Is vvvv already dead?

it is so nice to see this written :)

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Which harks back to this discussion about vvvv/vl usability.

sorry about me being triggered again, you can all hate me for what I’m writing here but,

vvvv beta is dead in the industry. period. I’m shitposting about vvvv because it’s really frustrating to see it slowly bitrot away along the years. I have serious doubts about my life choices when I decided to learn this tool in late 2000’s and not say Unity or TouchDesigner. It’s not suitable for modern systems now at all, all the competitors just completely took over vvvv. If you think about the things you can do with vanilla vvvv is laughingly small compared to today’s standards, not because it doesn’t have all the nodes, but all of those nodes are half finished, done as an experiment without actual usecase a decade ago.

I also mean DX11 not being in vanilla for 6 years now is just a colossal face-palm imo. And the world already gone past DX11 to Vulkan or DX12. Vanilla vvvv with its DX9 is actually 15 years behind on terms of rendering capabilities compared to the current state of industry. It’s good to see Xenko being embraced in VL, but more on that later. And to top it of now vux told me he will abandon the DX11 implementation in vvvv all together. So that’s dead too.

VL is being born for 6 years now littered with bad decisions, experimenting for the sake of experimentation, words can’t describe how bad its UI is, lack of clear target audience, lack of consistent roadmap. (I’ve already expressed all of my points separately multiple times on this website ain’t gonna do it here again) biblical amount of hugely wasted technological potentials. Meanwhile a single person @vux made FlareTic with a clear objective, clear use cases, following well known UI conventions, not trying to reinvent the wheel and guess what, that unreleased software now looks infinitely more finished and industry proof than vvvv or VL ever was.

To end all this, actually all vvvv patchers left MESO, and we can’t find replacements for them. My other developer colleagues get a PTSD just from the thought of touching vvvv. MESO is actually phasing out vvvv from new projects entirely and for the above mentioned reasons we’re not really enthusiastic about VL either, in favor of UE4. Which is a shame because UE4 is very unwieldy to do your bidding when it comes to custom systems but that’s really comparing apples to an atom-tanker.

I’m incredibly sad and depressed about the state of vvvv right now, and my years of investments working with it and contributing to it slowly going into garbage. And frustrated because there’s really no other tools like that for programming. You can imagine the same kind of prototyping is absolutely non-existent in UE4 or in Unity for example.

I’m really sorry for being arrogant and ranting all over the place, but that’s how I feel about vvvv right now, it’s not pleasant.

not dead but fading. being a 100% vvvv studio in 2018, we are now doing lots of unity stuff. vvvv still has its place, for quick one off projects or special cases like boygrouping and hardware control.

its true, there is other software being better at certain things, vvvv loosing more and more ground to specialized tools (ie. madmapper) or big player (unity,ue)

cycling 74 Jitter is not dead
pure data is not dead
Processing
open frameworks
Isadora
etc.

All of them loose to UE or unity to do the trendy vr game or dx12 shinny wonder demo thing, but they still have community using it BUT its true all of them are more quiet, probably shrinking.

So if all creative tools communities and use cases are shrinking, I dont think vvvv design decisions is the main problem here.

But I agree with @david clever support and marketing is key. I think the riott chat is amazing, to have vvvvgroup and many more answering 24/7 (kindof). NODE festival is really inspiring, it stands out as a really open place compared to other events.

I will say it again new media scene its in a limbo. The “new” is too old.

And remember Apple died in 95

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if devs would take 1 year to update actulal functionality for once that is relevant to n o n c o d e r s, vvvv would be back in the game

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I just stumbled upon this (posted by @tonfilm in the xenko forums :)

What nobody tells you about documentation

It doesn’t matter how good your software is, because if the documentation is not good enough, people will not use it .

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@u7angel
I guess that most of the projects in the car or exhibition business have change to games or "website" concepts and those concepts are naturally easier to develop in unity or html.

@manuel
A lot of the tools you mention have some unique selling points, like Processing is mainly for doing first programming steps. Max/MSP is shipped with Ableton, PureData is still for audio prototyping etc. I’m afraid that with vl + xenko vvvv will lose some unique vvvv features like FieldTrip, Instance Noodles, workup speed, easy shader editing etc. and will become a kind of game engine with visual programming input, but without all the features which comes with unity or unreal…

I’m really afraid that the future vvvv can’t be used for special projects like :

https://vvvv.org/blog/eq-teaser-kinetic-wall https://vvvv.org/blog/inspiration-wall or https://vvvv.org/blog/engram-data-sculpture-for-melting-memories

or only with the same amount of work, i have to put in unity or unreal.

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Now you see not all creative tools communities are shrinking, TouchDesigner or Notch.one are at their peak of their popularity afaik, especially Notch, despite the gaming industry giants leaning over them. They were concentrating on their niche and excels at them. Not putting effort into trying to update a tool to current standards of doing things is the developer’s fault. Especially when supposedly that software is their full-time job and they claim they still actively develop/maintain it.

