OSCulator 3.0 is here!

[camille]

After several years of hard work, we are proud to announce the release of OSCulator 3. This is the first major update since our initial release, 10 years ago.

osculator-3-screenshot.png
A special discount for you, loyal customer

OSCulator 3 has been almost completely rewritten for the latest versions of macOS and sports powerful new features (see below). Bringing OSCulator 3 to market required an enormous investment of resources, made possible thanks to your continuous support over the years.

Existing OSCulator 2 owners must upgrade their license to use OSCulator 3.
Please contact us to get your discount if you did not receive the announcement e-mail. There is no expiration on this offer, so feel free to ask at any time.
To say thank you, we are delighted to offer you a discount.

• Free upgrade for licenses purchased between 21 Feb 2016 and 20 Sep 2016.
• 50% discount for licenses purchased between 20 Sep 2015 and 20 Feb 2016, for an effective price of 9.99 USD.
• All other customers have a 25% discount, for an effective price of 14.99 USD.

What’s new in OSCulator 3

macOS Sierra
Compatibility with the most used versions of macOS has always been an important goal. That's why OSCulator 3 is compatible out-of-the-box with Yosemite, El Capitan, and the new Sierra.


Deep Inspection
Like a powerful microscope, use the Message Monitor to see the details of all incoming and outgoing messages. Use the Filter bar to choose what you want to focus on. This comes in handy for power users that have hundreds of messages in their list!


Send and receive anything MIDI
Want to hook up an old synth or translate a SysEx protocol to OSC? MIDI Templates will help you easily do so thanks to OSCulator's unique user interface.


Wiimote Whiteboard
Turn a flat surface into an interactive whiteboard! You will need a projector, an infrared pen and one or several Wiimotes. OSCulator 3 quietly does a bunch of fancy maths to give you the smoothest signal.


Errare humanum est...
Don't fear mistakes, undo support along with automatic document saving and version backup let you recover. And to help you avoid them in the first place, OSCulator 3 is easier to use thanks to its modernized user interface.


Have a question?
Do you have a special request or question?
Feel free to ask, I will be happy to help.


Yours Sincerely,
Camille

[clik]

Snapshots You read my mind!

Looks like Presets are now called Mappings, and Snapshots are a subset? Can you give a quick explanation of the difference between them and how they work together?

[camille]

Hi Clik!

Yes Presets are now called Mappings, because they only deal with the mapping between OSC messages and Events.

Snapshots are the capture of the last values of the messages. There is no way at the moment to see the values of edit them, but it will come in the future.

I hope you will like this new version.

Best,
Cam

[Moldr]

Greetings Camille,

Is the Wii balance board going to part of 3.0? I couldn't see the option unless I was missing something.

Thank you,
Kevin

[camille]

Hi Kevin,

Yes, the driver is the same, just improved internally.
There is no option for the Balance Board, it is recognized automatically.

Best,
Cam

[clik]

...and a brief description of the new MIDI template feature?

[camille]

Sure.

MIDI Templates are two things:

1. A way to send and receive generic MIDI messages, like SysEx, bank messages, etc, things that were previously difficult or impossible to make with OSCulator.
2. A graphical user interface to specify how the messages are built. If you know how a MIDI message is made, then it is easy to substitute a value received from OSC.

When you have created a MIDI Template, you can start using the "MIDI Message" event. A MIDI Message event receives a value from OSC, and translate the value to a MIDI message according to the template specification.

So does it work? In the template editor, you first write the bytes of the MIDI message you would like to send. Then you say what parts of the message have to be substituted with actual values (input value, MIDI output channel, etc.).

Here is an example of the Control Change 1:
MIDI Template Control Change 1.jpg

• The letter 'B' is the hexadecimal representation of the binary number 1011, and 1011 is the number for a Control Change MIDI message (this is explained here).
• The '0' just after the 'B' will be replaced with the MIDI output channel.
• Then '01' is the byte specifying that this is Control Change 1.
• Finally, the last byte '00' is replaced entirely with the OSC input value.

One important limitation of MIDI Templates is that you can only use a single input value. There is currently no way of substituting many different inputs.

I hope this introduction is clear enough, let me know if you have more questions.


Best,
Cam

[johnhartld]

Hi,

I have purchased a licence for osculator. Do I have to re-purchase to be able to use this version. I have just updated to macOS 10.12 so I can't use the old version anymore.

John

[camille]

Hi John,

I am sorry for the lack of clarity regarding upgrade price, I was waiting for the actual release to devise upgrade offers.

