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grisen · 2007-03-15, 12:18

DisplayShelf is a Coverflow clone made in flash. The source is available under the MIT open source license. Download here. There is also a step by step tutorial available here. Just some skew math to 2d images and some anti-aliasing = Psuedo-3D.

The demo and source might be useful for the XBMC devs (if they are planning on doing something similar). Yes, i know it's not the same programming language. But it might help anyway...

This could be the result.

**spiff** · 2007-03-15, 13:36

flash = no go. its owned by an evil corporation called macromedia, didn't you know? and its certainly not foss.

grisen · 2007-03-15, 13:39

spiff Wrote:flash = no go. its owned by an evil corporation called macromedia, didn't you know? and its certainly not foss.

As I said. It should be possible to look at the source code and use it as a base when programming in C++ (or whatever). I'm aware that xbmc cannot run flash...

**spiff** · 2007-03-15, 13:44

so basically you want us to look at vector animation "code", "translate" that into c++ in order to rip off another evil corporation?

hell no. you can do your dirty work yourself.

grisen · 2007-03-15, 13:51

spiff Wrote:so basically you want us to look at vector animation "code", "translate" that into c++ in order to rip off another evil corporation?

Did you even bother to look at the code and the demo? There is no vector animation. As I said it's only skew math to 2d images and some anti-aliasing.

Rip off? I'm not sure what you're referring to. CoverFlow is now an Apple product. Adobe made their own copy of CoverFlow, and also made a public source release.

**spiff** · 2007-03-15, 13:57

code is about 50kb of initializations, comments and calls to flash classes for moving the images. i didnt look at the demo because, surprise, surprise, macromedia/adobe doesnt ship the plugin for my platform.

rip off because coverflow was added by apple and now every one wants it. i dont care if its open or not, its still a ripoff of other ppls ideas.

finally, if its so simple, feel free to submit a patch.

grisen · 2007-03-15, 14:07

spiff Wrote:code is about 50kb of initializations, comments and calls to flash classes for moving the images. i didn't look at the demo because, surprise, surprise, macromedia/adobe doesn't ship the plugin for my platform.

rip off because coverflow was added by apple and now every one wants it. i don't care if its open or not, its still a ripoff of other ppls ideas.

This is the code I'm referring to. I'm guessing XBMC already contains graphics handling mechanisms.

I see your point about ripoff. But in that case, isn't XBMC a ripoff from Microsoft Media Center? What is the difference?

**spiff** · 2007-03-15, 14:18

same applies, that code hardly does anything, it's all calls to the flash components. while we ofc have basic image stuff in xbmc, we have nowhere near the library that flash provides.

granted, we started out with the same basic idea as msmc (doubt very much that they were first!), creating a media center. but i will claim that we have innovated within those boundaries. besides, this is one very specific function, not a general concept.

El Piranna · 2007-03-15, 15:28

Peace, please, peace... :p I liked CoverFlow when it was an independent app, i loved CoverFlow when it was buyed by Apple and included in iTunes, and i'm crazy with CoverFlow now that it works FullScreen. When i saw it the first thing i thinked was "XBMC!!!! I want this in my Linving Room!!!!", and well, i don't think it has a pattent, in any case thinking about it is really simple and stupid to program... I don't know DirectX, and my skills on OpenGL are very limited (i don't know how to use textures, for example), but i could be able to make a demo about it. Maybe it could be possible to add directly to the skins instead of XBMC core (someone has sayed "xTV"? Smile

)

jmarshall · 2007-03-15, 23:19

It's not as simple as it sounds.

The changes needed would be:

1. Move to a full 3D engine (at least bump the dimension of the transform matrix up to 3D + alpha then add a projection matrix back to 2D). We cannot do it otherwise, as it's not an affine transformation. We mayaswell just go full 3D in the process, though this will mean lots of code changes.

2. Think carefully how to open this for the skinner.

3. Redefine the container objects (fixedlist in particular) so that it can have separate left and right item layouts.

4. The "animation" code would be tricky, but not necessarily impossible to get synced up. In particular, scrolling quickly may cause issues.

Number 2 is probably the critical one.

Cheers,
Jonathan

El Piranna · 2007-03-16, 01:17

Jmarshall, interesting point your ones... I thinked it could be possible to do in a 2.5D format as xTV emulate home page animations from appleTV. In any case, i think there would be interesting make a demo-app that only does that, and later see how to integrate this code inside XBMC...

Maybe someone kill me, but i asked some time ago where i can get something similar to a xbmclib so i could be able to get my own XBox MediaCenter from scratch and nobody told me anything. XBMC is awesome, but there are things that could be interesting to re-do from the botton with more or less XBMC integration (for example, a full 3D interface as Microsoft original dashboard has).

**spiff** · 2007-03-16, 11:15

the code is all open. do what you want with it.

we certainly wont make a library out of our nice little application.