The latest update was on Monday 12 th October.
This one adds one new feature - the ability to export H264 encoded movies in a dumbed down profile which even intentionally crippled playback software like Apples Quicktime player can play back, so one no longer needs decent free/open source playback software like VLC to play such movies outside PTB.
Mostly this release is about adding grumpiness inducing 5 work days worth of new dirty hacks to work around the latest bugs and deficiencies in Apples OSX 10.11 El Capitan "operating system", which is afaics every bit as awful for PTB work as OSX 10.10 Yosemite and OSX 10.9 Mavericks were, at least as far as my limited sample on two machines and the feedback from two users indicates.
From now on, OSX versions before 10.11 El Capitan are no longer tested or officially supported.
OSX 10.8 - 10.10 should continue to "work", but no problems relating to these versions will be
handled and no bugs will be fixed. Only OSX 10.11 El Capitan will receive basic testing, bug
fixes and support.
New features and improvements:
- Allow H264 profile selection for movie writing. Demo this in ImagingStereoDemo by choosing Profile=2, the "Main Profile", something that even works with deficient movie players like Apples Quicktime.
Fixes for El Capitan, Apples latest goddamn awful "masterpiece":
- No longer completely hang and deadlock Octave-3 and Octave-4 in GUI mode due to El Capitan bugs. Octave-3 and Octave-4 now work ok in GUI mode, as tested on two machines.
- Avoid initial sync failure, caused by new El Capitan bugs, via some dirty hack, as tested on one macMini 2012 with Intel HD-4000 graphics. My own 2010 MacbookPro with a NVidia GeForce GT 330M is just as broken as it was on 10.9 and 10.10, with no use of page flipping for stimulus onset (== stimulation timing is not trustworthy at all) and a rate of 80% sync failures.
- Reduce frequency of white flashes when there shouldn't be any, caused by El Capitan bugs. Dirty hack. This is relevant if one uses Screen('Preference', 'VisualDebuglevel', 0) to start with a black screen instead of the white welcome screen, e.g., to keep dark adapted subjects dark adapted. A new OSX treat since a while is that during opening the onscreen window the window flashes or lights up white anyway for no discernible reason. The latest hack seems to reduce the frequency and duration of this happening.
- Make frozen/black screen hangs at end of a session slightly less frequent via a new hack. Not sure if the hack really consistently helps or it is just a placebo effect on my side, because i don't want all these hours of work wasted.
- Automatic fallback from stereomode 1 to stereomode 11 on OSX if mode 1 (OpenGL native quad-buffered stereo) is unsupported, as is the case on El Capitan for all tested NVidia, AMD and Intel gpus. Apple apparently decided that their users do no longer need professional stereo display support and officially deprecated the stereo OpenGL pixelformat selector as of 10.11. I'd love to know if Apple crippled native stereo support on their expensive professional class Quadro and Fire cards as well, that would add insult to injury.
- Rebuilt all OSX mex files against XCode 7 and the OSX 10.11 SDK's. For now the mex files should continue to work on 10.8 and later, although i'm thinking about removing support for 10.8 and 10.9
- Change support status on OSX: 10.11 El Capitan now supported, official support for OSX 10.10 Yosemite canceled.
This one adds one new feature - the ability to export H264 encoded movies in a dumbed down profile which even intentionally crippled playback software like Apples Quicktime player can play back, so one no longer needs decent free/open source playback software like VLC to play such movies outside PTB.
Mostly this release is about adding grumpiness inducing 5 work days worth of new dirty hacks to work around the latest bugs and deficiencies in Apples OSX 10.11 El Capitan "operating system", which is afaics every bit as awful for PTB work as OSX 10.10 Yosemite and OSX 10.9 Mavericks were, at least as far as my limited sample on two machines and the feedback from two users indicates.
From now on, OSX versions before 10.11 El Capitan are no longer tested or officially supported.
OSX 10.8 - 10.10 should continue to "work", but no problems relating to these versions will be
handled and no bugs will be fixed. Only OSX 10.11 El Capitan will receive basic testing, bug
fixes and support.
New features and improvements:
- Allow H264 profile selection for movie writing. Demo this in ImagingStereoDemo by choosing Profile=2, the "Main Profile", something that even works with deficient movie players like Apples Quicktime.
Fixes for El Capitan, Apples latest goddamn awful "masterpiece":
- No longer completely hang and deadlock Octave-3 and Octave-4 in GUI mode due to El Capitan bugs. Octave-3 and Octave-4 now work ok in GUI mode, as tested on two machines.
- Avoid initial sync failure, caused by new El Capitan bugs, via some dirty hack, as tested on one macMini 2012 with Intel HD-4000 graphics. My own 2010 MacbookPro with a NVidia GeForce GT 330M is just as broken as it was on 10.9 and 10.10, with no use of page flipping for stimulus onset (== stimulation timing is not trustworthy at all) and a rate of 80% sync failures.
- Reduce frequency of white flashes when there shouldn't be any, caused by El Capitan bugs. Dirty hack. This is relevant if one uses Screen('Preference', 'VisualDebuglevel', 0) to start with a black screen instead of the white welcome screen, e.g., to keep dark adapted subjects dark adapted. A new OSX treat since a while is that during opening the onscreen window the window flashes or lights up white anyway for no discernible reason. The latest hack seems to reduce the frequency and duration of this happening.
- Make frozen/black screen hangs at end of a session slightly less frequent via a new hack. Not sure if the hack really consistently helps or it is just a placebo effect on my side, because i don't want all these hours of work wasted.
- Automatic fallback from stereomode 1 to stereomode 11 on OSX if mode 1 (OpenGL native quad-buffered stereo) is unsupported, as is the case on El Capitan for all tested NVidia, AMD and Intel gpus. Apple apparently decided that their users do no longer need professional stereo display support and officially deprecated the stereo OpenGL pixelformat selector as of 10.11. I'd love to know if Apple crippled native stereo support on their expensive professional class Quadro and Fire cards as well, that would add insult to injury.
- Rebuilt all OSX mex files against XCode 7 and the OSX 10.11 SDK's. For now the mex files should continue to work on 10.8 and later, although i'm thinking about removing support for 10.8 and 10.9
- Change support status on OSX: 10.11 El Capitan now supported, official support for OSX 10.10 Yosemite canceled.
-mario