G-Force Platinum: The Ultimate Visualizer?

If you play music on your computer (and who doesn't nowadays), no doubt you have used one of the built-in graphic visualizers that come with the software. Both Apple and Microsoft supply competent and moderately interesting visuals that change to your music, but nothing I have seen compares to SoundSpectrums' G-Force.

This is easily the most impressive music visualizer on the market and one hell of a standalone screensaver.

Click pixs to see larger view

Available as a direct download at SoundSpectrums site (here), it works on Windows and Mac (OSX) computers. G-Force Platinum supports a wide variety of media players, including iTunes, Windows Media Player, Real, WinAmp, XMPlay and seven others.

You can try it for free with the free download - but be warned you will be back to buy the commercial versions!

On the right you can see several images captured while G-Force is running, but as spectacular as they are these stills just can't convery the fantastic, surrealistic motion that G-Force generates.

Everyone who has seen it running on my computer has just been compelled to stand and watch it for a while.

I purchased the G-Force Platinum (version 3.01, $30) because it has a standalone screen saver that as far as I am concerned replaces every other screen saver I own, and because it offers support for a wider variety of player applications. 

And it has support for live input, be it a microphone, radio, cd, whatever. Well worth the extra $10.

G-Force Toolbar

Both the Gold and Platinum versions include the G-Force Toolbar, which is a control application that allows you to fine tune and experiement with the images on screen.

Since there are millions upon millions of combinations, there are a lot of variables you can play with. (In fact, if you are the type of person who likes to write programming code and scripts, G-Force offers access under the hood so you can hack away to your hearts content.) 

The Toolbar floats over your iTunes or Windows Media Player display, so you can fiddle with the output while your music plays underneath.

G-Force Toolbar

The G-Force Toolbar allows you to take pictures of the art on the screen (the above images were taken this way), and you can add your own pictures or even video clips that become part of the show. You also have control over the Flowfield features, which combines different mathmatical pixel maps into new and more complex visual displays. All I can say is this is damn cool stuff.

Without	With FlowField Unions

Complement Live Performances

The Auxillary input option in the Platinum version will be of interest to those who are performing live music and want to have some outstanding motion graphics accompany their show. Other applications would include visuals at bars and nightclubs, or on your 42 inch plasma display or video projector at one of those awesome parties you throw!

 

 G-Force V-Bar

Another just plain cool feature is the V-Bar. Available with both the Gold and Platinum vesions, the V-Bar places a scalable window on your desktop that runs in the background, generating G-Force graphics as you are working in other applications. It can be positioned in a variety of positons on the screen (left, right, top & bottom), plus you can scale the height and width to suit your needs. It has a number of display options such as random, symetrical and tile ticker modes. And if you are using the auxillary input mode it can respond to sounds from external sources. Another excellent reason to buy this app!

The V-Bar in action!

So what does it look like when running? Here is a short clip of some output:

G-Force is available as a free download, a Gold version ($20) and a Platinum version ($30) .  I give it a 10 out of 10, our highest rating.

You can find out more here .

Posted at 03:54PM Mar 26, 2007 by Lou Wallace in Consumer Electronics  |