24 years after writing the first version, 17 years after originally open sourcing the software, and 13 years after my last release (V1.1.6) of the software, I have decided to pull LFI Player software out of the proverbial mothballs and start playing with it again. After all this time away from lasers, there are a couple of reasons for this...
* After years of not having any luck getting the LFI Player project to build with later versions of Visual Studio, I was finally able to successfully port the project from VC++ 6.0 (only runs on XP) to Visual Studio Community 2019, and then 2022
* Finding the low cost Bitlasers Helios Laser DAC, and successfully adding support to the software
* The generous long-term loan to me of a Unity Raw 1.7 projector by a good friend so I can actually project
* And last but not least, a little extra time due to being semi-retired and craving to play with coherent light again
So for anyone who might be interested, I have released the latest version (V1.2.2) of LFI Player application, an updated version of the User Manual, and some minimal updated demo material on SourceForge here...
LFI Player 3D Laser Display Software - Manage /LFI Player/V1.2.2 at SourceForge.net
V1.2.1 was quickly superceded with a bug fix, but includes...
* Port to Visual Studio 2022 Community
* Addition of support for Helios Laser DAC
* Removal of support for non-driver based devices such as GWS as the needed _outp() and _outw() functions are no longer supported by the C Runtime
* Addition of a MIDI controlled slider on the "Live" control panel so that master "Color Intensity" can be controlled with the MIDI controller Volume or Expression Wheel controls (for nice live fade in/out)
* Updated ILDA file support, both read and write, to reflect True Color RGB (i.e. non-indexed) option.
* Too many bug fixes to count (having a real projector brought a ton of bugs out of the woodwork)
* A bunch of code cleanup
V1.2.2 fixed a significant latency issue with the MIDI processing of the new master Color Intensity control
I will be making updates and additional bug fixes as I identify them and have time. As SorceForge does have GitHub integration, my plan is to go ahead and get the source code into GitHub and link to the existing SourceForge page where I will continue to release the application.
Please let me know if you have any questions and/or comments. Hope there are some who will find this useful.