Mac OS release is HERE!
For those who follow the development of Keysight very closely, you may have heard words along the lines of "I won't worry about figuring out Mac OS stuff for a long time yet". Well, err, about that: with some generous help from a Mac-based software developer, it happened a lot sooner than expected!
Not without sacrifice, however. Due to reliance on a Windows-only plugin, custom texture importing support has been stripped out of the Mac OS version for now. This feature will be added back in soon to bring the Mac version up to full parity with Windows though!
Additionally, the shadow casting option for impact lights has been disabled by default in the Mac OS release, due to shadows rendering incorrectly on Intel integrated graphics solutions. Keysight, in general, is a very graphics-intensive application, so please check out the Steam guide relating to performance optimization if you are struggling to maintain consistent framerates on a Mac device!
Roadmap
While an announcement is being made, let's discuss the direction Keysight is heading in. Big old disclaimer: these plans are not set in stone, and there is no time-frame for this stuff! Keysight is developed on a hobbyist basis, and is considered a complete product to begin with. With that out of the way, here's what's coming:
Huge menu overhaul. Ever wanted to change the settings of note indicators, so you click on the button labelled "note indicators", only to remember it's actually just under "settings"? That exactly situation happens to myself, and I literally built the damn thing. This kind of awful UX is not ok, and it's finally time to tackle it.
Furthermore, rebuilding all the menus from the ground up should allow for localization! Ensuring the technical accuracy of menu item localization will be very important, but I'm actively scouting out potential translators for Keysight already.
Widgets! What's a widget? Who knows, could be anything! Adding new features is hampered by the current menu backend. Rebuilding the menu should allow for little modules of functionality to be added much easier. Small extra Keysight features will be called "widgets", and these may include: a notes-per-second speedometer; pedalling indicator, etc. Widgets will be able to be placed freely in the scene, to fit into whatever your intended layout is!
And then the much looser, "some day" stuff:
- Particle overhaul. We need to get those vector field particle paths into Keysight! Also... fireworks? Particle wind? So many options!
- Visual overlays. Things like refractive raindrop layers, underwater refraction effect, snowfall, leaves, that sort of thing!
- Different ways to visualize notes. Things like note indicators acting more like a "spectrum" audio visualization, spiking up and down based on note activity.
If you have any feature suggestions, don't forget to make a post in the community hub about it.
Happy Keysighting!