In all the earlier uploads, the automatic update checker uses cached pages if available when checking for updates so could get an out of date version if the page has been cached for some reason.

Though as it doesn't cache the pages itself, I think most likely to happen if you visit the update file location manually in your browser, something else has to happen anyway to get the browser to cache the page.

So probably won't be an issue for most users (I only visit the url myself for debugging). Anyway just in case it does affect you for some reason, now it's fixed for future automatic update checks - though can't do anything about earlier downloads naturally..

Minor update -Monday July 18th 2011

Found out I haven't done an update message for the automatic check for updates since 2008! Sorry. So anyway have done one for this upload - also fixed some bugs in how the automatic check for update works.

Better layout for Move window - was confusing with the sway section somehow looked as if it was to do with the spin just relabelled the controls in a clearer fashion to fix it.

Sway - in the Pattern menu, when not swaying says "Set Swaying" in the drop menu but has no effect if click on it - fixed

Also added new check box to the More version of the Ribbon window " End ribbon if it draws over itself in reverse". This is something that can happen often if you use the option to respond to musical chords played in FTS or the Lambdoma window. You can see what happens if you use the new Grow option. The moving dot tracing the curve comes to a stop and then goes back on itself. When you do that with the ribbon or tube gradually changing from say red to blue you get a tube or ribbon with streaky red / blue effect - often also changing in colour in an erratic kind of a way.

It's because on the repeat in reverse back along the same curve then the tube now is red (say) where before it was blue. So both colours are on the surface of the tube, and so it's probably indeterminate which one your graphics card should treat as the surface colour at that point.

So - it's a bug - not intended - though may well be attractive for some patterns. Anyway it defaults to switched on for all new patterns but for compatibility in case you wanted the effect. is on for previously saved patterns.

HOw it works:

Anyway the new check box fixes it by cutting the tube at points where the curve reverses exactly. That's usually at 1/4 and at 3/4 through the cycle - at least if you start with an ordinary Lissajous curve, no special effects or transformations - and then play chords and see how it transforms.

So to make it fast to render I've just assumed that's where it happens - So switching on this check box shouldn't slow down the frame rate at all. But it's possible that if you transform the curve in complex ways you may well be able to still trigger the streaky indeterminate colour type effect even with this check box switched on.

If it is needed for other types of curve will investigate it further what needs to be done to fix it more generally. But lots to do so will leave it like this for now.

Minor update - July 15th 2011

During video export - if the frames time out because they take too long to render - you get a message to say so and offer to increase time out - that was fine - but every time you get that message you get a glitch in the rendered video - a "judder" effect - and sometimes a fragmentary frame as well
- anyway all fixed now.

Also if you play chords in Tune Smithy (or FTS Lambdoma) during video export with Lissajous 3D set to change shape in response to the chords - then the exported video changes - mid -export 0 which user won't expect to happen. So - made so doesn't respond during video export.

If you open a texture from within the pattern or background pattern window - you need to switch on the texture option to see the effect. Since user will almost certainly want it switched on if they select an image have done it so it automatically switches on whenever you select a texture image if not already on.

The pause spin, sway and wave drift options in the Pattern drop menu behaved in a rather confusing way at times - with the transformations, spins and sways not always pausing or resuming when you expected to e.g. have to click maybe twice before anything changes - fixed. Also added option to set the waves drifting to the drop menu (or to stop the wave drift) to make it really easy to switch the wave drift option on / off.

The frame rate for 3D tubes goes down noticeably with the rounded corner tubes feature if you have many segments to the tube. So I've disabled the rounded -corner tube for tubes with lots of segments.

This is for new patterns only doesn't affect anything you have already saved. The rounded corners are most needed for patterns with few segments but sometimes you need them for others such as e.g. the "pearl necklace at dawn" -if you see "spikes" shooting out when the corners are very sharp - then rounded corners will fix that. Made so it's a check box to disable it and if you switch "rounded corner tubes" on and it is disabled, offeres to re-enable it.

Minor update - July 8th 2011

Option to save Lissajous image to a file - may fail with error message for no apparent reason
- fixed.

When you browse to open a new texture using the Open Texture button - changes to the correct folder but if you change folder, doesn't open the image until you select it from the drop list - fixed.

