After running the ILDA test pattern at only 4K on my hard disk laser scanner, I really wanted to see how well the projector would do with the kinds of “real” vector graphics that I expected to be able to display. Most commercial ILDA frames are way too complicated for it.
As I mentioned, the control software for the projector still mostly sucks. I have a hacked-together ILDA frame importer, and a little interactive scribbly-widget. I really want to be able to integrate it with Inkscape, or even just give it an SVG importer so I can send single frame images from Inkscape to the projector. This will probably mean writing an SVG parser in Python which generates VectorMachine instructions for my laser projector. Fun.. but pretty complicated. (Oh, lazy web, does anyone know of an existing SVG parser that would be good at such a thing? Preferably written in Python?)
In the mean time, I just tried some crazy Russian shareware to generate ILDA files that I then run through my importer. The results aren’t too bad:
The “A” is very stable, and I can display it quite smoothly. (I don’t know the exact frame rate.) The “Hello World” flickers really badly- it’s probably only refreshing a couple times per second.. but it’s still readable.