Liberation professional laser software - coming soon

[swamidog]

The best possible solution is his absolute objective and that is to be platform independent. He will get there.

the best possible solution is coffee.

[stanwax]

re the windows malarky.
I too would like a windows Liberation, although I do actually have one Seb was developing across the two platforms originally, I did have Liberation on windows to demonstrate at the 2022 UKLEM, but shortly after this Seb made the decision to concentrate on the MAC. Its as simple as this. When compliling for Windows, at every turn there was numerous issues that the MAC version didnt present. It was sapping so much dev time that had he, at that point, continued on the dual path, I would guess Liberation wouldnt be huge steps behind the place its at now. That place is veryflexible, stable, tried and tested, and as far as im concerned, in terms of expressive multlaser busking is head and shoulders above anything else. And this is just the start of the journey. There is so much more to come. Including a version that will run on windows.
Thats my two pennies worth

Rob

Oh and one more thing, the version I have for windows is a million miles away from the current MAC build. You would barely recognise it! A HUGE ammount of work has been done in that year!

- - - Updated - - -

the best possible solution is coffee.

Cant argue with that

[james]

Are the Windows obstacles related to how Open Frameworks communicates with the GPU and OpenGL?

[stanwax]

I dont beleive so but Im not a coder so.....probs not within my remit
Rob

[LaserWizard]

I watched the 1.5 hour video that Seb posted 2 days ago, and learned that there is no timeline yet. I need it all, I don't have time to mess around if I can't get a program into my work flow right away after spending money. So I'll have to wait, even though Liberation looks fascinating.

Speaking of the Mac VS. Windows, I use them both but find Windows way more comfortable to use. Especially with the weird Mac updates recently, it is getting harder to use. I actually prefer the Mac OS on my 2011 machine.

[absolom7691]

Speaking of the Mac VS. Windows, I use them both but find Windows way more comfortable to use. Especially with the weird Mac updates recently, it is getting harder to use. I actually prefer the Mac OS on my 2011 machine.

I use all 3 at work. Windows, Mac, and Linux (RHEL and Ubuntu). I despise Mac's window management and GUI overall but love the seamless integration with Linux because of how MacOS is built. Windows is still my goto though.

With the GUI, sadly, Microsoft is going down the same MacOS road. Simplifying things and making window management more difficult. Windows 11 is fine for basic use but when I have multiple browsers open with multiple tabs in each, spread across 4 monitors, clustered window icons on the taskbar sucks the big one. Windows 10 let you turn off clustering, even though they took away the ability to organize the window icons on the taskbar (I miss Windows 7). Alt+tabbing through that many windows is maddening, as is hovering over the clustered icons to figure out which tiny preview window is which is a pain in the ass when multiple windows look similar. I still maintain that Windows 7 was the last great iteration.

Anyway, for gaming and general software availability, I'll still take Windows over Mac. Same with laser software, due to the limited hardware configurations available with Mac, Windows is the only game in town for me. I don't understand why Apple stopped making a standalone tower. I get being innovative and pioneering new things but, to quote Crow T. Robot, "Just because it's futuristic doesn't mean it's practical. "

[swamidog]

\
Anyway, for gaming and general software availability, I'll still take Windows over Mac. Same with laser software, due to the limited hardware configurations available with Mac, Windows is the only game in town for me. I don't understand why Apple stopped making a standalone tower. I get being innovative and pioneering new things but, to quote Crow T. Robot, "Just because it's futuristic doesn't mean it's practical. "

apple does still make a stand alone tower. it's the "Mac Pro".

[absolom7691]

apple does still make a stand alone tower. it's the "Mac Pro".

I stand corrected! I thought they dumped their line of towers in favor of the minis and the desktop with monitor.

[buffo]

So I've been thinking about this new Liberation laser show software for a while, and I finally decided to reach out to the developer (Seb) to chat about it. We were able to connect via a Zoom meeting, and what started out as a brief Q&A session turned into a 2 hour chat! I found Seb very easy to talk to, and we soon found several areas where our interests overlapped. For example, it turns out that back in the day, Seb was one of the developers behind the "Video Creator" software for the Amiga CD32. As it happens, I still have my copy of Video Creator, so I dug it out of the closet, and sure enough, there's his name in the credits! Very cool.

Seb walked me through some of the features of Liberation during our chat and answered a few questions I had about the work flow. In its present form, Liberation is ideal for live beam show performances, especially when coupled with the APC-40, and after a few demonstrations I was sold on the concept. Even better, Seb admitted that he's also got plans to add a timeline editor and several other features down the road to allow Liberation to be used for more than just live beams. However, as I am not a Mac user, I can't really benefit from the Beta program right now.

We discussed the future of a Windows version of Liberation, and Seb stated that he had some additional features that he wanted to add to the Mac version first, before he returned to the issue of compiling and debugging a Windows version. (These weren't show-stopper changes; mostly they were small things like interface tweaks and housekeeping stuff.) He also admitted that there weren't many people who had signed up for the "Windows User" tier on Patreon; most of his Patreon supporters are content to run the Mac version. Since the bulk of his support comes from Mac users, that's where he plans to focus most of his efforts, which will mean that the Windows version will not be the top priority. That being said, he did make it clear that there *will* be a Windows version of Liberation, but with very little support on Patreon for that version it might take up to a year for the Windows version to be released.

On the other hand, he also said that if he suddenly got a bunch of people to sign up for the Windows User tier on Patreon, he could easily justify getting a Windows version out in 3-4 months. I didn't press him for details on what, exactly, would constitute "a bunch of people", but I'm sure if it was in the neighborhood of 50 people or more, it would be enough.

I posted earlier that I was conflicted about how to support Liberation. Initially, I wasn't sure I was OK with signing up to support the project even though I couldn't use the software yet. But after speaking with Seb, I'm convinced that he will make good on his promise to release a Windows version. Plus, I do feel strongly that the project deserves my support, and signing up for the Windows User tier seems like the best way to do that right now.

So I've made a commitment to support Liberation through the end of this year, just to see what happens. I encourage anyone else who is interested in the Windows version of this software to sign up for the Windows User tier on Patreon as well. Seb has pledged to use Patreon funds from the Windows User tier to focus exclusively on getting the Windows version released, so more people in that tier means the Windows version gets released sooner. (It worked out to $40.67 per month for me, including tax.)

Looking forward to seeing where we are in 6 months!

Adam

[james]

I remember when I ported my app from strictly Linux to multiplatform. I had no way to experiment with building it on MacOS. At first it didn't seem like a big deal, but I found out there were lots of people who wanted to try it on Mac. In my case, it turned out to be all about how to compile it, what's in the Makefile, how to install Clang and the required libs SDL2 and Boost.

For Windows, I used to use DevC++, which uses a version of mingw. That was orphaned but it still worked. I knew I was building a 64 bit executable in Linux, but I wasn't able to do that in Windows. So I switched to msys2.org. This also uses mingw but it is constantly updated. There are completely separate build utilities for 32 bit and 64 bit executables. Msys is actually a command shell that acts very much like a bash shell in Linux. It has a package manager that allows you to install and update all kinds of neat stuff and it puts everything in its right place. So headers and libs are super easy.