Minor update - June 28th 2011

In some circumstances Lissajous 3D uses much more CPU than it should. E.g. if you set the maximum number of frames per second to 1, then the CPU shoots right up instead of going down to nearly 0 as you would expect.
- fixed.

A couple of very minor bug fixes, not sure if really worth explaining.

Anyway in case you are interested, here we go:. One is to do with how the menu is displayed when you pause the animation - if you resume from paused animation using a menu for one of the other windows, not the main window, the menu stays visible (so you can see change of the check state) - but that means the animation remains paused until you move the mouse off the menu (because animation pauses while menu is showing). Instead should close the menu immediately - is obvious to user that animation has resumed if you do that. The other is - you can't select a file with a very long file name in the list of Lissajous patterns (though fine with the drop list)
- both fixed.

Also - if you set a maximum number of frames per second - on close the program and start it up again though it displays the number you set doesn't actually use it any more. You have to edit the field every time you run the program before it uses the value. Normally just uses its default which is 100 frames per second.

That's rather high, not really need as many as that for smooth animations, set the default to a maximum of 50 frames per second, and fixed the bug.

Minor update - June 1st 2010

A few bug fixes for animation save as screen saver randomised patterns.

Minor update - May 31st 2010

Overlapping text on page 3 of the wizard and somewhat confusing layout for this window - fixed.

Bugs, stack fault, and access violation in option to make a web page gallery of all the Lissajous files in a folder - fixed.

Fixed some bugs in the way some of the screen saver example patterns may get randomised:

Pale blue ribbon with dipole magnet gets randomised for screensaver with
frequencies 1 1 1 7 7 -1
instead of the original
frequencies - was because it was flagged as "made as a spirograph"
- fixed

Texture for randomised verison of "Confluence" set to wrap according to Position (e.g. Pos, Width) may be just solid gray no apparent texture at all - was because the pattern used very large values for the size of the turns (3000 instead of 100) and the calculation for the automatic rescaling of the texture along the ribbon assumed size of 100
- fixed

Van Gog billowing Starry Sky - when randomised - only works for some texture such as "another sphere method". Not for Cylinder - by normals for instance or any of the others earlier in the list - fixed by changing the way the textures are randomised. If set to "another sphere method" or "same as ribbon" then randomises to one of those two, and not to the other ones earlier in the list - idea is if user has chosen one of those methods it may well be because it is a pattern that requires those methods, otherwise quite likely to have settled for something earlier in the list
- fixed

Minor update - May 29th 2010

Sometimes, when you press down the Alt key, all the static text in a window vanishes
- fixed

This is for the export in .Obj format option. Works fine for triangle strip, but when you choose quad strip for the ribbon, the export in .obj format connects the points of the quads in the wrong order, which changes the shape of some of the output curves, often the saved curve has gaps in it.
- fixed

When you use the Browse button in the EXPORT VIDEO - AVI, Flash Movie, Animated Gif or Frames... (Ctrl + M) window then you get message "The file name is not valid" - fixed

Sometimes just get single line tips instead of the new balloon tips - fixed.

Minor update - May 26th 2010

You may on rare occasions get an access violation in the middle of export as animation
- fixed

Other very minor bug fixes.

Minor update - May 25th 2010

The screen saver option to morph from one pattern to another had some bugs in it, didn't morph the shape for instance when it was supposed to, just instantly changed to the new values for the Turns.
fixed

If you start up a Lissajous file by file association and it uses textures, doesn't find the textures, and the patterns show up untextured - fixed.

If you use File | Save from the main window, nothing happens, works okay in the other windows.

If you open a pattern or make a new one with a ribbon instead of tubes or spheres - then add a texture to a pattern - for many patterns with ribbons the result is a stripey effect with the texture not obvious. Reason is because texture gets scaled to be very short along the length of the ribbon.
fixed with the new feature Extra scale for Position along Ribbon

File | Recently visited Files (CTRL + SHIFT + F9) goes blank for the combination of Sort by location selected and Show Folder unselected
- fixed

Some other minor bugs or bugs that are rarely encountered.

February 5th 2010

back to What's new

Bug report may send no bug report if you don't have your computer set up to send e-mails (e.g. if you send e-mail on-line or on a different computer) - and may lead to error message or access violation - fixed, and with Show Files button so you can see the files to send and then zip them and attach them to an e-mail or put them onto another computer.

