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DirectX Coursework2 Hand-in

Simon — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:02:48 +0000

Here is a screenshot of my mobile lights floating around the fish model all wrapped up in a micro-terrain:

Update on DirectX 2

Simon — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:31:05 +0000

Here are some screenshots I took a couple of days ago of developing my mobile lights. I’ve also decided to re-use the fish model for now since I have nothing better to replace it with!

Here is a shot of my first light, not doing very much interesting.

The final lights are completely mobile and have behaviour determined by taking analogue signals from my USB circuitboard. The motion ranges from soothing and gentle to fast and erratic.

Running DirectX with Analogue Input

Simon — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:44:43 +0000

Here’s a screenshot of my visualiser with a model (albeit the tiger model), mobile camera AND analogue input signals displaying in the output, built on the DXUT utility library.

A few more tweaks were needed to get the slower USB interface to read reliably while DirectX pounded my graphics card for every FPS it could get.

Useful DXUT DirectX Pages

Simon — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:05:57 +0000

Rather than simply tagging this page I thought it more appropriate to draw greater attention to it for myself:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb173254(VS.85).aspx

DirectX Coursework 1

Simon — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:12:01 +0000

Since I thought the fish looked a bit odd without its limbs I’ve decided to post another screenshot, this time of it actually running in DirectX and with the animated parts:

(Only after I took this and put it online did I notice the comments in the background…)

Creating a Visualisation in Visual Studio 2008 (Part 2)

Simon — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:18:12 +0000

Ultimately the point of researching how to create a Media Player visualisation was to be able to include DirectX capability.

After a lot of searching I found information on the subject (http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Development/microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.graphics/2004-11/0316.html) saying that the Summer 2003 DirectX SDK features a demo being implemented in a Media Player visualisation.

The Summer 2003 SDK: The Summer 2003 DirectX SDK

Creating a Visualisation in Visual Studio 2008 (Part 1)

Simon — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:45:07 +0000

I vaguely remember trying out something a long time ago with an old SDK and an old educational version of Visual Studio (obtained from university in the first year). There was a sample visualisation in C++ that could be immediately tested out in Windows Media Player.

But this was a long time ago and the files have been lost under several OS reinstalls and the voluminous expansion of accumulated stuff. Instead I would have to start anew with recent SDKs and the new Visual Studio 2008 for my Programming for Digital Media module. But because this wasn’t straightforward, and the number of circles I’ve had to run in will prove tedious to recount, I’ve decided to simply post what you DO need to do to get this to work.

The Method (sans crap)

Download the full new Windows SDK (the standalone Windows Media Player SDK will not help you…) Google it to find this huge installer.
Follow the instructions on MSDN for installing the Plugin Wizard into Visual Studio in general (not 2008) found on this MSDN page.
To summarise, this basically involves copying the three Windows Media Player Plugin wizard files from the SDK (C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1\Samples\Multimedia\WMP_11\wizards\VSNET) into the visual studio directory(C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcprojects) – my installations were probably the default locations.
Choose the 2005 one but rename it to wmpwiz.vsz once it’s copied
Then you open the file with Notepad and change it to look like this:
VSWIZARD 7.0 Wizard=VsWizard.VsWizardEngine.9.0 Param="WIZARD_NAME = Windows Media Player Plug-in Wizard" Param="ABSOLUTE_PATH = C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1\Samples\Multimedia\WMP_11\wizards\VSNET" Param="FALLBACK_LCID = 1033" Param="VS2003 = 1"
The original solution can be found here.

Nigel Thursdays

Simon — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:30:29 +0000

It would seem that from 9am onwards, Nigel Barlow is taking every lecture and practical of my day.

Something I spotted in his second session (but only lecture of the day) was the reference to “Computers which don’t look like computers?” links that go to miniature computer motherboard PCBs that run some form of inbuilt operating system. I’d say something like this could have a lot of potential for the games module should we want to build some form of physical installation.

The examples given were Gumstix and Colibri Modules.

Uploads

I’ve also managed to upload a few more images of times gone onto Flickr. Generally they’re heading for the Traditional Artwork set.