2011-07-08, 00:55
As someone who primarily uses XBCM to play music (on the Mac), I'm saddened by the distinct lack of visualization options. There are a few items in the menu, but honestly the only "real" choice is ProjectM. What options we do have are either simplistic our outdated.
Now, I know this is the internet, but I'm not just here to complain. I have a positive suggestion to contribute... honest!
Part of the beauty of open source projects like XBMC is that aspects can be opened up and handed off to others for expansion. Take fan art for example. Thanks to the efforts of fanart.tv, we gain access to an actively maintained (living) pool of content to improve our UI experience.
Why not do something similar with visualizations?
The core XBMC development team should not be burdened with the task of creating/porting/maintaining visualizations, but rather opening up the API so others can. Much like how we now install addons via an in-application UI, the same should exist for visualizations.
And rather than trying to create a new community of visualization developers, it may be a good idea to try and leverage existing communities, by making it easy for their visualizations to be imported. In this case, I am speaking specifically of the "demo scene" community.
http://www.demoscene.tv/
http://pouet.net/
http://scene.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
Here you have an active community of artists and programmers that create complex 2d and 3d visualizations (many of which are designed to interact with music). A partnership here could really breathe some new life into the world of XBMC visualizations.
Thoughts?
/Chris
Now, I know this is the internet, but I'm not just here to complain. I have a positive suggestion to contribute... honest!
Part of the beauty of open source projects like XBMC is that aspects can be opened up and handed off to others for expansion. Take fan art for example. Thanks to the efforts of fanart.tv, we gain access to an actively maintained (living) pool of content to improve our UI experience.
Why not do something similar with visualizations?
The core XBMC development team should not be burdened with the task of creating/porting/maintaining visualizations, but rather opening up the API so others can. Much like how we now install addons via an in-application UI, the same should exist for visualizations.
And rather than trying to create a new community of visualization developers, it may be a good idea to try and leverage existing communities, by making it easy for their visualizations to be imported. In this case, I am speaking specifically of the "demo scene" community.
http://www.demoscene.tv/
http://pouet.net/
http://scene.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
Here you have an active community of artists and programmers that create complex 2d and 3d visualizations (many of which are designed to interact with music). A partnership here could really breathe some new life into the world of XBMC visualizations.
Thoughts?
/Chris