January 18th 2010

back to What's new

Sometimes the program freezes when you try to make an animated gif or avi file - fixed.

Ctrl + Shift + F5 shortcut for the Pattern Texture window doesn't do anything - now done as Ctrl + F11 or Shift + F11 for the Background Texture - fixed.

Other minor bugs.

September 3rd 2009

back to What's new

When you make a web page of all the Lissajous patterns in a folder, you may get an access violation or similar bug reported, as soon as you click on the button - fixed.

Other minor bugs.

December 17th 2008

back to What's new

When you click on an entry in the new list of patterns, if you needed to scroll down to show it, then your scroll position gets lost - the highlight is still visible but it the list scrolls to put the highlight right at the bottom of the window - fixed.

If you switch off the Set depth for a spirograph, the spirograph is still shown with depth until you adjust one of the wheels - fixed.

Other minor bugs.

December 13th 2008

back to What's new

Minor bug fixes connected with the randomiser - fixed.

When you set a window on top of the main window using the Top button, then it should remember those settings for next session - fixed.

File | Save As still shows a 16 bit png save (there's no 16 bit png support in the program) - removed.

December 13th 2008

back to What's new

Minor bug fixes connected with the image save, movie save, and a few others.

Access violation that could occur while saving an image - especially if a png in 16 bit format - fixed.

July 3rd 2008

back to What's new

For the brown_and_blue_flower_shape pattern, and a few other patterns, get a rapidly flashing texture - this results from rounding errors when the file was saved and re-opened e.g. saving 7/3 as 2.333333 with not enough decimal places of precision - fixed

Other patterns - for a few of the tube based patterns, you can get similar looking flashing patterns for 20 sided tubes, e.g. double cup funge. Not sure what the cause is, but as a work around, the flashing goes away if you change to a smaller odd number of sides for the tube, say 11. Another example - crazy_star_cogs - pattern keeps flashing for 12 sided cogs. Fine if set to an odd number - for this upload changed it to 15. Flashes for every even number if set to rounded corners.

Edited all the pattterns to eliminate the flashing effects. This effect didn't show up, or was less prominent, when the patterns were played on slower machines which couldn't play such smooth animations for these patterns.

Movie for zigzaggy colourful flower links to page 10 (which doesn't exist) - similarly if you click the link for the page from the movie for the last pattern in each page (just the movie) links to the next page instead of the one it belongs to - fixed.

Sometimes doesn't pause the pattern when you go to File | Save As, also if you select a pattern from the drop list, if it takes a moment or two to load, you see it briefly as it should be at the time saved to the file, then it jumps forward a second or two to the position it is after the time it took to load it. Fixed - the timing now starts after the load has completed rather than before it starts - time tracking pauses during load of the file.

Found a thread synchronisation bug that lead to failed file saves (with error messages to say the save couldn't be completed) in rare situations while making the web page gallery of Lissajous patterns - potentially it could also lead to access violations in rare situations though that didn't happen in the testing - fixed

back to What's new

May 4th 2008

back to What's new

If you halt construction of the web page while it is in the middle of making a movie for one of the pages, then you end up with a fragmentary movie with only some of the frames made - and if you then remake it with the option to leave movies

in place if they exist, result is that the web page is remade with a fragmentary movie in it.

Fixed by adding a message to ask the user if they want to delete the fragmentary movie when they halt the web page construction.

back to What's new

May 19th 2008

back to What's new

In Vista, when the screen saver was running, you would see flashes of the windows on your desktop appear briefly while it was playing - fixed. Other minor Vista bug fixes.

Some of the patterns changed very slowly, or not at all, especially noticeable for the screen saver - made new versions which are more dynamic for those.

When you save the Lissajous pattern as a flash movie, animated gif etc, if the pattern was spinning, the saved animation just had the wave drift (change of shape), didn't spin - fixed.

Various minor bug fixes in the layout of the web pages.

back to What's new

April 15th 2008

back to What's new

When you save an animated gif, then it seems to stop for a while not doing anything after the frames have all been made - added a message to the window at that point saying "Saving" so you can see what is happening - it is saving the finished animated gif at that point.

Also get error messages sometimes due to previous version of .gif not deleted before making the new one - especially if you halt it mid construction - fixed.

Help may not show up for some installed browsers (e.g. Maxthon) - fixed.

