iBeams

I meant to post this a week ago, here’s me trying to explain all the various bells and knobs of ibeams

there’s a link from the first info pages to the video

I’m getting close to releasing a new version of iBeams.

New Features:

• Ability to use a custom background.
• Touches, Sources and Targets can now deform space, effectively they can create localized grid distortions
• A number of auto movement options on the touches and sources
• Touches have a visual representation and there are sound effects for the interaction.
• A bunch of new viral bits, save to photo album, email a screen grab to a friend, direct upload to twitter (eg http://twitpic.com/16bot4 )
• A bunch of UI improvements: New visibility page that puts all the various options in one place. UI maximize button. The option page control is now always visible.

Happily enough I’ve now made my investment back (it took a year and I think the music visualization was key.) iBeams is selling well and appears to be much more interesting then audiogasam or Spawn Illuminati, or pretty much any other visualizer I’ve come across.  I don’t think there’s much more I could do with the idea, except port it to the iPad

After a 6 month break Version 2.0 of iBeams arrived on the appstore last week. By some creative analysis of the microphone power levels I’ve turned it into a music visualizer

Showing the multiple sources/target functionality and the motion blur controls

Apple seems to have changed some of their indexing/search algos, the result is that the free version of iBeams has plunged in “popularity” in the last week:

http://www.mobclix.com/appstore/1/app/304286607

A new version of the lite app should show up in a day or two, the lite version is pretty close to what I originally shipped as iBeams. And a new version of iBeams with the infinite recursion code should show up in a similar time frame.  I’m really hoping that changes the sales trajectory.

One of the glitches that I had hit while developing iBeams was an odd visual humming when turning motion blur all away up. I’ve attempted to fix this by rendering into an off-screen frame buffer and discovered some nice side benefits:

Video:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/56692683@N00/3384301461/

I’ve seen a couple of discussions on the web suggesting that the iPhone didn’t support Frame buffer objects, they definitely work although I didn’t have much luck getting them to render into a buffer that was bigger then the screen resolution (320 x 480).

By ping-ponging between two FBO’s I was able to create a feedback loop much like you’d get by pointing a video camera at a monitor showing the video camera’s view, or a hall of mirrors. With a couple of parameter tweaks, iBeams now emulates a dynamic Spirograph stretching off into infinity.  I’m hoping to get the changes submitted to the store in the next couple of days.

There’s now a iBeams flicker group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/ibeams/

We’re putting the finishing touches on a new version of iBeams, UI screen shots bellow:



It’s now possible to create new sources, new stable targets that aren’t associated with touches. Directly edit the color of beams and the background. Hopefully it’ll be out by next week.

The iBeams lite app has finaly made it through Q&A, it’s pretty weak, I really wish apple had timed demos instead of trying to figure out how to cripple your software so that it’s still useful but still worth buying the full version.

This video was done by Eric March of http://www.frapstr.com/ and shows off some of the latest features of iBeams. Version 1.1 is currently going through Q&A at Apple but should be out in a few days. It adds a number of new visual effects as well as a new user interface with controls for motion blur, the number of beams, speed of the system, and a few other bits.

The review at frapster

So after a bit of hoop jumping the app has been up for the last week at the store. I was actually traveling for work at the time. I’m hoping to have a video up in the next few days.

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