Vvvv

vvvv, pronounced "vau vier" and also written v4, is a general-purpose toolkit for building real-time media work, with a special focus on video synthesis, motion graphics, audio and large installations that talk to physical interfaces. Instead of typing code, a developer joins nodes into a visual dataflow network called a patch, and a patch can be created, edited and tested while it is running. Patches are stored on disk as standard XML. Most nodes work on one-dimensional arrays of values called spreads, so one connection can drive a whole particle system, and a shorter array is repeated to fill a longer one. Shader code written in HLSL can sit inside the dataflow and is recompiled and uploaded as soon as its text changes, and a feature called boygrouping lets one master computer drive many slave computers in parallel. The beta line is written in Borland Delphi, with plugins in C# on the .NET Framework, and uses DirectX, so it runs only on Microsoft Windows. A rewritten version, vvvv gamma, was released on 1 April 2020. The tool began as an in-house tool of the Frankfurt media collective MESO and is now maintained by the VVVV group; non-commercial, educational and evaluation use is free and commercial use needs a licence.