# Psychosynth, and 3D in general... - Site: Analog Industries - Author: Chris Randall - Date: 2008-04-09 - URL: https://analogindustries.com/2008/04/psychosynth-and-3d-in-general/ I noted with interest when Matrix put up a [little blurb](http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2008/04/psychosynth-011-reactable-inspired.html) about [Psychosynth](http://www.psychosynth.com/doku.php) the other day, which is an open-source no-table-or-Bjork-required clone of the Reactable stuff. Now, right from the outset let's get one thing clear: my patience for that whole "breaking down the barriers between the artist and his shit" routine is essentially nonexistent. My interest in these sorts of tools is limited to workflow questions entirely. Personally, I think the audio results of the Psychosynth specifically are underwhelming at minimum, and for the most part downright bad. Now, with that massive caveat out of the way, here's why I bring this whole thing up. My job with Audio Damage, aside from providing pithy responses to emailed questions ("why doesn't Dubstation 1.5 work with Cubase VST in Windows 98?") is generally related to forest matters. As opposed to tree matters, which are most definitely Adam's department. So the general look of Audio Damage products, how they fit in to the world at large, and the personality they have are generally my responsibility, while Adam deals with the internal structures, the actual DSP, and turning my flights of fancy in to actual usable products. That's the general way things work around here, with notable exceptions. So I'm always on the lookout for new ways to do things that will separate AD from the herd, and one of the things I keep coming back to are true 3D interfaces. I had a rather deep experimental phase going a couple years back, and I kept inflicting a little filter I made with a true 3D pure OpenGL interface on our testing crew. They were nonplussed by the whole thing. I believe one actually pondered whether I still had a firm grasp of my sanity. To be sure, there are several products out there, some well-known, that use OpenGL for drawing. (Expert Sleepers' [Minky Starshine](http://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/minkystarshine.html) is one such, although it ain't the prettiest thing out there, and I'm fairly certain that Urs Heckmann uses OpenGL for some of his stuff, although it might just be a combo platter of CoreGraphics and GDI+; hard to tell. Plogue Bidule is done in pure OpenGL, for what it's worth.) The reason for using OpenGL is to open up the Z plane; VSTGUI, which we use for everything right now, is firmly bound to X and Y, with nary a Z in sight. To be certain, it is perfectly capable of doing most everything we need to release fine products. But in my head (the afore-mentioned flights of fancy) I see user interfaces for products that evoke [Anymails](http://carohorn.de/anymails/img/1-anymails-big.jpg) and [Fidgt,](http://www.fidgt.com/visualize) and for that we need something a bit lower level and more fluid in its execution. I actually have one such product in my head that continues on a theme we started in the early days of AD, but I won't elaborate on that at this juncture. Long story short, go watch the Psychosynth videos if you have a minute and think about how a true 3D interface could be used for other things. Personally, as I said, I don't find the Psychosynth stuff very interesting, but I _do_ see the logical extensions. For the record, Psychosynth was done with the OGRE 3D game engine and CEGUI. He has downloadables there, but only for Linux, naturally. But this discussion I'm envisioning isn't really about Psychosynth at all, but rather taking advantage of the platform in which we all work, the computer screen, and making things that are _completely_ new, rather than evoking some crusty piece of gear with my Mental Ray chops. How dangerous is this course of action? ## Comments (10) **ehdyn** (2008-04-09): Yes, expand into Z-but don't feel the need to drag legacy hardware paradigms into software interfaces. Good interview here about that sort o thing. http://www.perimetersound.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.43 **shamann** (2008-04-09): If you check out Fragmental, the multi-effect I dreamt up with Niall Moody, it uses OpenGL for its routing matrix (using Niall's VSTGL wrapper). Makes for nice, fluid redraws: http://www.niallmoody.com/ndcplugs/fragmental.htm I'm not sure I'm sold on 3D plugin interfaces, mostly because we still only get to interact with them in 2D. But I do like interfaces that resemble the Anymails and Fidgt examples, especially when it comes to making sense of large, multi-tiered datasets. That might be one of the problems with plugins, they generally don't need to present a lot of data at once, so the flat interfaces we have get the job done pretty effectively. **shamann** (2008-04-09): I just watched the psychosynth video. I like the fluid, gridless, freeform nature of the interface, but the 3D side of it is mostly unnecessary. It could just as easily be a flat, straight-on 2D view (which it mostly is, anyway). **bassling** (2008-04-09): Any step away from the interfaces we now have for DAWs is a good thing. Computer keyboards are based on a design that was developed to slow typists! Mouses are the terrible for repetitive movement. And, personally, I hate the idea software effects need to look like a (sometimes entirely virtual) hardware version. They may be designed by engineers for engineers but there are much bigger markets to capture for companies catering to people who want to make their own music. **Chris Randall** (2008-04-09): I fully agree that the 3D (as in "hey, I'm a spaceship! Watch me float about!") aspect of Psychosynth and similar ideas is completely unnecessary. The Z plane is useful for other reasons, though. Like in Plogue where you can zoom in/out, and Fidgt, of course. -CR **inteliko** (2008-04-09): Man, ya UI's are good..fuckin AD and URS are primo...just dont come out with some shit lookin like Kantos or some gay citrus logo. **inteliko** (2008-04-09): or fuckin Steinberg Plex....hahahahahaha! **angstrom** (2008-04-09): For me the benefit of Reactable is the tactility, grabbing real things that do something when placed somewhere. But sadly Reactable is just a tech-demo for position sensing which produces tedious noises, when it could be so much more. The Psychosynth copies that tech-demo and omits the only interesting part, the tactility. That's daft IMO. The benefit of tactility is that you can learn it, you know what shape does what, and which hand positions when repeated will produce what effect. To get on topic, I think the course of action is interesting, fascinating, but yes a little dangerous financially. The perils of drastically innovative interface design is just too long a subject to go into in a comment box though! **meeglosh** (2008-04-09): I could see 3D interfaces being the norm in the not too distant future once people make the connection between the z axis and surround fx/mixing. It could already be cool for some of that psychoacoustic spatialization goodness. 3D Replicant, anyone? **tremorcore** (2008-04-09): as i sit here getting my head around paprevision3d and tweener, and the possibilities therein, i can fully empathize with the seduction of the z plane. but i'm with shamann, in that i feel real user benefits won't be had with 3D UI's until we have full-on "minority report" multi-touch hardware. that's when this stuff will be useful, if not necessary. if i were an audio software developer with lots of free time, i might start building a plogue/energyXT type of app which used the z plane and a human-finger-sized ui. maybe it'll be ready to go when "the future is now!" and maybe some facets of its design will trickle into the current point-click 2D DAW landscape.