LifeViz

Windows 11-ready WPF visualization of a 3D-stacked Game of Life grid. The UI stays minimalist-16:9 canvas, no chrome, context menu for everything-but now it also supports tapping into open desktop windows, webcams, and media files as live depth sources.

Development

dotnet build
dotnet run

The new Rider solution (lifeviz.sln) includes a "lifeviz: Run App" configuration so IDE runs mirror dotnet run.

For a quick local install-style smoke test (publish to artifacts\local-install, add Start Menu shortcuts, and launch the app; if the folder is locked it falls back to a timestamped path):

.\install.ps1

The script also creates LifeViz.lnk and LifeViz (Local).lnk in the Start Menu and renames any ClickOnce lifeviz*.appref-ms entries to LifeViz (ClickOnce)... so search defaults to the local build.

Live Window Injection

Right-click the scene and use Sources to stack multiple windows, OBS-style:

• Add entries via Sources > Add Window Source, Add Webcam Source, Add File Source, Add Video Sequence, or Add Layer Group (checked items are already in the stack). File sources accept static images (PNG/JPG/BMP/WEBP), GIFs, and videos; animated files loop. Video sequences build a playlist of videos that advances on end and loops back to the first, and video layers expose a Restart action. Layer groups have their own submenu stack; they composite their children internally and blend as a single layer, using the first child to determine the group's aspect ratio. The top entry is the primary: it drives the canvas aspect ratio (unless the aspect ratio lock is enabled). Make Primary, Move Up/Down, or Remove/Remove All to resequence quickly; clearing all sources drops back to the 16:9 default.
• Each source exposes a wallpaper-style fit mode (Fill default, plus Fit/Stretch/Center/Tile/Span) that controls how the layer scales into the frame.
• Each source has its own blend mode applied during compositing (Additive default; Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Lighten, Darken, Subtractive). Normal respects per-pixel transparency in sources like PNGs, and can optionally key out a background color (default black) with an adjustable range.
• Layer Editor... opens a separate window to manage the stack on another monitor. Enable Live Mode for immediate updates, or turn it off and use Apply to batch changes. The editor includes Save... and Load... buttons to export/import layer stacks as .lifevizlayers.json; live mode applies loads immediately, otherwise load into the draft and hit Apply.
• Each source can stack animations (Zoom In, Translate, Rotate, Beat Shake, Fade, DVD Bounce) synced to the global animation BPM, with forward or reverse loops plus expanded speed steps (1/8x–8x) and per-animation cycle lengths for long fades; Beat Shake responds to detected audio beats when a device is selected (falls back to BPM if not) and includes an intensity slider (speed/cycle do not affect its amplitude), and DVD Bounce exposes a size control. Use Animation BPM > Sync to Audio BPM to beat-match all animations, and Audio Source > None to clear the input.
• Video file sources depend on system codecs; if frames render blank, LifeViz will auto-transcode to H.264 using ffmpeg (cached under %LOCALAPPDATA%\\lifeviz\\video-cache). While transcoding, the layer is temporarily skipped (so it won't blank out the stack). Install ffmpeg on your PATH or transcode manually if needed.
• Composite Blend still controls how the finished composite mixes with the Game of Life output (Additive default via the pixel shader; Normal is transparency-aware).
• Passthrough Underlay shows the composite behind the simulation.
• Fullscreen toggle lives in the context menu and persists; it now sizes to the active monitor bounds, stays topmost, and covers the taskbar.
• Update to Latest Release... pulls down the newest GitHub release installer and runs it to upgrade the current installation in place (LifeViz closes while the installer runs).
• Capture uses DPI-correct window bounds (via DWM) so the full surface is normalized even for PiP/scaled windows, and the composited buffer feeds the injection path (threshold window + noise + life/binning modes) on every tick.
• Capture buffers are pooled and only the downscaled composite is retained, eliminating GC spikes from per-frame allocations.
• Webcam sources stream via WinRT MediaCapture; clearing sources or closing the app releases the camera. Cameras retry initialization once and wait longer for first frames before being removed.
• Framerate lock: choose 15 / 30 / 60 fps from the context menu to match capture needs or ease CPU/GPU load.
• Capture threshold window: adjustable min/max sliders (with optional invert) in the context menu; only pixels inside the window set cells alive during injection, applied before each simulation step.
• Injection noise: adjustable slider (0-1) that randomly skips cell injection per pixel to introduce controlled noise.
• Built-in recording: Start Recording writes to %UserProfile%\\Videos\\LifeViz using a pixel-perfect integer upscale to the nearest HD height (720/1080/1440/2160 when divisible). Use Recording Quality to pick Lossless (FFV1 in MKV, compressed), Crisp (H.264 in MP4, Windows Media Player compatible), Uncompressed (AVI, huge files), or H.264 tiers (High/Balanced/Compact); encoding favors quality-based VBR with bitrate caps so pixel lines stay crisp, and a taskbar overlay appears while active. Lossless and crisp recording use ffmpeg on PATH.