Fixed a number of very minor bugs and glitches.

back to What's new

January 2008 - Release of Lissajous 3D version 2.1

Fixed a number of very minor bugs and glitches and improved the layout of the windows and the way the user interface works in many ways.

Fixed some bugs that show up when run on systems with multiple monitors, with the various multiple monitor options. For instance, that it only shows up on one of the monitors if you have the secondary monitor set to the left of the primary monitor (negative coordinates in the multi- monitor space).

Some web pages shown from Lissajous 3D by file association didn't show up if you have Mozilla FireFox as your web browser - this is because I forgot to add a file://localhost/ prefix - which FireFox needs for local files, but Internet Explorer doesn't mind about one way or the other.

Fixed another major bug though most users will rarely encounter it - if you use the option to make a web page of flash animated jpegs or pngs then after a dozen or so movies of some length (sooner if the movies are very long), you may find that you start to get messages from the WinMing library to say that it can no longer save the movies. This clears up when you close the program and start it up again - but only to recur again another dozen or so movies later. The bug was the indirect result of a bug in my port of the old version of the Win Ming flash generation library to windows, now fixed.

Mar 20th 2006

After some particular screen saver patterns are shown, the ones following may change less than they usually do - what happens is that they no longer spin, only transform. Also when you open one shape after another from the main program then after opening a non spinning pattern, the others from then on may no longer spin until you press the button to set it spinning again. Fixed.

Sometimes in the random succession of patterns, you see the same pattern again soon after you last saw it in the screen saver - fixed.

Feb 24th 2006

Occasional access violation message for some patterns if you resize a window and then after that, change to full screen then back to normal again - fixed.

The recent files list sometimes didn't record newly opened files to add to the history - fixed.

If you customised the web page layout for the option to show all the Lissajous figures as thumbnails, it forgets the page intro and end note when you next redo the page. When this happens you can easily recover it by using the revert button to revert to the last used options for the pages - but you had to recover it again every time you remake the page, which shouldn't be necessary. Fixed.

It was also easy to forget to revert to the old options if one had changed something in the web page layout for anothre page - that's fixed too. see the new Always revert option in the What's New section..

Feb 16th 2006

Bug fix in the new 2.0 release - if you save a spirograph with drifting waves, and then reopen it you may find that the waves are no longer drifting. That is, until you show the spirograph window when if it is set to auto remake the spirograph the waves will start drifting again.

Fixed - also the bug only affected reading from the file. The drifting waves were actually saved so previously saved files with drifting waves will read fine.

Feb 12th 2006

When Lissajous first started up with a slow to draw picture, it would sometimes momentarily show a frame with random patterns on it unrelated to the figures (just an undrawn frame). Fixed.

April 8 2004

The screen saver would show more distant shapes in the pattern in front of the nearer ones on a few displays (though the window version of the program showed them just fine) - fixed. Also not displaying with appropriate colours in displays set to 256 colour palettes (the older display mode, still available on modern monitors) - fixed.

Not exactly synchronising the tunes and the shapes when both are set to play for the same length oftime - fixed.

Also some glitches when running FTS in the background to accompany the screen saver - fixed.

No tool tips shown for the screen saver settings dialog - fixed.

Doesn't randomise first file played by screen saver\par when set to play random scene - done.

When you use the arrow keys to change the time in the shape window, it has no effect on shape - done.

November 28 2003

When you show the about window it may sometimes show strangely - problem was that the window wasn't always in the position that it seemed to be on the screen when it first appears - fixed.

Occasionally you might find that when you click and drag on the shape to turn it nothing happens - fixed.

November 27 2003

Fixed some bugs in the Images | Animation frames , including one that can cause an access violation when the dialog is first shown.

With the colour wheel, if you set the brightness or saturation to 0 then the hue gets set to 0 for red - which is perfectly valid of course, but it means that if you then set them back to a non zero number the colour has got changed from whatever it was before to red. So better if the hue doesn't get changed - fixed.

If you scroll the hue beyond 600 then it resets to a value in the range 0 to 600. We don't want that here as the hues need to be able to go up to any number such as 3600 etc to go around several times for rainbow effects. This only affected use of the spin controls to change the hue - fixed.

