ANNOUNCEMENT
Following last years release of the MK2 Input board, the long awaited (well long promised) DMXorcist2 will soon be available.

The original version of DMXorcist which is now nearly 6 years old will remain available throughout 2012 for new customers who require a mature solution, however its unlikely to benefit from any future upgrades, and its likely to become unsupported on any future windows operating systems, or support any versions of VSA beyond 5.001.

The new version is very different from the original, this release is a long way from a numerical increment name change, a few invisible tweaks and addition of a few unwanted functions, that are traditionally associated with a ‘software upgrade’ DMXorcist2 represents over three years of on and off work to fix many problems with the original software and to improve ease of use and performance, and its only due to a few recent breakthroughs in reliability and functionality, that have led me to feel its ready for near future release.

At the core of DMXorcist2 is a multi-threaded engine, traditional single thread applications will only use a single core on a modern multi core computer meaning that up to 75% of your computers power remains relatively unused. However, DMXorcist2 Multi-thread engine will distribute the load across however many cores as your computer has making the best possible use of your computers power.

Another feature of DMXorcist2 is that it unites the functionality of both Exorcist and DMXorcist, this now means you can now run multiple DMX routines simultaneously (as per DMXorcist), whilst running mixed media routines at the same time (as per Exorcist)

The initial rollout version of DMXorcist2 may lack a few features of current DMXorcist and Exorcist (Script, Infra red controls), however its my intention, over the period of about a year after release, to add these functions as free upgrades to eventually release a unified product, with at least all the functionality of the original products. For me the advantages of this approach is it lets me concentrate on making the core functionality reliable before I turn to the 'periphery' features.

In addition to the original functionality DMXorcist2 will add new functionality such as multiple input boards, unlimited sound and VSA players, unlimited functions and timers, and maybe multiple DMX streams, the modular nature of the system enables me to easily add new plug in features.

A preview of DMXorcist2 can be viewed here, this footage was shot a couple of years ago when the basic concepts were laid out, since then a lot of issues that I failed to mention in this video have been fixed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvVJO...mZZ6HKPhitZj24

The licencing system will change to a points based system. The freeware version will have enough points for basic functionality for users to sample the features, additional points can be purchased to grow your control system, as with DMXorcist licences are keyed to the IO boards, and the original Exorcist and new MK2 boards will continue to be compatible with the new software.

Bata test volunteers are welcome, please drop me an email or PM stating your computer system, whether you have VSA console or any earlier versions of Exorcist and Input boards.


Summary of DMXorcist 2 Changes
  • All new simplified and customisable user interface
  • New points based licence system
  • Instant arming of all players and Input boards
  • x86/x64 compatability
  • Playback of unlimited DMX VSA file simultaneously
  • Playback of unlimited mixed media VSA Files, simultaneously if they don't share output devices. (dependent of purchase of VSA console)
  • Playback of unlimited sound files
  • Playback of unlimited Video files
  • Unlimited input boards
  • Unlimited logic functions
  • Unlimited Timers
  • Unlimited Counters
  • Unlimited random generators
  • Unlimited Compare functions
  • New 4 way logic functions
  • New parametric VSA parser
  • New VSA DMX pause function
The currently reccomended operating system is Windows 7, however DMXorcist2 will be supported on Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Note 'unlimited' means unlimited by software and within the number of purchased licence points, in actuality there will be a limit imposed by the computer hardware.