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Xbox 360 Lightsynth
Ophion writes "Renowned digital artist Jeff Minter of Llamasoft has created a new lightsynth that will be built into the Xbox 360. More information on the console's music player is available from Microsoft." From the post: "I believe it finally begins to achieve the potential that I saw all those years ago when I first made Psychedelia... and I am happier with it than I have ever been with anything I've created in my entire career. And we got it into the firmware again... Microsoft firmware. Of the Xbox360 for goat's sake. At last... after more than 20 years' work, one of my lightsynths is going to reach a decent sized audience. Millions and millions..."
furthermore, his previous work is basically the foundation for much of modern audio visualization programs (iTunes; WinAmp, WinMediaPlayer, various xmmc plugins). this software is likely to further influence the field, given it's unique qualities. there has been some experimentation with 3d visualizations and various filters and effects, but this is pretty much state of the art. it's running in HD, and quite fluidly. it's realtime interactive, and it should be pretty accessible being in ROM and using a wireless analouge controller. 4 people can control the thing simultaneously using a variety of control inputs (buttons, sticks,.. I don't know the exact mappings). impressively, this thing is under a half meg of code. check out the video's, which are compressed, low resolution, low framerate relative to the actual realtime xbox360 HD output...