News from fxpansion >GEIST 2<

[Teksonik]

What do you think about the new gui?

It's friggin hideous.....

I hate this new flat lifeless bland 2d crap spawned by Windows 10. I'm sure others love it.......they should be forced to go back to using an Atari ST.........

[Dasheesh]

Hey thanks day job. Those are looking better.

[jacqueslacouth]

What do you think about the new gui?

It's friggin hideous.....

I hate this new flat lifeless bland 2d crap spawned by Windows 10. I'm sure others love it.......they should be forced to go back to using an Atari ST.........

Could not agree more! Grotesque!

[PatchAdamz]

What do you think about the new gui?

It's friggin hideous.....

I hate this new flat lifeless bland 2d crap spawned by Windows 10. I'm sure others love it.......they should be forced to go back to using an Atari ST.........

Could not agree more! Grotesque!

I'm sure the GUI will have a few different color choices.
That will help a little.
(that green is a bit nauseating)

[elxsound]

Loving it.

Finally. Can't wait for this.

[Teksonik]

I'm sure the GUI will have a few different color choices.
That will help a little.
(that green is a bit nauseating)

Man I'm not sure there is any color in the spectrum that will help that mess.............

[dredd i knight]

I think the gui is fine but tbh, I'm more interested in how they improve on Geist itself. Yeah the looks are important, but the improvements they making sound really good.... This thread seems stuck on the looks, and I'd have thought anyone interested in Geist would be more interested in the programs actual improvements...

[Teksonik]

This thread seems stuck on the looks,

The OP.............

What do you think about the new gui?

So opinions on the "looks" was the original question.

How can you be interested in something you don't even want to look at ? Anyway all we've got at this point is a screenshot so obviously that's what the conversation will be about until there is a demo version. I don't even see any information about Geist 2's new features. Can you point me to any information on the "improvements" ?

EDIT: I did find this on the FXpansion forum from a few days ago:

"Is there any tentative idea of when G2 will be available

1.) Not yet. early next year would be my guess, with public beta before that"

So wake me when there is some real news........

[pdxindy]

I think the gui is fine but tbh, I'm more interested in how they improve on Geist itself. Yeah the looks are important, but the improvements they making sound really good.... This thread seems stuck on the looks, and I'd have thought anyone interested in Geist would be more interested in the programs actual improvements...

What improvements sound good? I want to hear about them!

[dayjob]

I think the gui is fine but tbh, I'm more interested in how they improve on Geist itself. Yeah the looks are important, but the improvements they making sound really good.... This thread seems stuck on the looks, and I'd have thought anyone interested in Geist would be more interested in the programs actual improvements...

What improvements sound good? I want to hear about them!

there's some info in the fxpansion forum geist thread

http://www.fxpansion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7581066

looks like they're packing lot's of filters, fx and stuff form their standalone FX plug ins.. bloom, maul, etch etc..

scalable vector gui.. 12 bit sampler emulation mode. HiQ interpolation etc.

we'll see. sounds like they're really making it a beast. hopefully they can make it all manageable with a decent gui.

[budweiser]

Man I'm not sure there is any color in the spectrum that will help that mess.............

I second that and can't say it better

[PatchAdamz]

I'm sure the GUI will have a few different color choices.
That will help a little.
(that green is a bit nauseating)

Man I'm not sure there is any color in the spectrum that will help that mess.............

Mauve?

[ENV1]

You obviously haven't checked in a while

The U-he GUI's have mostly been updated (A new Zebra GUI is in beta) and are now crisp at all sizes. Give Hive a try for example...

Thats true, i havent. I have thrown all UH stuff out after the Tyrell episode. But thats another story. Not worth getting into.


As for the UI thing, yesterday i had the chance to take a look at the recently released BeatZille, and from what i could tell its all still the same (one set of static images) except for the fact that the image resources are now made precisely twice as large as the UI is at 100%, which means 100% is really 50% from an image-size perspective, hence the more you blow the UI up the sharper the images get simply because you are getting closer and closer to their actual (100% sharpness) size.

So no real changes here, except for the image size doubling. (Which definitely makes a lot of sense since the interpolation is actually pretty good in this case.) But what i said about loss of sharpness still applies; there will always be some amount of interpolation-degradation unless you set the UI size to 200%. It just cant be helped.

There is another option. You can render realistic 3D GUIs on the fly with OpenGL. That isn't as commonly done, but it is an option.

Agreed. Technically thats certainly something that could be seen in the future. But if Native Instruments' attempt to try something like this is any indication (to my knowledge the only attempt so far) then the success of it is rather doubtful. With the initial release of Replika (im sure we all remember) half of the people either had massive problems or couldnt get it to work at all. And even after the update there were still problems for many, including myself, which is why i finally had to give up on it.

So if this method of UI creation is ever to become an option that can actually be let loose on the consumer, a lot more work is needed. Personally i would therefore not really count it among 'usable' options at this point.

You can also do a hybrid of prerendered knobs in varying sizes with a vector background, dynamic text, and decent layout manager.

I guess so. But for this to be good youd need everything in a lot of different sizes, (which means more HDD space and RAM), plus it wouldnt work for the background unless you used something extremely simple or straight unicolored, so at the very least you would have the interpolation problem there. (Sure, theoretically you could make a gazillion backgrounds as well so that each UI increase/decrease by 1 pixel is covered by a new image. But thats so extreme, i doubt anyone would ever do it.)

So if we are talking from a 'could it be done' point of view then the answer is definitely yes. But if the question is 'would it actually be better than offering several fixed sizes' then i would say no, it would not be, because it will never be as precise as a static solution and only mean more work for both the developer and the UI/GFX designer. (A lot more work, actually.)


That being said, im still convinced that we will see a lot more vector UIs in the not so distant future regardless of how good or bad a solution people might consider it to be from a 'technical' point of view. There will be more simply because this is what people want these days, and by extension what sells these days. Whether everyone eventually chooses this route remains to be seen; Waldorf for example chose to go the different static sizes way with their recent updates (normal and XL in their case) so although vector is very popular at the moment, not everyone is jumping on the vector bandwagon yet...

[Teksonik]

Mauve?

Especially not Mauve..........

Anyway put an ENV1 skin on it and then I would be interested........

[kingtubby]

Sorry, slightly off topic, but the Cytomic plugins scale beautifully. I don't know what method he used but he did a great job, imo.