How far you can start grabbing and how far you can drop the cord?
If we start grabbing above the end of the node will it considered as a moving of node or starting a patching?
What to do if nodes or even inputs/outputs intersects by the active region?
Should there be any difference in behaviour if you link up or down?
Should it make a difference if you connect IO, node pins or splicer / accumulator / boundary ?
When should it be dropped to connect to the boundaries?
Shoul it be connected to the pin or to the boundary?
I would also love to see improvements in this area.
Direct dragging of connections like in pretty much every other node based tool would be very much appreciated here.
And it hasn’t to be either-or, Houdini does it both:
Click on a connection and let go and the wire sticks to your mouse pointer, which is fantastic if you want to make connections to further away nodes or insert in-between points.
Click and drag works as well, and is way more effective when making many connections to close-by nodes.
This way, you have it all and the workflow improves immensely.
After having worked through Genuary I would want to emphasise this once more. Allowing direct dragging of links is an INSTANT reduction of clicks by 50%!
Instead of
click-release-move-click-release
you have
click-drag-release
And like I said, Houdini has it both for situations where you need a link further.
Click and drag for direct connection, click-release-move for connections over longer distances.
This one change would make such a difference already in the overall feel of extreme clickiness in VVVV.
You now may test-drive this with the latest vvvv gamma previews.
Please also try
your pens and mouses,
different monitors (DIP Scaling),
different zoom levels of your patch editor
Does it work? Is it too reactive or not reactive enough? Are you able to hit the pin?
What about the other actions, like selecting a link or moving a node? Are they now harder to do?
Is it balanced?
Thanks for the feedback!
Edit: please include the vvvv version in your feedback, thanks!
Instantly VVVV feels a 100% more natural.
In my short test, you seem to have nailed it right away (Version 0092).
I also seem to have way less trouble to create a link with my Wacom pen, which was pretty horrible before. My average was 2-7 tries each time…
Now it just seems to work as expected.
Deep felt thanks for this!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Tried a bit more and I guess for old hands it will need some readjustment of habit.
Expect some growing pain there at first. ;-)
Could become a preference if the backlash is too bad.
Moving things like pads now can’t be done with the pin as before, but one needs to use the name field.
Works well for me though and is well worth it.
It’s interesting how the snap to pins works very naturally, but for instance for a region you still have to click the slicer or accumulator slots and after that, with the link still attached, you also have to explicitly click on a pin.
Not bad, was just unexpected. But in those cases it may make sense to be explicit.
So far I absolutely love it - first time I feel like I’m not fumbling with mittens on in VVVV… ;-)
Doesn’t work at all for me. I either end up dragging the node / iobox or creating a selection rectangle.
Tested with 6.0-0092 on my 14" 2160p laptop, scaling set to 100, 125, 150 & 175%.
Used two different mice.
Here it’s an 17" Asus ROG STRIX laptop with 2560x1440px set to 125% scaling with Windows 11 home.
AMD internal graphics and GeForce RTX 3070 with latest drivers running V4 6.0092 .
Drag start etc. are at default for me - I had them tried larger before (which didn’t help with anything) but I reset them today and it works great.
Honestly, I think your preview build is broken. This looks like the exact old behavior to me.
We had corrupt builds and removed them from the server quickly. But you might have gotten that one. And we somehow got unlucky and after sorting everything ended up with the same build number…
Please remove build 92 from your disk. With GammaLauncher rescan vvvv updates and just to be 100% sure: restart gamma launcher. then Download again.
It would be great if the node browser opened when releasing the link somewhere in the patch. Exposing a pin could work also like that, when either middle-dragging a pin or hold Alt while releasing the mouse button.
After working all night with the new behaviour, I found that it now can be a bit hard to select things, the “link grab zone” of the pins is pretty large.
I tried to change the DragStartArea in preferences, but that didn’t seem to change this - not sure exactly what it does actually, it never seemed to have an effect for me.
It looks as if the link drag zone starts slightly inside the node label area, maybe it should start a tiny bit further out so that the main central area stays free for dragging the node itself.
Overall, the link-grabbing area now feels rather extensive, so I personally could now live with a slightly smaller one.
moving nodes got improved. Thanks for the feedback!
I now moved the discussion to over here: Patch Editor UX with the hope that it is easier to read for others, as they don’t get distracted by the in-between state.
