Old fart's comments, experiences and insights

[laserist]

Perhaps, but only if you squint and hold your mouth just right.
In the modern world, that's neither a feasible solution nor possible to modify from song to song during a show.
Furthermore, the GS 3xx (320?) chopper can's inertia wouldn't allow it to 'vignette' @ ~1kHz, which is ballpark to the spinner frequencies being used for this effect.
I'm suggesting more modern techniques that I already have working, which are playable in real time for the benefit of others, who are using similar hardware and software, Brian.

Am I correct about the double chop being used for the Echoes cycloid?

Roj

You're not visualizing the old galvo slotted can chopper correctly. As soon as the galvo started to turn off of zero the intensity began to diminish. Soon it eclipsed the beam completely. Additional gain added to to eclipse period. But there was always a vignette or roll off to the intensity.

[Greg]

I had a post "In the old days we did this" that shows my home grown PWM chopper blade that could produce exactly the tappered chop effect that Greg did.
Attachment 60630

That is one really nice looking wheel, unlike the piece of open air flying architecture garbage shown in the photo and made about twenty years ago. The funny thing was, the TDA7274 low voltage DC motor speed controller regulated the motor so well the effect looked right. Also shown is the actual slotted can chopper recently spoken of.

Currently, chopper and colormod come from two colormod2 circuits on breadboard shown below the repurposed side pod. Of course any signal source from the 6B circuits, file, or algorithm can be switched in. All the stuff being said about ramps and triangles applies. Also there is code which overrides chopper if XYI is present.

I'm not sure about the frequencies, I dialed the image in by eye, but I'll measure frequencies next opportune moment.

[Greg]

Greg's image isn't colormod. It's just got a ton of chopper & a fixed rotation that wasn't available on the Mark IV that was designed for Laserium I. I don't remember exactly when the 0, 90, 180, 270 rotation was added, but it wasn't part of the Mark 6A either.

Oh. Well, there it is. More evidence against 15,6 having anything to do with fixed rotation.

[lasermaster1977]

That is one really nice looking wheel, unlike the piece of open air flying architecture garbage shown in the photo and made about twenty years ago. The funny thing was, the TDA7274 low voltage DC motor speed controller regulated the motor so well the effect looked right. Also shown is the actual slotted can chopper recently spoken of.

Currently, chopper and colormod come from two colormod2 circuits on breadboard shown below the repurposed side pod. Of course any signal source from the 6B circuits, file, or algorithm can be switched in. All the stuff being said about ramps and triangles applies. Also there is code which overrides chopper if XYI is present.

I'm not sure about the frequencies, I dialed the image in by eye, but I'll measure frequencies next opportune moment.

Thanks Greg. All done with a pencil draftsman compass, small finishing nail, straight edge, a pair of brand new Fiske scissors and a spray can of Krylon Flat Black.


Amazing, Greg, thanks for the photos. I hadn't imagined the "open air flying architecture" chopper was that big.

Imagine the inverse of that and scaled way, way down as shown in this post of mine.
https://photonlexicon.com/forums/sho...light=GS-120PD

The photos in this thread shows the chopper "strip" on a GS-115 open loop scanner but we only used it on the GS-120PD closed-loop scanner for image blanking. The default, unenergized position of the scanner was where the chopper strip vertical ends just allowed the beam to pass through with no interference. Obviously, the blanking upper-end frequency limit was just under 1Khz.

[Greg]

Regardless of their signal source, are you sending those same 'spinner' frequency sawtooth waveforms directly to the projector's RGB drivers to cause the fadeout effect, as I've concluded? Or are you using a mechanical chopper, as others have mentioned?

To be clear about what is being used in the videos I'm posting, the 6b emulator has four ILDA outputs to four off the shelf projectors. I'm not doing anything with optics at this point. The sawteeth and and all other analog input signals end up as float values which get dealt with by software as HSV, which then get converted to RGB for output. This means there is a "saturation modulation" effect waiting to be explored. As is, the colormod has various modes, which include the classic discrete colors look, and a continuous sweep of hue look.

lasermaster1977: I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand your comment. What in the photo looks big? The little black paper wheel is only about 2 inches diameter. I just posted that to show how absolutely crappy my accuracy was compared to your wheel. The chopper can is just sitting on the other stuff, not related or connected.

[lasermaster1977]

Greg, my mistake. I was referring to the spinning-slot can in the background. I noticed the small disc shutter in the lower foreground but didn't know that was what your referral was toward.

[HankLloydRight]

This has to be the worst Echoes visuals EVER.
It proves that A.I. has neither visual talent, emotions, nor soul.

Well, I think we can all agree that AI has no soul or emotions.

But I disagree that it has no talent.

I liked the video. Very trippy and very Pink Floyd. Definitely hitting the beats/cues and reflecting the tone/feel of the track. AI created something here that most of us could not (I'm talking video, not a laser show). And that is talent, even if non-human. I couldn't create that video in 1000 years.

Sure, it could (and most certainly will) improve in the very near future. Even one year from now AI will be way more advanced than today.

[laserist]

This has to be the worst Echoes visuals EVER.
It proves that A.I. has neither visual talent, emotions, nor soul.

At 1st, I concluded that there was no connection between the visual chaos and Echoes, just A.I. generated imagery, with the sound track added afterwards.
Then came the later part of Echoes, that we used during Laserium I and some visual effects started hitting musical queues, so I wondered whether A.I. had tapped into an old Laserium video for its imaging synthesis. Then, it started creating clones of Floyd's band members and becoming less chaotic.
Reckon A.I. needs a few thousand more rehearsals, before pretending to replace any laserists.
No worries.

I think that if the AI in question was "trained" with self indulgent crap - it'll probably "learn" to "create" stuff that looks like self indulgent crap. Worse it's "training" probably never included "saying" "Not just no, but he'll no" to the majority of a piece like Echos. It important to realize why Laserium edited Echos down from 23:32 to 5:59 in the first place. And it's certainly not just 23:32 is just too damn long...

[HankLloydRight]

By the way, the Echoes video you posted was from over a year ago. A lot has happened since then.

Here's a more recent AI Pink Floyd video, and you can already see the vast improvements in "talent" and "soul (music)"

https://youtu.be/astibs0-aT0

And another from 3 months ago, also very impressive IMHO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0S3GCRucyg

[laserist]

Snip
It's the long term future, once A.I. becomes sentient, that concerns me the most, Hank.
Snip
Roj

If the goal is to create sentient A.I., (or singularity level A.I.) aren't we talking about creating a new class of slaves? Whoever owns the computer owns this sentient entity, and controls it's destiny? What whip will it's overseer employ to maximize its profit?