XLights

From Nutcracker Wiki
Revision as of 06:36, 21 August 2015 by Edmon (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search


xLights History

  • Xlights was created in 2010 by Matt Brown. Matt, a LOR user, wanted a show player that would have low system requirements and high performance.
  • Xlights has been a reliable player used by hundreds of Christmas Light enthusiasts

Nutcracker 2.0

  • Nutcracker was written by Sean Meighan in 2012.
  • Sean, who was new to Christmas Lights, wanted an easier way of creating effects on smart RGB devices.
  • Sean came up with the concept of defining a model (Megatree, matrix, arches, .etc.) and then dropping effects (butterfly, spirals, text, .etc.) onto the model.
  • Nutcracker 1.0 and 2.0 were developed as a web application. To create effects you would log into the web, define models, and drop effects.

XLights/Nutcracker is Born!

  • In January 2013, Matt Brown took the web based code that Sean had written and re-wrote into C++ and made Nutcracker part of xLights.
  • It produced a real time Nutcracker product.
  • Example:
    • The snowflake effect took 5 minutes to generate effects using Nutcracker 2 minutes
    • In Nutcracker 3 (The xLights port), that same effect now took less than 5 seconds.

xLights/Nutcracker - The Next Evolution in computer animated lighting!