fl.future~

Usage Questions
1

Turns out I don’t grasp fl.future properly either (in addition to fl.chain). I’m trying to use it to schedule ticks from a ‘beat’ ‘tracker’, and am a very confused person.

  1. In mode relative , what are we relative to? The help file says an incoming frame, but the object seems to be behaving relative to the last time it triggered. Run this a bunch of times see FUT climb in the Max console:

----------begin_max5_patcher----------
579.3ocyW9rabBCDF+L7TX4yzsfM+a60JU0Gf1SUQUDVmMNBrQFylsJJ6ydw
igpMInsNZwU8BRLLv3e1eymMOEFfuUdj0iQeB8CTPvSgAAPHSffo6CvsUGqa
p5gzvB1ixae.GYejlcTCg6TbgF84uN+.wPKWzvzvKkLEjuCxc78+.kbVlxA8
bpwSQ6pz02yE6+ohUqsiORZwlrHDYawl3HTF0bkP1Ditw7JOGFZtDccXbWyF
sbLwSNyAcYNlS0FR+qNlEBLFcykPrDPLOEPrzSHpX648Zl5DJYQNIKvYxZxI
Mq3LNKx7Dm2MnGTrSnO1J2wPJVSklef45RKozCHSIaMvlPS8DyB4iNKdIE9f
PamYZgu5Oq1eBo4sLWktjbePYbrgubuzhZMS+x2+lyKjz2sa5DGowfdLa6+E
toDhOVpJi8pa56oiKwGZQBovqcb02WwEN4htP2WRlGHNYK05hR79NjjXzKP3
xvl5CXyg8G25K8qTTybW.S8AgTfvrjEID9.3Ft30GTE9fl3uD6d4fpdt7yiY
T7eFG6X8ZtXTDKEmmTpMoEmZctR4NTIyQoNKIoZGSAl0WUoe0Wc4RSxWAHMm
K5uWoh0nRtLcNObttYOWjHl+Y4ejDgtrDI45lNKbY5bUfLykNt0PLN21d4Jk
sFhQhKydz2TIq8UUW2AlpeJanHi9yOHgk0xH3VtvdK3khUrC747gywgqTi9m
5QyywepALjOla2uAa1YVIF3SZjQ7FKI38KpZY8cUVRfsHBeN72vnKlZH
-----------end_max5_patcher-----------
  1. In mode absolute I don’t understand the conditions under which fl.future thinks it worthwhile to output. As before, run the below a bunch of time (well ,2). First time is what I expect, second time I only get one output.

----------begin_max5_patcher----------
582.3ocyW9saaBCEF+Z3ovx2trLrM+K61IMsGfsqlplbHtothXiLlzLU07rO
3XXJsC04pfm1MHwgi4y+rOmOCOFGg2pOIZwnOh9NJJ5w3nHHzPfnw6ivG3mp
p4sPZXk3A816wqbOxJNYgvMFoxh9zWldfp6fTUKrvfHiAk6fb6G+6YzKxT2Y
mRMYLZC2VcmTs+GFQk0M+noEqyVgnaJVmrBkwFtRoqSP2LLjmhiGtr55v315
0Vcehm8lC17bLkpKj8mMBGDXL5lWCwR.w7T.wx.g36NiHIyRHcFBIKIgrrhK
HLcSfH71NamQbF8gC5cBDeaqttyJ7cSkVF.jYT.VRJIPLqzO3cYKsHDD55IS
KBUmIe+YjUdP3aoKMODTljLvWdPZNc1ne9ae06MR1a1GcjizDndLay+E9nTZ
H1pJSBpO5aoiiDhZQJsHncbU2wkpIWTinlakG8t6ijE.hIa.OFBiFHjMh8xV
qvbFQSPOCgWG1zP.ad1.kaBU8qVUI7u.lEBBY.gYyelH7Bv0R0K+DU3END+4
X2p6LUSxOcPNJ42yichVqT0WDqUWlTgKoYWZ8VobeTpbATZ36w96Jku.JQ7g
oWLczlcBCb.z0IMyCoG54t9kSeTZ3uU9Gsbxle4jbcUmE9TyrHPl4yF2hTcl
5iRYKQuM0mUO1enjy9h2zbTXZGyFDo2e9dMrsVtBtUpb2BdoXi3nbJe363vb
Su+os27r+mZ.C4S4tyavCmLaTcxwZjd75kD79U7Ch1FtiD3Hh3mh+Ev7zYZF
-----------end_max5_patcher-----------

In other news, the modes abs/rel of fl.chain seem to work precisely the opposite way round to what I’d expect, so perhaps there is a larger problem with my grasp of fl timing

2

Last week Alex and I were discussing some documentation stuff and I remarked that fl.chain~ does fl.future~'s job and more so perhaps its worth just fl.chaining if you want some temporally connected frame trigger magic.

My understanding is that in relative mode the timings are relative to the source frame’s arrival. So if it arrives at 100, and the numbers you give it are 1 and 2 you get frame’s triggered at 100, 101, 102. The absolute mode is asking you trigger in time compared to the arrival of the frame, but accumulating the values. When I think about the naming though, you are totally right and they seem to make not much sense until you see the modes at work. I think relative makes sense if you think about it being relative to the trigger frame, but absolute might be better renamed to something like “accumulative”. I’m not sure. Alex is doing object review now so I would let him know!

What is it that you’re trying to do? You are of equal or greater savviness in FrameLib land to myself, but perhaps a fresh set of eyes and ears can help you down your beat tracking path.

3

This thing comes up with (absolute) times for the next tick, but seems to want to revise these times based on incoming pulses. I don’t think either future or chain will let me schedule something, and then override it. This is the paper I’m implementing:
http://music.cs.northwestern.edu/publications/paper206-c4befce599e3eda209e6595065e02cf6.pdf

Although, now I think about it, this is probably a misreading of the paper, because what if the newly scheduled time was in the past? Eh? What then?

I’m not sure it works well enough to be worth sharing the patch in progress just yet. There’s been a lot of fl almost doing what I need, but not quite with this one

4

Okay so when you say absolute timings do you mean, now + time passed?

5

Some time since DSP started. There’s an initial period estimate, which is when the first beat is scheduled for, and then each beat after that is offset by the period (which is adapting).

6

So - it looks like fl.future~ needs a reset method, which is why you get different results after the first run - other than that absolute mode runs as expected. Relative mode seems a bit broken. I’m taking a look on the dynamic-contexts branch.

7

OK - looks like the reset is the only bug but the timings are in samples by default. This object may still disappear but at least is fixed up for now.

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