Re: [sc-users] pen/geometry

On Mar 4, 2006, at 1:55 PM, kubick wrote:

Robb,
how is the latency/cpu strain using that SC/Processing method?

The latency wasn't bad at all. I was dispatching messages simultaneously to both SCSynth and Processing on the same machine, as well as catching OSC messages from a PC (running Max) across a wireless network, and yes there was some degree of latency (which I think is normal. Right now I am working with a hardware interface to Processing to SC, all on the same machine, and can sense a *very slight* delay, part of which might even be due to the delay function purposely written into the evaluation loop of my hardware). And I have noticed that with large networked setups, sending and receiving lots of messages from various locations that every once and a while there are 'stalls', which I assume are from either the network hardware (switches/routers) and/or the network protocols wrangling messages. But all in all it's about as 'real time' as one could expect from networking.

seems like an interesting thing to pursue......though I fear the cpu load
thing, which is already a problem for me, just in SC.....

Again, running SC and Processing side-by-side, CPU load was as lovely as ever, meaning low. Granted I was just running an SC GUI control to send messages to for four lightweight synths in SCSynth, and passing OSC messages Processing, nothing really heavy. And at times Processing felt a bit sluggish, but I think that was mostly due to the hack recursive code I wrote to make my objects have 'feathered' edges (yes, something I know you want to do too). But I never actually checked the CPU load, in part because it never felt like it was anywhere near critical on my 1.5G 12" Mac laptop.

A lot of what I'm doing (using SCTextView) is moving text around
on the screen, which seems to cause hiccups pretty quickly....
being new to all of this, I'm not sure if that's just because I've coded
badly...or if SC isn't optimised for graphics...or if it's just a cpu intensive
task, and that's why that sort of thing often gets rendered in advance.

You'd have to ask James or others how graphics heavy it is, but...

I've been thinking that maybe OpenGL could be a cheaper route to go..??...
but I don't know much about what that would entail as far as connectivity
w/ the sc server. I suppose it would be a matter of writing some UGens...?
(and of course there is the small issue of learning openGL....)

... not to sound like a Processing zealot, rather just advocating the 'right tool for the job', I can tell you that Processing is optimized for graphics in 2d, OpenGL and P3D (the native Processing 3d environment). It is also open source (free) and, with the addition of a third-party class supports OSC, which makes it very easy to interface to SC. And yes,given that you mentioned text, has functions for graphically manipulating text.

Plus, being based on Java, if you are comfortable writing code in SC you should be able to pick it up quickly (that said; have fun getting used to having to 'type' all your variables!)

And, I noticed something I hadn't noticed before, thanks to Julian;
which is that Color does support alpha channels.