The colour patch in the colour wheel is supposed to be shown with a dotted border when you click on it as a sign that you can use its keyboard shortcuts (see its tool tip help) such as Insert, Delete in combinations with Ctrl and Shift to change the hue, saturation or brightness. Shortcuts were working fine but wasn't always shown with the dotted border when it should be - fixed.

November 5 2003

Fixed a bug that caused an access violation (handled) when you open a file in LJ format.

November 3 2003

Images | Image Size and Save Image | Save Image As had got disabled - fixed.

Images | Animation frames - the animations had also got disabled - not animating, just showed a single frame - fixed.

Monday October 6 2003

Bug fix - if you set a shape spinning using the mouse with it set to the trackball type of spin then save it, then when you re-open the shape you find it is no lnger spinning. The reason is that it wasn't saving the time increment for the trackball spin quaternion, which was only recorded internally and nowhere in the interface. Added this to Move | Spin Methods - fixed.

Saturday September 6 2003

Fixes a bug in the tool tips that can cause a fluttering hourglass when a window is first shown and another one that can cause access violations for users with Windows 98 + Explorer 5.x. See the Fractal Tune Smithy Bug Fixes page for 5th Sept. for details

Monday July 15

Fixes a few bugs. Main thing - a few check boxes that had no effect. Also the preview of the frames that show in the Images | Animation frames movie only showed correctly if the image was square. Other images were saved correctly - but shown as stretched horizontally or vertically in the preview. A few other really minor fixes which I can't even remember now. Also uses the most recent builds of the dlls to make flash movies. This fixes a potential memory leak when saving flash animated pngs. Finally, the keyboard shortcuts F!, F2, F3 etc had stopped working - fixed..

Thursday July 10

Improvements in the layout and in the messages you see when you first run the program - as it was you could easily switch to full screen when you started up the program because the window title bar used to read

"Lissajous 3D - Press Enter to switch to / from full screen" - but if the window is small then you just see the first part: "Lissajous 3D - Press Enter..."

Follow that instruction and you go into full screen mode, and don't know how to get back again. It now says Lissajous 3D - to switch to / from full screen press enter . So hopefully users will no longer get mystified about how to get back to windowed mode.

A number of other small bug fixes and additions or changes in the layout

Saturday June 21

Important bug fix!

When you run Lissajous 3D for a fair while, or for a shorter while on a fast computer, eventually you find other programs can't start, with "out of memory" error messages. When Lissajous 3D exits the problem persists, and the only solution is to reboot.

Fixed. Happened because the hand cursor for the main window got reloaded for every frame rather than once only, each time loading a new copy of the cursor. Nothing to do with OpenGL. This doesn't show up in memory leak tests - when the application exits Windows is supposed to free any memory allocated in this fashion automatically. Presumably it did, so probably something else is involved as well, maybe indeed memory fragmentation. Whatever it is, it is fixed now.

Lissajous 3D users should re-download it to make sure this problem doesn't happen.

Sorry about this!

Updated the version number to 1.1 to alert users to this fix

Some debugging of the skins.

Wednesday June 18

The option to change gradually from one material to another along the length of a ribbon can now also be used with tubes.

(technical note - this is done by another mod of the gle_with_time_out.dll )

Handled exception may occasionally occur after you show and then close the page setup dialog for one of the tube based shapes. Under investigation - may be fixed with this upload. Also added a shorter time out for the picture for the Page Setup dialog, preset to 1 second but configurable by user. See Opts | Animation Time Outs | Maximum time to take to paint the picture in the Page Setup preview

Bug fix 1.01 Friday June 13 2003

After you have been showing animated curves that use 3D tubes in Lissajous 3D (such as the hexagonal cross section 3D Lissajous and the pearl necklace above) you may sometimes get an out of memory message when you launch another program - fixed

This seems to be because the Gle library used to draw tubes does many small allocations and frees in rapid succession. It was fixed with a modifiction of the gle library to use recyclable memory rather than fresh allocations for each new frame. Lissajous 3D has no memory leaks so that wasn't the problem. Technically, the issue is that the heap may get fragmented causing fragmetation of the RAM memory available if you do many allocations of varied size in rapid succession. The modification used won't affect any other programs running as the library is already renamed to gle_with_time_out.dll .

Inicidentally, if you get this same problem with other programs, Free RAM XPPro is useful to help keep RAM defragmented (freeware)

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