10.4 preview r4376, r4393 - Feature round-up

Archived development update discussion from past versions
Archived development updates.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Yes, the style of the notes did change between those releases. (It was actually for an efficiency improvement to make note drawing take only two draw calls instead of three.) The work on Synthesia 11 has required a bit of new technology that will allow the old style with the new efficiency (although, that will probably be added in a release following 11).

Today there isn't an easy way to change those colors without modifying the texture stored inside the app itself.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Korados wrote:... the stuttering is less but not completely gone.
I've also noticed (this was just reinforced a minute ago) that Windows seems to give full-screen applications a higher priority for graphics.

Synthesia was just running rather stuttery and skippy (even after the pre-fast-forward trick I mentioned), and when I pressed Alt-Enter to switch to full screen mode, everything changed to perfectly smooth. Synthesia doesn't change behavior at all between those cases (or even really know that they are separate cases), so it must be the OS changing something.

Does running in full-screen mode make things smoother?
Harald
Posts: 1

Post by Harald »

Hi!
Testing r4393 with Android 7.0 on a Galaxy TAB A (2016)
Keyboard Casio LK-280
All changes are saved after ending session. No further troubles.
Thank you!
Harald :mrgreen:
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

Nice job for this release! Synthesia seems more responsive on my old machine :)
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

That is good to hear! There has been an ongoing time investment over the last several years to pay off some of the early technical debt that Synthesia accrued back when I had only been out of college for a few years and thought I knew what I was doing! :lol: Sometimes it feels like things have been moving forward at a glacial pace, but slowly and surely the code base is getting easier and faster to work on.

The new sheet music rendering code is probably the best example. Using what I've been learning about in the last couple years about data-oriented design, the new sheet code can perform some rather amazing feats: one particular torture test is loading one of the several minute long FNaF songs, cranking the sheet size all the way up, and forcing Synthesia internally to render all of the pages of music at once. Our oldest test hardware (some small Dell from 2007) can draw the entire song at its largest size in just over a single (60 fps) frame!

That said, there are still two or three major optimizations (that have only gone unfinished because they're a lot of work!) that would make Synthesia run fast on essentially any hardware, all the way down to a Raspberry Pi 3. It will be a triumphant day when I get a chance to get things to that point.
TonE
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by TonE »

Can Synthesia also show lights on keyboards for the scales, e.g. mine would be K-Board having only 2 octaves = 25 keys.

I tested with r2840 and it does not. Playing notes can be shown of course, but not the scale notes which can be displayed on Synthesia screen piano keyboard, e.g. as numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. K-Board can show velocities 1..15 as different intensities. So showing velocity = 1 for the scale notes, and a higher number e.g. 15 for the playing notes would be one idea.

Long time I did not visit this forum. :)
TonE
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by TonE »

How to paste unlock key in wine in latest Synthesia? And why are the data from Application Data directory not read? Having a button: Paste from clipboard would be useful.
UPDATE: Ok, copied all xml files from SynthesiaDev to Synthesia directory and it works.
spstarr
Posts: 15

Post by spstarr »

So, I've just bought a key since I've found this to be the best program to learn how to play. I am interested in the notation functionality that's being worked on, since I have a horrible time reading notation :/. I can't wait to try the new builds out.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Hey TonE, long time no see!
TonE wrote:... but not the scale notes which can be displayed on Synthesia screen piano keyboard...
Do you mean something like this feature suggestion but on the actual keyboard itself? I hadn't seen the K-Board before. I wonder how niche that feature would be. The only other keyboards with anything close to that kind of functionality are the Komplete Kontrols.
TonE wrote:How to paste unlock key...
The configuration window is baked right into Synthesia.exe now. Normally you just hold your Shift key while launching the app, but we've heard that this doesn't work under Wine. In that case, you can use:

Code: Select all

Synthesia.exe --on-startup Configuration
TonE
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by TonE »

Nicholas wrote:... but on the actual keyboard itself?
It is same as lighting feature what we have already, working nicely on K-Board, but only for playing notes. The scale notes could be displayed with a less strong light on all scale notes, always, the playing notes would just have higher intensity. Only an idea, because the device supports it, and for coding it would be just a minor addition I guess, as we have already the ability of showing scale notes on the keys, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7.