You can even argue HTML5 and modern js libraries now are actually better tools sometimes for media arts than vvvv at this point, especially when you have all the window and screen management with electron, all the 3D stuff with three.js, all the hardware accelerated video playback, and all the audio capabilities of the js audio API’s. That is pretty much not dying either.

max/msp is a music software first and it’s pretty damn good at it. Jitter imo wasn’t really meant to shine that much since its conception.

Pure Data is so dead mate.

Processing is an educational language, Pascal for 21st century (or more precisely the very first decade of 21st century)

OpenFrameworks is C++ framework + library. Can’t really compare that to a software with a UI, and it’s especially not great for rapid development (except maybe their immediate UI).

and I haven’t seen a single soul using Isadora ever, even less in commercial spaces.

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I’m not thinking my 10 years of experience turn into garbage with vvvv fading. And I don’t think vvvv/vl is so bad (if so, what am I doing here for 10 years?) I know many great and unique projects made with vvvv and I want to thank MESO & vvvvgroup for the great tool and their hard work. Also I met a number of great people! You guys always in my heart and great memories! How can that turn into garbage?

During that time I had to make pipelines to easier deal with vvvv oddities:

  1. How to find people who can learn vvvv and how to teach them.
  2. How to sell vvvv projects.
  3. How to do projects without exact specification / complete brief and with dozens of changes.
  4. How to support & update vvvv projects during years.

vvvv was great tool for me. If anyone is interesting in that pipelines still - please feel free to contact me.

But it’s true that vvvv/vl/gamma is not compete with modern tools anymore and I believe the main issues are:

  • zero marketing
  • lack of modern rendering templates
  • lack of proper animation libraries
  • lack of UI libraries
  • lack of cross-platforming

All of these was discussed many times, and as mentioned - vvvvgroup is well aware of it.
So I’m quit vvvv.
Of course, we have some current & upcoming projects and some projects on warranty support - all of those will be complete. If you’re still interested in me as in vvvv patcher or in Ivan Raster as a team - please feel free to contact me. But my vvvvexit is started. I hope to join NODE20 to meet you guys and to have a beer with you, but not in hope to find the next big thing.

Спасибо, удачи и до скорых встреч!

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Hi, sorry for my late reply.
What, you didn’t really wait for my very personal and biased opinion?
Oh right, because nobody cares :)

Some remarks:

  1. lol - some posts really gave me a good laugh
  2. Man, if you’re frustrated, just don’t use it - don’t make a big fuzz, what is this really? Some people really overestimate their role in this I suppose. Use another software then, don’t shitpost in the forums. It’s sad in terms of the community, but we can move on without you, it’s not like you’re “putting any nails in the coffin” with your decision. Go ahead.
  3. vvvv is still good at what it was and there’s other software out there which excel at other use cases, so what? It’s like it has always been and will ever be. There’s been a change in demand for high end rendering these days, but that’s nothing I ever really expected vvvv to deliver.
  4. @microdee please: “If you think about the things you can do with vanilla vvvv is laughingly small compared to today’s standards, not because it doesn’t have all the nodes, but all of those nodes are half finished, done as an experiment without actual usecase a decade ago.”. I value your work and dedication over the years, but now you’re just really unfair and actually gave a very good summary about emeshe, fbx4v et al. I’m not meaning to rant, but what I’m saying here: you should know better than this.
  5. Thank you vvvvgroup for your ongoing braveness and outstanding work in the past! I’m happy to share the limbo with you and everyone else who’s being realistic.
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Hello Hello. I might be one of those overestimating their role, so be it. I am not here to rant. I am posting because I want vvvv to succeed.

I think you’re wrong, unfortunately. Of course I don’t know the numbers but most likely quite a chunk of revenue will be gone with wirmachenbunt, ivanraster and meso.
Especially the latter matters. What is the “message” when the original founders abandon their software?

Those decisions also “fragment the market” and make it harder to commit to one software and it’s impossible to be good at all of them. vvvv/vl (+xenko), unreal (c++/blueprints), unity (c#/bolt) maybe touchdesigner or notch. How should I (or we) as freelancers progress?
Maybe it’s just my advanced age but this development instills me with some kind of existential angst.

And the lack of response by the goup in threads like this doesn’t inspire confidence either.

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I didn’t have this complex that “community can’t go on without me” thing, never thought and never said that, you imagined that I’m talking in that tone. And I am switching to different softwares, but I make the fanfare because I really don’t like that I have to switch to stay afloat.

What I was trying to convey, I know I had my failed miserable packs never going anywhere like Emeshe, FBX4V or VObjects, but I still have the mp.* packs especially mp.essentials, mp.dx and Notuiv (and partially Vanadium) which I’m really proud of, I poured lot of effort and time into those and vvvv fading away means my work with those also fades away. And I think it’s also applicable to other great contributors like Vux’s DX11 and colossal addonpack nodes, Woei’s various great contributions and addonpack nodes, Kyle’s Instance Noodles / Field Trip, Velcrome’s Messages or ZeroMQ, mburk’s SuperPhysical, tmp’s DX11.Particles etc etc…

What I learnt during these years with vvvv will stay with me, that I thank for the community and for the devvvvs, I’m obviously not bashing on that right now. I’m bashing on huge ass wasted potentials and the decay as a result of that.

