let it be clear that math is just an option in LSX, you can do neat stuff without math too!).


Back on topic: someone should really check out if drlava is ok... this isn't normal.

[JohnYayas]

I could add equations to Spaghetti in about a week. If this is something you are interested in being a part of Spaghetti contact me offline.

[bdg2]

Um, well yes they do, and have on more than one occassion. But I wasn't in a hurry. Bill seems to do all license related stuff himself. And when there's expos and stuff on, license file deliveries slow down big time.

Not that this in any way justifies crap customer service. If you take money for a product or service, that immediately sets service expectations. Andrew (Dr Lava) has let his customers down on more than a few occasions, and his whole drop off the face of the earth routine is a bit old.

Although I have been intrigued by LSX and the video to laser software, I'm now very definitely going to stay well away.

Exactly. Tired, old, and obnoxious. Look elsewhere

[Things]

Pretty poor not giving the 2 minutes or whatever it takes to generate and send a license key to a paying customer. But we've come to expect this from him, nothing has changed.

[borgqueenx]

its not poor, its unacceptable. if i wouldnt get the key within 48 hours id open a dispute if i had payed with paypal.
If drlava cant maintain a shop then dont do a shop....would make him get rid of all his angry customers.