November 28, 2005
You have been warned
I don’t know if it’s really a good idea to show Pharlap in its current state, but from the emails I received after my demos on MAX Singapore and Spark Europe I know that some of you are really eager to play around with it. So be it. But don’t be disappointed - this thing is still in alpha. To put this into the right context - the current state is the result of ca. 3 weeks of coding.
Before you can start you will have to do some preparations:
- Get Flash 8 if you haven’t got it yet.
- Use a Windows machine. The faster the better. Pharlap is hungry for performance. I did not test if this thing works at all on a Mac. You may try of course if you are daring, but if there will ever be a Mac version it will be in the very far future.
- Use Internet Explorer. I’m very sorry for that, but it turned out that the ExternalInterface communication that I make havy use of works best in that browser. You can use Firefox, too, but I was under the impression that the Flash-to-Javascript-to-Java-to-Javascript-to-Flash pipeline is not as fluid. I did not test this with any other browser. Actually right now it is not my intention to make this thing as cross-browser compatible as possible. It’s a standalone application after all.
- Check if you have got the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). If not - just follow the update or installation instructions on the Java.com site. It’s probably not really necessary to have the latest version, but it’s one source of doubt less, why Pharlap possibly does not work on your machine.
- Get JSyn. This is needed to get the live sound data from your sound card. This is why we need Java - Flash 8 cannot yet analyze sound. In a future Flash 8.5 version of Pharlap that part will probably not be necessary anymore because of the native getSoundSpectrum() method of AS3.
- Allow popups from this site. Pharlap needs two windows: one hosts the control panel, the other one contains the actual stage which shows the visuals. The usual setup is to move the control panel to one screen and the stage to a second screen.
If you have everything prepared launch Pharlap v0.1.
Depending on your browser’s security settings you will see at least one, possibly some more warning message boxes: the one that will definitely appear is a Java confirmation box that asks for your permission to plug into your sound card - it is possible that it will be hidden under the stage or control panel window - but you will have to confirm it first before you can proceed. There might be some more Windows confirmation boxes asking you if you want to allow Scripting/ActiveX etc. - confirm all these with “Okay” or “Yes”.
You might also see the “A script is running slow” message by Flash. If that pops up do not confirm to abort the script - it will only appear once. Pharlap is currently not optimized to be loaded via an internet connection, but rather on a local server, so that might be the reason for that message.
After the two windows have appeared and all confirmation boxes have been confirmed you are ready to go. If your screen size is 1024×768 you will have to set the control panel to fullscreen (press the F11 key) - if it’s less you will have no fun. If you do not have two screens you can also close the stage window and temporarily use the preview window only to play around. If you have to screens, move the stage to the other screen and press F11 to set it to fullscreen mode, too.
That’s it for the moment. Explore the possibilities, discover the bugs, get angry about the missing features. In the coming days I will hopefully have some time for some “first steps” tutorials.
Oh yes before you ask - the source code will NOT be available at the moment. But I will probably publish some of the used classes soon, like the live sound analysis and the MIDI controller connection. Please be patient. Decompiling will harm your karma.
Filed by Mario Klingemann at 2:41 pm under Pharlap v0.1
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