I know I failed with those, and I clearly stated they are not working anymore and stop using it. I didn’t asked a single penny for Emeshe for example (I got one guy donating me a 100 bucks out of total random) and I had too high aspirations for FBX4V which got never fulfilled, 1-3 people payed for it, but I admitted its clear shortcomings and obsoleted it. Also it’s not my full-time job to maintain those, they were not the end objective of the people paying my salary (in contrary to vvvv).

so much +1

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hey @readme nice to hear from you! remember how you had to urgent clean a mess after my patching back in 2012?
@bjoern remember how I blamed you in your dream: “You changed my module!!!”?
@joreg remember how you was surprised and scared with right-wheel car on a street of St.Petersburg?
@vux and @unc remember guys how hard you get drunk at shawarma at Kupchino?
@westbam remember how you spent 3 hours to get to me at Amsterdam and found me totally wasted & unable to talk?
@kalle remember how you fix my boots with hot glue?
@hrovac remember how fire guard saved police Lada from frozen lake?
@dottore remember how you played at abandone radar dome?
@fibo remember how you suggested me to buy bitcoins in 2010 or so and I denied?

Sorry to all I didn’t mentioned here, but the limit is only 10 users - the list would be so long!
So it’s not only just about using or not using a software.

@readme please advise, where is another place to speak about future of vvvv & community?

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Hey my dear favourite community that I can call myself part of.
First, what I find brave is that I open the forum and a thread called “Is vvvv already dead?” jumps into view. You could call it the opposite of good marketing! But then I look further and see all these members doing what they are best at: finding the bug, making it better.

Honestly I value this quality the most. Every new release is buggy. It can not be otherwise.
What I find here is a lot of creative people whose style of work and sharing their knowledge is unified by this tool called vvvv.
It’s a nerdy, honest, intrinsically motivated way of working that does a lot of good for all those who use it and all possible audiences who see the final projects.

I think to choose vvvv as your tool is not only a decision for efficient, state-of-the-arts well supported well docu— (portfolio blabla…)
To choose vvvv as your tool is also the challange of keeping it going and shaping it in the way we need it. It’s like a good friend who sometimes needs help :) - and not a service.

I also see that it constantly changes what vvvv is for the community. It goes along with a truth we all know: things change, grow and also die. And that just means that they are very alive!

@bo27 I just read your comment while I was finishing mine, thanks it made me smile :)
And also to all the others who are commenting here, thank you all for caring about this beautiful piece of software :D
Might be that NODE17’s topic was “HOPE” bcs that’s exactly what I find here.

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I have a vvvv group on Linkedin and there are join requests every week. Most of them do not have a vvvv account/nick name.

I think that people get an account on vvvv website when they feel more confident.

I knew many people that studied at Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera or Nuova Accademia delle Belle Arti (NABA) in Milan (art schools) that use vvvv sometimes or would like to learn it. They do not have a vvvv account and they do not participate in the community.

It is difficult to involve people in a community, in particular to make their active participants. A lot of people just look what is happening so I think there are many more vvvv users out there then those you can count looking at the web analytics statistics.

One more thing. Just because I just saw tf like readme’s post
and it keeps going round and round in my head.

If you don’t like it go home

is a very dangerous attitude to have.

I don’t imagine the decision to move to another software / toolchain after 10-20 years,
has been (or is) an easy one to make, especially if your livelyhood,
that of your company and your staff depend on it.
Wrong decision potential disaster.

Obviously there must be substantial reasons.

every one else who’s being realistic

really?

Since more than one person/company came to the same conclusion
maybe some things aren’t so well on the vvvv side of things…

Threads like this one cropping up time and again apparently suggest the same.
You can’t (or at least you shouldn’t) blame users for feeling being left behind.


If anyone is interested in my insignificant opinion get in touch (by other means)
so we can talk in person or at least from face to face.
People tend to misinterpret the tone in written conversation and get offended.

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That’s where most frustration comes from many users here, because there’s many that are fundamental contributors and dont get their viewpoint expressed in the design of the software, so they get tired and move on.

I agree, specially being a tool for artistic creation. But there’s also commercial use, so if you pay you expect a different treatment on these topics.

@bo27, its hard to hear it, man.
Really thanks for chance to work with you. Even sometimes it was crazy…but funny and usefull ! Just know, that your skills are always inspired me.
And thanks for Template!!

@jj-h, the projects have not changed so much. but in some cases we don‘t have the time to develop basic things which come ready made in alternative tools.

sometimes its even really simple things like startup time. we have a series of exhibits which we have to move from vvvv to something else because of the slow startup. a compiled unity project starts so much faster than a vvvv project.

i find it peronally quite rewarding to be able to use different tools for different purposes. sure, there was always the hope to use vvvv for everything, but no tool can provide everything in perfect detail. vvvv is bad and good at things, unity too. its quite amazing how chaotic the unity toolchain is. quite similar to vvvv.

once vvvv gamma is actually better at something compared to other tools, i‘m happy to adopt.