News

January 8, 2024

Synthesoft Flashback: 

I've made quite a few changes to improve startup times and frame rates.
Fixed a bug that was causing some plane/palette configurations to display incorrectly.
Improved the frame recording capability and usability.
You can now configure Flashback to use keystroke combinations to invoke 3rd party screen recorders.
The built-in frame recorder can record up to 8K resolution frames in jpg or png for use with a frames->video tool (like Xvid).
Improved usability of the auto-play in the preset browser w/the addition of VCR-like controls. The record button uses either your prefered screen recorder or the Flashback frame recorder.
New presets and shaders
This release is not codsigned and is distributed in portable format

July 1, 2023

Synthesoft Flashback: 

I have implemented various enhancements to the user interface, incorporated new modules, overhauled the shader editor/compiler, and introduced additional effects to the DigiFX module. Additionally, I have included support for the following:

* Shift-Click: Drag the entire UI as a whole or only the targeted window if the windows are locked together.
* Pressing 'H' in the Visuals window will display a window showing the available keyboard commands. Many of these commands can also be accessed through a right-click context menu.
* Most of the UI windows feature right-click context menus.
* In the Preset Browser window, you can select multiple items and then press the "Go" button to play the selected items.
* Presets now include a Favor attribute, which can be incremented by pressing the space bar when the preset is playing in the Visuals window (the Visuals window must be targeted or have focus). 

June 5, 2022

Synthesoft Flashback: 

Added two new modules (Fracture and Noise)
* Noise can be pretty demanding of your GPU and will look best on newer gaming adapters.
* Set the Preset Browser to details view and sort by module to find all presets that use them

Visuals Window:

*Converted to a standard window so that it will play nice with XBox Game Recorder

Right-Click menu:
* Added options to initiate a timed recordings (requires XBox Game recorder)
* Added options for changing window size to list of common dimensions

DigiFX:
* Added Terrain effect (Toggle by setting "View Height" to non-zero)

General
* Integer/float Control edit fields are no longer read-only
* Added a few UI tweaks (Most windows now support stretching/scaling)

March 2, 2022

Synthesoft Flashback: 

Added new shaders, presets, palettes, and a new module (Turbulence).
Ctrl+Mouse Wheel will now scale fonts in listview and treeview
Most control windows are now scalable and contents will scale to match

December 28, 2021

Synthesoft Flashback: 

Added a "Fave" column to the Preset Browser details view .    To play your favorites, sort by the fave column, select your favorites, and press "Go"

Added the following keyboard commands when the Visuals Window is targeted/has focus:
'H' - Toggles a window displaying the Visuals Windows commands

Autoplay:
TAB  -- Toggle autoplay mode.
R-Arrow  --  In autoplay mode: Advance to the next preset.
L-Arrow   -- In autoplay mode: Returns to the previous preset.

Display:
F  --  Toggle: Display frame rate information.
R  --  Toggle: Display backbuffer metrics.
T  --  Toggle: Display the preset name.

Mouse:
R-Click   -- Display context menu.
Wheel  --  Increase/decrease the thickness of the visuals window frame.

Misc:
+/-   -- Increase/decrease the frame rate target.
S   -- Save the current frame to an picture file in the ScreenShots folder.
Spacebar   -- Increment the favor count for the active (animating) preset.
Pg-Up/Dn   -- Increase/decrease the thickness of the visuals window frame.

November 14, 2021

Synthesoft Flashback:  Lots of UI improvements.

Fixes:
* All planes in a preset now load correctly
* Brightness in Morpher now applied smoothly across morph
* Fixed an issue w/normals in KOB Animator (and added additional parameters/tuning)

General:
* As usual, plenty of optimizations, and new presets.
* Added Tool Tips w/meaningful descriptions.
* Added update check (in Help menu).

Preset Browser:
* Now uses double left-click to launch a preset.
* Now has a Details View (right-click context menu in list view) w/ filtering by preset attributes (name, size, date, sound sync support, modules used).
* Now supports multi-select (very useful with Autoplay).

Palette Editor:
* Updated palette browser and palette miner to display palettes so they're easy  to compare

October 27, 2021

Synthesoft Flashback:  Fixed a bug that broke most of the OpenGL presets. Mental note: Regression testing mandatory. More optimizations, new presets, palettes, and a Mandelbrot module.

October 16, 2021

Synthesoft Flashback:  Lots of optimizations as well as many new presets, palettes, and images.

October 1, 2021

Synthesoft Flashback:  The Beta is now available for download.

September 18, 2021

Announcing Synthesoft Flashback

Flashback is a new product that incorporates parts of Hypno, Psych, and Kine under a single interface.  Flashback features a completely new interface designed for interactive editing of presets as they animate.   It supports most of the pattern types of its predecessors as well as a few new ones.  It makes better use of CPU/GPU resources and should perform significantly better on newer systems.    I'm hoping to have it ready for beta testing on October 1st 2021.   Here's a screen shot of the UI  (LGT Twitter).

December 3, 2018

• Hypno, Psych, Kine  - Fixed a problem that broke our installations when Windows 10 installed a major update.
• Hypno - Increased the range for the "Detail" slider in the "Auxiliary Settings" panel of the configuration dialog.   Faster systems with 4K monitors should look better.

July 31, 2015

• Psych - Removed reliance on 256 color video modes for color effects.  This *vastly* improves the appearance on Windows 8, 8.1, and 10.
• Psych - Added frames-per-second target goals (for both module drawing and color animation)  to the "Auxiliary Settings" panel of the configuration dialog.

January 7, 2015

• Removed a runtime dependency issue in AudioMonitorDLL.dll that displayed an error and prevented it from loading on some systems
• Improved platform compatibility and performance

October 15, 2014

• Added support for sound sync with any media player on Windows Vista or later
• Improved performance with many of the modules
• Many new preset Displays, Palettes, Textures, and Objects.
• Added a floating visuals window option to the task bar launcher
• Improved integration with post-Windows XP platforms. 
• Dropped support for pre-XP platforms

**We recommend that you uninstall previous versions of the software before installing the new versions.  Be sure to back up any Displays you have created first so that you can import them into the new version.