game engines

Idea For Discussion - Offscreen Window Grab App Launcher & Embedment /Menu Bar Interrogator Super Hack Provider Plugin

This is the concept...

A QC patch launches a arbitrary app from file path input, in a viewable secondary QC Editor app window... in the Setting panel of the patch! One can control x/y pixel width and height, as well as offset translations somewhere in all of this, similar to the v002 screen capture patch. During all of this, the app is only viewable in this largish settings panel, or perhaps a bigger GUI hack, that launches a unique window.

One autoconfigures controls for the patch in a way similar to a composition loader. After "configuring" all of the parameters of said app would be available via the app's menubar are available as inputs or outputs (if applicable) to the QC patch.

One can minimize of close this app Viewer window, and the QC provider patch, would still output the image. The Viewer window is just for the luxury of seeing the actual window of the app one will eventually be "offscreen grabbing" from.

The app file itself, should be able to be embedded in the composition.

Now, the idea, is that it would be a universal way of getting visual input for other apps "into" QC, without having to worry about doing a screen grab in a traditional sense, or having to make sure that windows always open in the same place so that the image can get piped into QC (via something like v002 screengrab). If the menu bar, or perhaps other controls, of an app can be used to dynamically configure input/ouput ports on a QC patch, it would provide a modest level of interactivity as well.

I see this as a provider type of patch, that would be able to be plugged into any standard QC renderer. It would be really useful for launching Processing app windows, and grabbing the visual result into QC, or maybe things like Ogre, or various gaming engines.

I'm going to label this as "semi-started", since a few of the hurdles are already sort of done...