*free* software to help determine your first reflection points - Page 2

Hi Stew4msu.

I think maybe the key point is that the sound is not fired in a straight line off the front of the speaker. It is simulated heading out in thousands of different directions, randomly chosen in a very wide cone coming off the face of the speaker (currently 80 degrees in the program). In this diagram, sound is simulated coming out in every direction inside the arc bounded in white. If you were to rotate the speaker, as long as the yellow raytracing line coming off the speaker stays inside the white perimeter line on the arc (next to the 'a' in theta), the reflection point will still be detected. In this diagram I whipped up, the angle theta > 50 degrees, so you could rotate the speaker in or down that amount and still detect the proper reflection points.



The equivalent in the mirror test would be to say as long as you can still see a sliver of the front face of the speaker in the mirror, you would consider that a possible reflection point. If you rotate the speaker past that, you will miss reflection points.

New version 1.02 is now posted guys. Changes are in post #1.

I don't plan on posting a new version every day, but when important bugs are found - especially ones that cause "illegal operations", i'll push out an updated version ASAP. Thanks to ecrabb for finding an "illegal operation" crash that is now fixed in v1.02. There is also some added functionality described in post #1.

jspeillman,

Thanks for the info on Vista. I'll post a DX10 version shortly after I get Vista since the port will be easy.

mbennum,

Thanks! As to your question, i'm honestly not sure. Some forum searches may turn up results.

Curt3g,

Thanks! I'll add cathedral ceiling to the list of feature requests.


ps. Does anyone know how I can modify the thread title? I'd like to update the current version info in there too if possible.

Hi ccapozzoli. What error do you get when you try to run it?

Hi vipercompany. Thanks! Paypal email is smith@kulkarnicorp.com.

Thanks to vipercompany for his donation!

If there are any other requests for certain features in the room geometry (such as the ability to use cathedral ceilings), please let me know in the next 24 hours, as I will be reworking this part of the code over the next few days.

Hi Terry. Zip archive has been added as a download option in the first post.

Hi Gino. The program in the current form supports rooms larger than 24'x24'. Cathedral ceilings will be added in the next release.

Thx Curt3g, i'll make sure you can choose the axis for the cathedral ceiling.

Hi Timmy. We've already had the discussion about rotating speakers and the fact is rotation doesn't make much of a difference when it comes to reflection points since the app casts such a wide cone off each speaker anyway.

Re small group or wide group...if you mean listener zones, the smaller the better. The smaller you make the green boxes, the less sound will reflect off the walls and hit them, resulting in smaller clusters of points, so you get to make less panels!

As for the past few posts about feature requests, I will consider all of them for future releases, but for the next version, which will be 1.1, I have now locked in the features that will be available. They include:

1. Cathedral Ceilings
2. Ability to setup speakers off-center in the room x-axis
3. Ability to setup listener zones off-center in the room x-axis
4. Ability to selectively disable listener zones
5. GUI redesigned to support these features
6. Sound now passes through listeners to back wall and reflects, resulting in
more reflections shown on back wall. Before I was assuming the green boxes intercepted all sound fired at them, which won't strictly be the case unless you're a family of fatheads.

behind the scenes improvements:
Raytracer now 2x faster than v1.02. Default scene on my machine is < 5 seconds. Can't make it much faster.
GUI drawing code is 3x faster
CPU utilization down 15% on my machine

I'm not sure when this release will be since I will be away most of the next month, and I am only about 1/2 done the modifications, but i'll do what I can.