Virtual Light Machine using Tapes?

[leech]

Seems to me that I found some sort of VLM program for the A8 at some point in the past, but I can't recall if it just had some examples for it, or you could actually input music via tape through it.  Or if this is even possible?

 

After seeing the Bad Apple demo running on an Atari 400 with full music coming in from the tape, I was thinking 'how sweet would a VLM based around an Atari 8bit be?'  Would be even cooler to get the Fujinet to stream MP3s or something this way...

[+Stephen]

You are probably thinking of Colourspace (by Jeff Minter).  This work morphed into Colourspace for the ST, then Trip-A-Tron.  On the Jaguar CD we got VLM (Virtual Light Machine), then on the Nuon we got VLM-2.  On the XBox 360 it had now morphed into an engine called Neon.  He's still working on it, and his latest engine powers his most recent games.

 

Also - Colourspace was meant to be "played" and it can record your performance so that it can later be replayed, and if done properly, in sync with the music.

 

Keep in mind though - the Audio In on the SIO line only goes to the TV speaker.  The computer doesn't get to sample the audio, so it cannot be properly interactive.

[_The Doctor__]

I'd like to see it sample an audio input via the I/O ports (aka stick/paddle ports)

 

[spookt]

1 hour ago, Stephen said:

You are probably thinking of Colourspace (by Jeff Minter).  This work morphed into Colourspace for the ST, then Trip-A-Tron.  On the Jaguar CD we got VLM (Virtual Light Machine), then on the Nuon we got VLM-2.  On the XBox 360 it had now morphed into an engine called Neon.  He's still working on it, and his latest engine powers his most recent games.

 

Also - Colourspace was meant to be "played" and it can record your performance so that it can later be replayed, and if done properly, in sync with the music.

 

Keep in mind though - the Audio In on the SIO line only goes to the TV speaker.  The computer doesn't get to sample the audio, so it cannot be properly interactive.

I seem to remember a ‘disco lights’ type in program that let you play music via the cassette and flashed colour bars in time to the beat or peaks in the music automatically? Hmm, where was it listed …

[baktra]

7 hours ago, spookt said:

I seem to remember a ‘disco lights’ type in program that let you play music via the cassette and flashed colour bars in time to the beat or peaks in the music automatically? Hmm, where was it listed …

It was a BASIC tenliner, if I recall correctly.

 

If you place the music track to the right channel, and poll the SKSTAT, you will get some "patterns" from the FSK demodulator driven by the music. Too rough, of course, for any sophisicated light patterns, in my opinion.

[Rybags]

There were sampling devices that used the joystick ports, not sure if they uses POT input or digital via the stick pins (maybe both?)

 

The problem though is that to get any sort of meaningful analysis of the audio in real time you'd be left with barely any CPU time to do graphics rendering.

[deffroe]

21 hours ago, spookt said:

I seem to remember a ‘disco lights’ type in program that let you play music via the cassette and flashed colour bars in time to the beat or peaks in the music automatically? Hmm, where was it listed …

That was my thoughts when I started reading this thread, it was a type-in from Atari User magazine.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Virtual Light Machine using keyboard...

ahem, just press a key to change effect.

 

 

VLMDEMO.xex

[pirx]

On 9/27/2023 at 7:43 AM, Rybags said:

There were sampling devices that used the joystick ports, not sure if they uses POT input or digital via the stick pins (maybe both?)

POT is too slow for sampling (almost the whole screen worth of scanlines), but could be good enough for beat detection or something like this. When you switch to the fast POT mode the resolution is very poor, still maybe good enough for VLM

[_The Doctor__]

exactly none of these (including high discoteque) do a complete sampling of the music, they're just grab beats, high points and sometimes point from a melody or lyric. You don't need a 24 channel spectrum analyzer, just grabbing some number/levels, a more complex I/O port dongle could be made if you wanted to try all that though and you could set triggers analog and pot or I/O if you wanted...

With that in mind you could probably use a cheap spectrum display and trigger off of its output bars...

Edited September 28, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[13matt]

I think C&VG did a type in for the atari. It was just blocks of text in antic mode 6 and it responded to music played on the datarecorder. The effect was quite good if the rhythm was strong on the music. Just a pity the playback was always so noisy. I did try once putting a single on my turntable and a tape in the 1010. Worked for a bit with my TV on mute but it got out of sync towards the end. 

[Rybags]

I suppose the conversion circuit could potentially recognise parts of audio as FSK tones but don't think it would correlate to any particular beat or frequency within the music.

In a lot of cases we could see visual representation of such a thing and think otherwise.

The processing power needed to produce much useful - remember that the PS1 wasn't even fast enough to do MP3 playback.

Similar things could have been done on the Falcon but it has the benefit of the DSP.