AudioSpace News

Just in time for the season of celebrations, here's the latest AudioSpace for your delight 🎁. Level up the ambience and display beautiful visualizations for your playlists - the bigger the screen 📺 the better!

With the added texture support for shaders, AudioSpace is now not only a visualizer and a media player, but also a full-blown HLSL shader toy with Unreal Engine 5 visual fidelity (e.g. great blooms and reflections), comprehensive set of real-time audio data easily available, and runtime compilation just by re-selecting the shader in the menu. You won't find this anywhere else, and by itself the feature has indeed all the makings of becoming a separate application at some point.

To share your shaders and try our shaders created by others, visit the new shaders sub-forum. There's already something that's not included in the installation packet. ✨

There are also two new sub-forums that are long overdue, really:
Ideas & Feature Requests, and Bug Reports. Make good use of them.

As always, this update is free for current owners of AudioSpace. If you like AudioSpace and wish to support further development, give a positive review so that others can find it too 👍.
Enjoy! ❤️

Here's the full list of changes:

• added support for user textures in shaders, completing the shader functionality;
  accepted file types include BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and GIF (but not DDS)
  
• level meter can now be customized with a full variety of colors and styles
  
• menu:
  
  
  
  • new preset buttons with +-10 preset range selection
    
  • improved clarity with dynamic opacity, esp. with media player
    
  • added visual feedback for clicking the prev/next buttons in the menu
    
  • better parameter slider & color adjustment help texts
    
• AudioSpace window:
  
  
  
  • position is now saved and restored correctly (as applicable)
    
  • in VR, window tries to get keyboard focus and is switched to real full-screen mode
    (instead of borderless window) on startup and always on reset to reduce stuttering
    
  • maximize/restore button in title bar is now correctly updated after Alt+Enter
    
  • added "AudioSpace" to the title bar
    
• auto-camera:
  
  
  
  • auto-saving viewpoints is now done only when menu is closed, to avoid unnecessary overwriting of manually saved viewpoints
    
  • any media player wall is now brought to view if no visualizations are active in the room
    
• in VR, HMD centering is now checked on startup and followed by auto-centering (if very wrong) or hint message (if somewhat wrong)
  
• change of audio device (e.g. speakers headphones) is now handled gracefully without need to restart application
  
• traveling to another location is now appropriately animated
  
• improvements to planet rendering and animation, especially regarding Earth
  
• visual improvements to nebula wavefronts (fog fade in/out, expanse to the sides)
  
• better and more stardust with aurora, warp tunnel & trinity flux (much more with only the high frequency band enabled!)
  
• improved kaleidoscope edge fadeout and added "spiralizer" under param B
  
• improved media player pause & stop handling
  
• fixed an issue with the floor grid audio status color not always updating correctly on startup
  
• anti-aliasing options are now either 2xMSAA or 4xMSAA, as UE5's masked opacity doesn't work with anything else
  
• automation with program scripts:
  
  
  
  • time codes can now be also relative (with a "+" prefix)
    
  • revised, fully documented example program is now included
    
  • updated documentation available here

The long anticipated 🌞summer🌞 release of AudioSpace is finally here, and not a day too soon as tomorrow it's already September. But the wait was worth it: now you can choose to enjoy AudioSpace as a windowed application with a normal set of title bar controls. Its highlight is automatic viewpoints: there's no longer need to move around to find the best camera angle. For those who prefer the freedom of movement of the earlier versions, fear not: "AudioSpace VR" provides now this, as well as the full VR experience when your headset is detected or your OpenXR Runtime (such as SteamVR) is running,

Also new are the three big features of this release to level things up:

1. User defined shaders - that is, your own visualizations! Many shaders already included, including ray marching examples and the kaleidoscope effect. Experiment freely with existing shaders (they can be reloaded runtime just be re-selecting the shader) and add your own under Documents/AudioSpace/shaders.
   
2. Fluid simulations (liquid and gas).
   
3. 3D models: customize your visualization environment to your liking.
   
   • add your 3D models under Documents/AudioSpace/models (one subfolder / model)
     
   • set model position, scale etc. via a config.ini file (created automatically)
     
   • supports glTF models (.gltf and .glb), more file formats may be added later
     
   • animations supported, tangent space normals required (for now)
     
   • a fully operational space station included, of course :)
     

To top things off, here's more:

• new ROOM modes: 3D spectrum - 3 variations of spectrum columns in 3D. This and some other ROOM modes now have multiple variations (small sub-buttons inside the main button).
  