Configuration

• Settings persist to %AppData%\lifeviz\config.json after the app finishes loading (height/rows, depth, framerate, blend/composite toggles, thresholds, opacity, passthrough, etc.) and restore on next launch. The window keeps the current aspect ratio and can be resized from the corner grip; use height presets or fullscreen to change simulation resolution without letterboxing.
• The source stack is restored too: window sources are matched by title, webcams by device id/name, file sources by path (video sequences restore their ordered path list), keeping order (including nested layer groups) plus per-layer blend mode, fit mode, opacity, mirror, and keying settings (enable/color/range) when the inputs are available.
• YouTube sources resolve asynchronously on launch so the UI can come up even if the stream lookup is slow; the layer starts once the stream URL is resolved (check logs for failures).
• Aspect ratio lock state persists (default lock ratio is 16:9).
• Fullscreen preference is remembered and re-applied on launch using the active monitor bounds so the taskbar stays hidden.

Packaging & Deployment

ClickOnce remains the primary distribution path. Packaging requires the full .NET Framework MSBuild that ships with Visual Studio/Build Tools:

# Developer PowerShell where msbuild.exe is available
msbuild lifeviz.csproj `
  /t:Publish `
  /p:PublishProfile=Properties\PublishProfiles\WinClickOnce.pubxml `
  /p:Configuration=Release

The repo now bundles three helper scripts:

• Publish-Installer.ps1 - resolves MSBuild.exe, runs the publish target, and writes manifests + installer assets into bin/Release/net9.0-windows/publish/.
• deploy.ps1 - builds, publishes with an auto-generated version (so ClickOnce always sees an update), then launches the lifeviz.application manifest to trigger an in-place update of the installed app.
• Publish-GitHubRelease.ps1 - builds, publishes a ClickOnce payload, bundles it into a single lifeviz_installer.exe (self-extracting + auto-install), and creates a GitHub release that uploads that one exe (requires gh CLI authenticated to your repo). It asks a quick vibe check (tiny tweak / glow-up / new era) and auto-bumps the version/tag for you-no need to invent numbers.
• Install-ClickOnce.ps1 - bundled alongside published payloads; stages the ClickOnce files to %LOCALAPPDATA%\lifeviz-clickonce, clears the old ClickOnce cache, and launches the manifest from that stable path so future installs/updates don't break when the zip is extracted to a new folder.
• Rider users: run the lifeviz: Publish Installer (MSBuild.exe) configuration (stored in .run/), which shells out to Publish-Installer.ps1 so full MSBuild is used. The auto-generated Rider publish config uses dotnet msbuild and will fail with MSB4803.
• If you do publish via dotnet msbuild (e.g., Rider's generated publish config), the project automatically disables the ClickOnce bootstrapper so the build succeeds; use the MSBuild.exe-backed scripts to produce the optional setup.exe bootstrapper.

Artifacts:

• Application Files/lifeviz_<version>/... - versioned payload.
• lifeviz.application - ClickOnce manifest; launching it after deploy.ps1 applies the latest build.
• setup.exe - optional bootstrapper for clean machines (installs prerequisites + shortcuts). Only needed for first-time installs.

To push a Windows release to GitHub:

gh auth login # one-time
.\Publish-GitHubRelease.ps1 -NotesPath release-notes.md

Use -Draft to stage without publishing. The script reuses Publish-Installer.ps1 to generate assets and emits a single lifeviz_installer.exe into artifacts/github-release/; the GitHub release uploads just that executable.

NOTE: .NET CLI alone cannot produce ClickOnce installers (MSB4803). Always use the full MSBuild toolchain, either directly (msbuild) or through the scripts above.

Wiki

All technical details (rendering pipeline, controls, install flow) live in /wiki. Update the relevant page whenever you change the app; see agents.md for documentation expectations.