Recently the new Ventuz dongles have arrived. But since the old dongles were content with breaking down while taking them into the hand or putting them on the ground softly (yes and ok, sometimes by falling on the ground), the new Ventuz dongles come with an amazing new feature. The allready break down if you look at them, and respectively if you don’t look at them often  enough. Or they just don’t like my face.

Anyway they just break down for no reason. Sometimes only for a few seconds and sometimes forever. Nevertheless the old one’s had to be “touched” in a way for this to happen, the new one’s obviously not. Even installing them inside the pc does not protect them anymore from malfunctioning.

Basically I wouldn’t have a big problem with that, if there wasn’t another new development for safety (probably since version 4.4). Until now it was possible to remove the dongle after a presentation had been started and the presentation was still running perfectly. (This was kind of a safety function, if the dongle should break down during a running show/presentation) So now if you remove the dongle after the presentation was started it will stand still and it can also not be reactivated by inserting the dongle again. You have to wait 15 minutes before you can remove it without any danger. (The comprehendible idea behind this was the fact that so far it was possible to start 30 presentations with only one presenter dongle, which was not what the software producers had in mind. – That’s why this is not so easy any more. To start 30 presentations you would now need 8 hours)

As long as the dongles would function correctly, I wouldn’t have a problem with that – but they don’t. And it’s only a matter of time for such a dongle to malfunction during a running show/presentation.

So before going about any new features this problem should be solved. For the future you better turn away your face while inserting the dongle.

Here is the official summary on the exact meanings of the Ventuz statistics.

F = Framerate

G = Generation – Time of the value generators. These are movers, interpolating-elements, scroll-text and all the nodes generating new values for each frame.

B = Bindings – Connections and the validations resulting from value changes. This also includes generating resources, if necessary.

A = Stands for Abs-tree-validation. This is kind of a insider. The Abs-tree is the absolute hirachy-tree. That means not the one you see in Ventuz – but the one Ventuz really calculates. Including the setting of the matrixes in the axis and the other DirectX-states (materials,textures,…). For example: lots of spreaders will make this value rise.

V = Video  – and live-video decoding (and their transfers).

R = Rendering – the time Ventuz needs for its rendering process.

Thanks to Karol.

After a few months Realtime Mania is online again. Christan Schmidt former Ventuz product-manager and Ventuz guru decided to bring his blog back to life. We took the vote and think this is great.

http://realtimemania.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

Besides his english is a lot better than mine and maybe he’ll give us the honour to welcome him as author on our blog.

Who doesn’t get this one, should be glad about it. (hmm well … anyway this can only be understood by the one’s who understand it).

And as always – whoever can beat this – e-mail us…