FWsim 4.4.2 is rolling out on Steam now. This one is all about the effect editor, plus a speed boost that everyone gets without touching a single setting.
Faster out of the box
Accelerated Rendering is now on by default. Same visual quality, noticeably faster, and easier on laptop batteries. It works on NVidia and AMD dedicated graphics cards, and you can switch it off under Preferences > Graphics if you prefer.
Mortar sparks and launch flames re-tuned: denser, finer mortar sparks, and launch flames that are smaller overall and grow with the caliber.
Effect Editor: build better effects, faster
Stars Editor redesigned. Settings are grouped into clear boxes, so you scroll less and find things faster.
Multi-colour stars. Ctrl+click in the colour grid to give one set of stars several colours at once. The stars are split evenly among the selected colours.
Seven new star shapes: Star, Bow Tie, Snail, Parallel Rings, Circle Diadem, Sphere Diadem and Pillar Mine. The Ring shape gets a new Arc setting for half and quarter rings.
Rotate star shapes in two dimensions (X and Y), so you can cross two copies of a shape.
Camera control. Fly around your effect with the mouse, just like the fly-around camera in the show editor.
Scattering Stars: a new two-star opposite-pair crossette. Crossettes now keep their four-arm cross shape intact.
More control over tails and crackling. New Modify Gravity and Gravity Variance sliders on tail and ascent effect components, crackling inside a tail can be adjusted right where you use it, and custom crackling gets percentage sliders for duration, size, density and speed.
Custom shapes (lancework). Right-click the shape square to load a ready-made shape from an image file (PNG, BMP, GIF, JPG) or recolour the whole shape in one go.
Cake editor: new actions "Change Quantity of selected Effects" and "Fill up to a number of shots". The cake node now shows its duration both ways, from first to last shot and from first shot to burnout.
Fixed: mines with a Farfalle, Tourbillon or Whistle had no launch sparks.
Fixed: motorized star tails on fountains and mines got the wrong spark count.
Fixed: playback did not pause correctly past the end of the animation.
Show editor and video
Video export keeps running while your computer is locked. Locking, Alt+Tab and display mode changes no longer interrupt playback, and FWsim recovers after a graphics driver reset.
Fixed: an effect could stay on screen forever (the "ghost effect") after its cue was moved away from under the stopped playback cursor.
Fixed: a dragged item could get stuck to the mouse when another window took the focus mid-drag.
Effect library: the type filter has a fixed order, and search no longer matches inside links and scripts.
The update installs automatically through Steam. Have fun, and show us what you build! The full changelog for all editions is at fwsim.com/updates-v4.php.
