I haven’t made a huge number of additions to Gallery Incomplet [Note: Moved to incomplet.gskinner.com] since my last update. This is because I’ve been really busy since the holidays teaching my London workshop, prepping for FlashForward and FitC, moving into the new office (more info on that soon), releasing gProject 1.3, and all the usual work / personal things that normally keep me busy.

I’ve been meaning to post code for some of the newer experiments, but prepping/documenting source code for release is a significant undertaking and I just haven’t had time. Now that things have settled down to a dull roar, I plan to do more blogging. This will include releasing a lot more source code and tutorials (ie. real content).

There have been a few notable additions though, and I’ve done a fair amount of work updating the engine with hidden features which are described below.

Updates:

– lots of hidden updates to support presentation mode and local content (see “the secret life of incomplet.swf” below)

– support for clicking the background to close a piece (so you don’t need to hunt for the close button)

– NEW: Based on a request from Kevin Wolff, I added support for direct linking and bookmarking in the gallery. For example, http://incomplet.gskinner.com/index2.html#camgoo links directly to the new WebCam gOO experiment.

Additions:

– CamWriter: uses my gesture recognition engine to translate color tracking data into text. Write your next essay with your webcam!

– CamWriter v2: extends CamWriter with a light-weight linear gesture engine to remove keyboard dependencies (you had to press the spacebar to signal input in v1). A down-up stroke starts input, and hovering stops it.

– FlowField: Uses perlin noise to generate an acceleration field, which results in some really interesting “orderly chaotic” motion. I’m actually impressed by how large this can run at full frame rate (740×600 @ 20fps).

– GalacticDrift: Similar to FlowField, but using perlin noise as a velocity field, and with different graphics logic.

– InfiniteBobs: Inspired by one of my students at the London Flash 8 workshop, Amiga demo fans will be familiar with this one. It’s basically drawing a single sprite back to one of 16 alternating bitmaps. This results in the appearance of “infinite” sprites, with almost no overhead. Retro goodness.

– VidPong: Play pong with your webcam… whee! Motion tracking and some new logic. My favourite part is that you can curve your shots by hitting the ball while your paddle is in motion.

– WebCam gOO: I built this ages ago, but rediscovered it while prepping for FF and thought I’d post it.

The secret life of incomplet.swf

Gallery Incomplet leads a double life. It’s primary role is as the mild mannered incomplet.org, acting as a timeline of my experimental work. What you might not know, is that it moonlights as a presentation engine. It’s the same swf, but a setting in the xml it loads puts it into presentation mode. In this mode, it ditches date based sorting and the timeline (because presentations don’t make a lot of sense with it), adds slide controls in the detail view so you can advance and go back without returning to the timeline, puts in a timer (for my reference while I talk), and makes a whole slew of other minor modifications that make presenting easy.

In addition, the xml supports a flag for local content (both gallery pieces and individual media items). This content is stored in a separate directory from the live content, and only shows up when the swf is run offline. This way I can easily show “live” versions of content when I present, and upload videos for others to look at.

To check out the additions, click on over to Gallery Incomplet. As always, I’d love to hear what you think about the new pieces.