Code: Select all

if (key is displaying 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7)
  light up key using velocity = 1

if (key is playing)
  light up key using velocity = 15
Those two velocity settings could be somewhere in config.
wacher
Posts: 30

Post by wacher »

Hello Nicholas,

Synthesia makes a dump file to desktop and don't save anything when exits if you use the latest Windows
10.3 and 10.4 too
Synthesia r4096 Crash.dmp
Synthesia r4395 Crash.dmp
Windows 10 build 17063 (Insider), previous build was OK.

(I tried this on my tablet what is used daily for playing and I tried this on my desktop PC as well)

Should I upload one of dump files?
Last edited by wacher on 12-22-17 10:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

This is a shot in the dark, but try this:

1. Hold your Shift key while launching Synthesia.
2. Find the "Midi.UseWinRTMidi" entry in the list.
3. Remove the check mark from the Value box.

After you close the configuration window, does it start up normally?
wacher
Posts: 30

Post by wacher »

Start is OK, nothing wrong with start.
I can play, I can practice, Synthesia is purring like a kitten, I can do anything just the exit (or save?) throws a dump file.

I tried what you asked but nothing changed, I mean start is ok, playing is ok, but exit is not ok.
Last edited by wacher on 12-22-17 1:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Oh, sorry! I misunderstood. Then yes, if you could post the dump file, I'll take a look.
wacher
Posts: 30

Post by wacher »

Here are two files:
Synthesia r4395 Crash.dmp
(286.84 KiB) Downloaded 254 times
Synthesia r4096 Crash.dmp
(267.69 KiB) Downloaded 258 times
Again: everything is fine just exiting is failed.

The symptom appears just after upgrading my Windows to the latest Insider (17063). Build 16299 (or any before) was hassle free.
It seems MS has changed something. I don't know it is a bug what will be fixed or this is a new something and you have to adapt to.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Thanks for posting those (along with the extra details). We've started to see this species of crash a little more often. I wonder how many Synthesia users are part of Microsoft's insider program. Hmm.

It's a strange crash, to be sure. It's... sort of in the graphics tear-down code, but often when things are in the middle of catastrophically failing, the exact crash site can be a little unreliable. Visual Studio is telling me it's happening on an OpenGL call to delete/clean-up a texture, but it's hard to tell for sure if that's what's really going wrong.

It might be worth a double-check to see if there are any new (beta?) graphics drivers available for your hardware. I know Intel seems to release a new video driver every week or two. Maybe there has been a fix in the meantime.
wacher
Posts: 30

Post by wacher »

Thank you for investigation.
Could you finish the saving before this graphics thing? I don't care the coredump but Synthesia saves nothing :(
I will check the driver.
wacher
Posts: 30

Post by wacher »

I've checked my config of my PC and my tablet. Both of them have the latest driver. (I chekced them manually and with Intel® Driver & Support Assistant as well)
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Saving before the graphics tear down would... sort of be a workaround. It would still crash. Ideally, we can find a fix for it either way!

And I just checked the other half dozen of these that we've seen and 100% of them show a Windows version of "17063.1000.x86fre.rs_prerelease.171213-1610". I wonder if I can reproduce it (in debug mode) on our Windows 10 machine if I switch to the insider track.

I don't know though. Some of the comments in this forum make it sound like 17063 might just not have been ready to send out yet. Maybe the problem will simply be fixed in the next Windows 10 build?
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

It looks like they released 17074 to the fast ring yesterday. Do you have any better luck exiting Synthesia while running that build?
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