• improved cursor visibility in all experiences; VR mode has now a beam cursor for motion controllers for aiming with your hands (instead of eyes like in the earlier versions)
  
• help texts are now shown for param sliders (also with shaders)
  
• switched from 8-bit to 32-bit textures on all panels (quality improvement)
  
• Unreal Engine version updated from 4.26 to 5.3
  
• on Earth, day has dawned and ground details are more visible towards the sunrise
  
• new configuration options:
  
  • maxChannels: limit number of visualized channels (default is 2 channels)
    
  • autoSaveViewpoint: in the non-VR AudioSpace, save the most recent viewpoint always to the current preset (on by default)
    
  • allowMultiplePanelsPerWall: by default there's now only one visualization panel per each wall, this option allows to have many
    
  • alwaysSyncPanels: for copying visualization style changes to all panels with the same mode;
    this behavior can also be temporarily toggled by pressing Shift when changing things in menu (syncing panels is useful e.g. with a shader such as the "fractal space" on multiple walls)
    

As usual, this update is free for current owners of AudioSpace. Newcomers are also in luck, as the price will remain the same as before. Looking forward to see your next AudioSpace visualizations of your favorite music. 🎵🎬 Enjoy!

As a small thank you for the past year, here's an audiovisual Christmas greeting for all you wonderful AudioSpacers: O Holy Night by Life in 3D

In terms of future development of AudioSpace, some quite interesting new features are already being planned for 2024. Can't spoil more yet, but there's especially one major visualization mode thingy in the works that I'm very exited about.

Meanwhile, enjoy the holidays, have a wonderful Christmas time and all the best for the New Year!

Kari / Ferrit

This version includes the following changes:
- improved dynamic behavior of Shape of Sound
- fixed Shape of Sound palette not updating correctly on preset changes
- fixed audio initialization issue on certain audio chipsets on Windows 11
- fixed camera height after using teleport buttons in open space
- changed setup behavior when restart is needed due to locked Explorer ShellExtension

Enjoy!

Now it's here: AudioSpace that is not only a visualizer but also a media player! This major update includes a good volume of other delights as well, such as new visualizations on the back wall, the VU meter, and vectorscope v2 with multiband skills. See the full list at the end of this post to get properly excited. ✨

Installation typically requires Windows restart due to full Explorer integration of the media player. Steam doesn't warn users about that, so check that reboot is OK before installing.

As always, this update is free for current owners of AudioSpace. Newcomers are also in luck, as the price will remain the same as before (for now). Looking forward to see your next AudioSpace visualization videos around. 🎵🎬 Enjoy!

• AudioSpace can now play music and videos from files, playlists and online streams
  
• most audio formats are supported (not .flac and .ogg though), as are all major playlists
  
• for videos, H.264 encoded .mp4 is the best format for compatibility and performance
  
• playback is controlled by a media layer that can be toggled on & off for each wall, floor and roof; example playlist of online radios is available by default on the roof media layer
  
• media layers can also include background & overlay pictures for frames, watermarks, lyrics textures etc., let your creativity run wild!
  
• new mode in the ROOM group: "VU meter" (modeled to be a fairly decent imitation of an analog VU meter, with RMS averaging and correct rise/fall times; toggle all frequency bands off for full-band mode)
  
• visualizations are enabled now also on the all-new back wall, with unique variations of each mode
  
• wall dimensions are now 16:9 or ~21:9 (64:27) to match display aspect ratios better
  
• new location: "Black Hole" (when you want a fully black background for visualizations)
  
• console panel now tries hard not to be on the way of any visualizations
  
• configuration & presets are now saved under Documents\AudioSpace as text files for easy access and editability; that's a good place also for any program sequences you might create (an example is available)
  
• new feature: multiband vectorscope; unselecting all frequency bands brings out the (classic) full-band vectorscope (same applies for waveforms)
  
• vectorscope slider B is now dedicated to a new "attractor" parameter; slider C controls the line style
  
• spectrum columns: param C was moved on B slider, as C now controls a new "hollow -> peak afterglow" parameter (try full peaks on the back wall!)
  
• aurora & warp tunnel: faster reacting visualization can now be selected by lowering slider B when you need better sync / snappier response
  
• shape of sound: param B now controls also the "vortex-foce" of particle movement; max vortex at both -1 and 1