Friday, December 21, 2007

Community Video: Fun with WiiMote and Compiz Fusion



Since I won't have time to make videos over this holiday, I've decided to look over videos I enjoy or find interesting and post them here as "Community Videos." Of course, they will all remain about Compiz Fusion and related topics!

This was made by our very own SmSpillaz, whom you should know by now:

This video demonstrates how you can use a WiiMote along with Compiz Fusion to do some pretty cool stuff.

Note that it is done all with the inbuilt accelerometer, and I'm using the 'Hack' WiiMote driver via uinput. There is an actual driver being developed by the freedesktop guys as we speak (And it works with MPX too :))

I didn't use the IR pointer because it's a pain to use with plugins that warp the pointer (Such as cube) and puts your pointer out of sync.

More info at smspillaz.wordpress.com
My observations: It looks like an interesting way of manipulating Compiz Fusion (and a desktop in general) but certainly not something that would be useful or have a purpose other than impressing people with your 1337 h4x0r skillz :P. Still, good work Sam!

Please note that I did not make this video, or any others in the future labeled "Community Video." Refer to the Youtube page to give the author feedback.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Video: Practical Uses of Desktop Effects

EDIT: The link is fixed now! Also added the name of the song. Please recast your ratings on youtube :D Thanks!


I hope you enjoy this silly video parodying Compiz Fusion's effects. :) This is all I will do for the next few weeks, since I will be busy on vacation :D

High Quality MPEG file here

Thanks for answering the poll by the way.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Episode III

Original MPEG added.


As a special treat, I present episode III of FusionCast. It's a no-talking episode, but it features Freescale, Shelf, and Freewins, and a few less known features of these three new(ish) plugins.

Hope you enjoy, and don't mind if the quality is a little below my usual standard--I made this in a few hours.

All three plugins are available through the GIT repository.

Notes
=======

Freescale is a simple hack by SmSpillaz that changes Freewins so that it scales windows instead of rotating them. It has a few bugs, and is a hack, so the code is less polished.

Shelf, on the other hand, is based on the miniwin plugin from long ago. The name was suggested by me in the forums, when I had the same sort of idea. Since it's coded by KristianLy (he made many plugins and is a member of the team), and has been made from scratch, it will most likely have less bugs and be under longer development. Also, the point of Shelf is more useful than Freescale is, since Freescale is what its name says--free-scaling. It has about as much use as Freewins. Shelf, however, should be useful as a sort of replacement to minimization.

The bugs at the end are just a little example of silly things you can do. If you make all your windows at the same 3d angle as the desktop, it can look sort of like you are working on a 3d table. Of course, you can't use your windows while using Freewins, but.... it looks cool. :D


Original MPEG here.


Please email me at fusioncast at gmail dot com!
I am on IRC frequently under the nick of gavintlgold.
Also, comment by clicking on the link below.

Clarification about shelf

Some folks were confused about the use of shelf, so I decided to post my idea right here on the blog. Kristian (the developer working on it) doesn't want to do the group integration, because he doesn't feel that it's good to have a dependency on it. But other than that he's going to base it on the following forum post (and how miniwin was in its old stages):

Another Plugin Idea: Shelf Plugin
Now, I wish i could code this, but I don't know anything about it. But here's my idea.

We have a new plugin called "Shelf". It requires the group/tab plugin to work (and integrates well with it). The basic idea: When you initiate the event, the plugin scales down to a small size that sits on your desktop (with a nice reflection). Here's a mockup: Ok, now we have a mockup of a mouseover (of course it would look slicker, i just drew this with the pencil tool):

Here's another idea: A different mode called "card" mode that would look like this (and enable rotation, etc): [this was added before freewins was invented, right now we might be able to just have freewins do this]
For more, and the discussion, click here.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Note to self...

NEVER USE NTSC MODE IN KDENLIVE.

The audio won't work.

That is all.

By the way, I'm exporting a nice quick video now. Look forward to it very soon!

Resolution!

So, finally we find out what happened to the webspace. Our friendly host fsckr found a notice from 1and1 saying that there was pornography on his page, and that they deleted it. He then asked them to remake it, since he had no knowledge of it.

Well, it was my forum's spam gremlins that did it. So now we know what was up.

In this very very late update, I may as well add that I have ubuntu and compiz fusion git back, and have all those mouthwateringly cool new plugins installed.

So..... I think I'll see if I can make a silent (Since audio takes a lot of work) new fusioncast vid featuring those (think Shelf, freewins, freescale, atlantis2, snowball... all those good things).

Sorry for being the typical bad vidcaster and leaving you all alone without an update.

Luckily SmSpillaz has done nothing of the sort, and remains faithful with his Community News. Read that for now.