Flash Player 10 beta is here, and it sports some impressive new visual tricks — further illustrations of what I mean when I say the "rich" part of rich media is so important, whatever the JavaScript coders may tell you:

• 3D "effects" and API: this isn’t true 3D, as you can get with direct OpenGL access in Java (and thus Processing), but it does allow some basic 3D effects and greatly-simplified movement on the Z plane
• Pixel effects: custom filters and effects via the Pixel Bender technology scripted in After Effects — rejoice, AE fans!
• Advanced text: This is what I really miss in Processing, and the gap just got bigger. (Hmm… anyone want to code a ligature library?)
• Newer drawing API: Badly-needed improvements for drawing shapes
• Better performance: More GPU acceleration, all automatic, for drawing and video alike

I still think there are plenty of reasons to go with Processing as a visualist, and I’m excited to see how JavaFX, the new Java-based multimedia scripting language and platform from Sun, progresses. But Flash 10 should be very good news for people who like the things that make Flash Flash (video support, for instance, and things like tweening classes), and it means we should be seeing great new things in the awesome open source, Flash-based visual tool Onyx VJ in the near future.

Thanks to Glenn for the reminder!

You can check out some demos or even download the preview of the player itself:

Flash Player 10 @ Adobe Labs

What about Flash and open source? Well, the picture is a little clouded.

This illustrates why people are jumping for Processing.js, even if it cripples many of the things that make Processing cool. Paul Downey inadvertently hits the nail on the head:

… somehow hadn’t got around to actually doing anything with it. You see it’s the whole Java thing that puts me off; when it comes to playtime life’s far too short to wrangle a CLASSPATH or compile an applet.

Ah-hah — there’s the reason: developer laziness, and fear of Java. And rightfully so. Configuring a full-blown IDE for Java can in fact be some effort — I think it’s well worth it when you’re doing lots of work over time, but what if you just want to sketch?

Here’s the good news: Processing’s "founding fathers" Ben Fry and Casy Reas agree with you.

The thing is, these JavaScript developers I think haven’t bothered actually trying Processing — the real Processing in Java. The creators of Processing understood that traditional Java development could be a pain. So the whole point of the Processing IDE that you get when you download — a simplified text editor that understands the Processing language — is saving you exactly that trouble. You almost never, ever have to deal with "wrangling a classpath." It just doesn’t happen, certainly not with the included libraries (which do a lot more than Processing.js can). In fact, there’s even a download for Windows that takes care of installing Java for you. Nor do you have to worry about the effort involved in "compiling an applet." Again, Processing does the work for you.

In case you’re interested, what Paul did is reasonably cool — he set up Processing.js inside TiddlyWiki, the personal notebook tool.

But, Paul, in the time it took you to do that, you could have been off and running in the Processing editor. Give it a shot, really. As I said, I think the hack for JavaScript is very much in the spirit of Processing as an open platform. But if you don’t experience it in Java, you’re missing out on a lot of what it can do.

I think ports, hacks, and tech projects are fantastic. I’m a believer in experiments and proof of concept. So when I saw the port of Processing to JavaScript, I was impressed. I think this stuff is valuable, even if it’s imperfect.

Processing.js could indeed be useful in some cases, and it’s a testament to developer John Resig’s prowess as a JavaScript guru. But it’s limited by the restrictions of JavaScript. That isn’t a deal-breaker — it just means you need to adjust expectations and use this tool as what it is.

Unfortunately, the word "JavaScript" is magical to a lot of the Web development community in a way that seems to make them lose sight of reality.

Processing.js Aftermath [John Resig blog]

That’s sad. Because if "Java" remains a four-letter word (erm … well, you know what I mean), it really will be a massive blow to the open future of rich client media.

The Reality

Processing in Java is …

• Extensible (you can easily add Java libraries to add features)
• Massively compatible (you need only Java 1.3 or later, which believe it or not is already on the majority of machines — on CDM, we see roughly the same penetration as we do for Flash)
• Fast (significantly faster than JavaScript for processor-intensive operations)
• 3D
• Functional in the browser and as desktop software on every platform
• Compatible with desktop features (hardware support, MIDI, synthesis, audio, video … see the extensible bit)

Processing in JavaScript is …

• Limited to JavaScript’s capabilities — and thus not nearly as extensible
• Massively incompatible (IE7 doesn’t work at all. Firefox 3 is recommended, even though it’s not out yet.)
• Slow, often unstable, and CPU-hungry
• Browser-only
• Loses all desktop functionality (hardware support is significantly less than what you get with Flash)

This is not to say it’s not a good idea, or that it’s not fun to play with. In fact, none of the above restrictions take away from the coolness of John’s project — I’m really glad he did this, and I think it has a lot of potential. But let’s see how the JavaScript-happy blogosphere takes the news…

I’m sure that after all of our gentle prompting, people are keeping a watchful RSS reader over Flight404.

For those who haven’t been paying attention: The latest iteration in Robert’s wonderfully evolving Magnetosphere series was designed for the AniBoom Radiohead video contest:

Weird Fishes: Arpeggi from flight404 on Vimeo.

More information.

Cat hit up the Amoeba Dance comments with a link to Sanch TV’s work in vvvv.