OSCulator 3 will be:
- free for users that purchased OSCulator 2 between February 21th 2016 and September 20th 2016.
- 50% off for users that purchased OSCulator 2 between September 20th 2015 and February 20th 2016.

At the moment, I have not found a solution to make the upgrade automatic, so the discount is applied on request.

So in your case, you purchased OSCulator 2 on May 2016, which means that you are entitled to a free upgrade.
You will receive an e-mail to get your license in a short while.


Best,
Cam

[clik]

I'd love to hear from your feedback, so please don't hesitate to share your thoughts, questions and comments here!

Can't see a Lock option where it used to be, under the Routing dropdown...

Scroll bar behaviour - can you tweak the Scalings page to shift the Out. max column to the left away from the scroll bar? I know this is only an issue because I have the 'Show Scroll Bars' set to 'Automatically based on mouse or trackpad' in Sierra's System Preferences/General... or maybe an OSCulator preference to override that systemwide behaviour?

[camille]

Hi clik,

Can't see a Lock option where it used to be, under the Routing dropdown...

The UI changed a bit, OSCulator now leverages the Finder being able to lock documents.
Note there was a bug in the first beta where input locking would not properly work, this is fixed now, so please run the automatic update.

About the UI: right now in version 3.0-beta, open a Finder window, choose File -> Get Info, and check the "Locked" checkbox. Not only, it does the right thing by preventing accidental overwrite of the file, but also OSCulator locks the inputs.

In a future version of OSCulator, you will be able to lock the document right from the main window. This will be a bit more intuitive I guess.

Scroll bar behaviour - can you tweak the Scalings page to shift the Out. max column to the left away from the scroll bar? I know this is only an issue because I have the 'Show Scroll Bars' set to 'Automatically based on mouse or trackpad' in Sierra's System Preferences/General... or maybe an OSCulator preference to override that systemwide behaviour?

Good catch, this has always been quite annoying. I added dummy columns at the end of both the main list, and the scalings list so the hovering scroll bar does not get in the way. This change will be available on the next beta release, I'll post here when it's available.


Best,
Cam

[balam]

Hi Regarding the new feature

• Wiimote TUIO output àla Wiimote Whiteboard

how this works

[camille]

Hi balam,

Wiimote TUIO output àla Wiimote Whiteboard

The idea is that you use the Wiimote as a basic IR camera, and OSCulator will track the coordinates of up to 4 bright dots.

The setup is as follows:

• The wiimote is on a stand, facing a screen (possibily a large projection on a wall)
• You use a IR light source, placed close to the screen plane to act as a pointer

See this video of Johnny Lee demonstrating the concept.

Before you can use the Whiteboard emulation, you have to calibrate OSCulator. You do this by launching the calibration tool. 4 bullseyes will be displayed, and for each bullseye, you must flash your IR light once. Once the 4 corners are calibrated, you can dismiss the calibration window, and start doing whatever you want with the signal from OSCulator.


Cam

[pparker88]

Hello!

I'm still having some trouble figuring out how to lock input in the beta (version: 3.0-beta-26-gab18a5a). I tried locking the doc from the 'get info' window, but it didn't seem to change anything.

Also, just curious, is there any estimated timeframe for when a full release might be made??

Thanks!
Paul

[camille]

Hi Paul!

I'm still having some trouble figuring out how to lock input in the beta (version: 3.0-beta-26-gab18a5a). I tried locking the doc from the 'get info' window, but it didn't seem to change anything.

I just tried with the version you mentionned and got the expected result:

When the document is locked from the Finder "Get Info" window, the OSCulator list becomes grey and no unknown OSC messages are accepted. Furthermore, you can't manually change or create a new mapping (formely known as preset), or change the OSC input port.

Conversely, when the "Locked" checkbox is unchecked, the message list becomes editable again and OSCulator creates a new entry for received unknown OSC messages.

If it did not behave that way on your side, I'd be happy to have a closer look at your osc3 file. Please send it to camille@osculator.net.

Also, just curious, is there any estimated timeframe for when a full release might be made??

The current beta seems pretty stable. I know there is a bug crashing the app when a window is closed but it seems it only happens randomly, so it is a bit hard to track.

I wished I got more user feedback, though I can see the beta program had some good success. If I can find some time next couple of weeks, I will roll a golden master candidate and make it the default download.

As always, your suggestions are welcome.

Best,
Cam