Apart from some smooth motion and subtly textured shapes, Sanch is also collaborating on an AV act “Va”, with quad-screen visuals:

I’m sure I’m not the only visualist to have been inspired by Autechre’s Gantz Graf video, nor the only person to have watched it and though “some day, we will be able to do that in realtime”:

I think we’re still quite a way off, but the latest project to set my mind thinking along these lines is Amoeba Dance - Caliper Remote (and the followup, Amoeba Dance with Mad Girls,) by CDMo reader Memo:

This is created realtime in VDMX from a quartz composer generator, controlled by 9-band audio analysis, and topped off with a very nice little effects chain.

A few people have mentioned they don’t get the same look when they use the QTZ file, this is because the QTZ file renders with very basic shading and there is quite a bit of post done in VDMX. The Effects I’m using (from top to bottom) are:
Serpia Tone (100%, Source Atop)
Shaded Material (0-40% tied to audio analysis, Soft Light)
City Lights (100%, Source Atop)
Bloom (100%, Screen)

I’ve also got a 9-band audio analysis going on, with different frequencies driving all the parameters of QTZ. You can just setup the frequencies randomly and it will do pretty cool stuff to almost any song (see http://www.memo.tv/amoeba_dance_v1_5 for an example!!), but it is best to taylor the frequencies to the specific song…

Memo shares the GLSL code and the QTZ file on his site, which contains some interesting nuggets of QC, Actionscript, Processing and other codey goodness. PK: Because this uses GLSL which runs in any OpenGL environment, you could also port the geometry stuff to Processing, Max/MSP/Jitter, Pd/GEM, or (with some adjustments) even things like vvvv, etc. — no need for Quartz Composer per se.

He also maintains a VDMX and Quartz Composer repository: http://vdmx.memo.tv/.

Awesome work, and more to come it seems.

For all of the other CDMo readers who are doing cool things, don’t wait for us to find you: Hit the comments or the contact page and tell us what you’re up to!

Attention, vector math fans! Wait … stop. That’s a terrible lead. Let me try again.

Open source advocates, your attention, please! Okay, slightly better.

Anyway, Java3D, the fully object-oriented Java API to 3D visuals, is now fully open source. That actually is big news to vector math coder types, because the vector math packages are now all modifiable if you like. For visualists, the news is that even the relatively sophisticated portions of Java are going fully open — including, in this case, a key 3D component for the ubiquitous taste sensation Processing I keep talking about ad infinitum.

Much as Cat Stevens became Yusuf Islam and Lesley Hornby became Twiggy, Java3D won’t be called Java3D any more. Since 3D graphics programmers excel at marketing, it’ll instead be called “3D Graphics API for the Java Platform.”

On the off chance you’re not confused yet, Java3D isn’t the only open source 3D graphics API for the … um … Java platform. JOGL, the Java binding to OpenGL, is also open source (under the BSD instead of the GPL). So, what’s the difference between JOGL and the API Formerly Known as Java3D? (Speaking of which, can we just call the latter Fred? Fred is a great name for an API.)

Imagine VJing with a stream of live snapshots from partygoers — or playing live data from the Web on email statistics as though it were a musical/visual instrument. The ability of tools like Processing to make numbers fluid opens up new interfaces to the storehouses of data on the Web — but also makes them friendly to artists and visualists.

I’ll be doing a workshop at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin with S. Joy Mountford, formerly VP Design Innovation, Yahoo and leader of the Yahoo Design Innovation Team aka yHaus. Joy certainly knows her stuff — not only did she lead a ground-breaking team at Yahoo, but she’s also supported student work and research and has a long history in interaction design including working on the original QuickTime interface. We’ll talk about the work being done, where we think these technologies are going, and how you can give it a try yourself.

Data as Art: Musical, Visual Web APIs [Event Page, SxSWi]

5:00 pm - 6:00 pm, Sunday, March 9

Regine at We Make Money Not Art has a fantastic overview (summarizing a recent workshop) of presenting data and numbers visually:

Visualizing: tracing an aesthetics of data

It’s a great read; well worth working through the whole thing.

The art of presenting data more expressively is exploding fast. It was a big part of the impetus behind the creation of Processing, the artistic coding tool. (In fact, a lot of those post reminds me of some of the ideas Ben Fry explored at a workshop I attended in Aspen, Colorado. While Processing is often used by artists for other purposes, it was born as a means of making data visual.)

Ben describes data visualization as “thinking with the eyes” — provocative stuff. But coming from a music background, I’m always interested in the senses going beyond thought. Could data become a live performance tool? With Processing (and other tools) in the hands of VJs/visualists, there’s nothing preventing artists from taking that next step.

If you’re going to South by Southwest Interactive (March in Austin), I’ll be presenting a panel (and possibly one or two events) on data as art, both in visuals and music, and will speak specifically to this question of performance tool. Already confirmed for the panel session is pioneering interaction designer S. Joy Mountford, who led Appple’s International Interface Design Project and is now on Yahoo’s Design Innovation Team. More details on that event soon.

What happens when data artists and interaction designers collide with VJs and digital musicians? I’m excited to find out.