FWsim - Fireworks Display Simulator news & patch notes

• Better performance when editing your show, especially on large shows with many cues
• New option: “Reverse Order on Timeline” (CTRL + SHIFT + R). Use this when you make a stepper out of single cues and you want to reverse the order.
• The timeline now looks much better when you zoom out very far. Your show will look cleaner and it’s easier to make edits even at extreme zoom levels.
• Better thumbnail images

Exciting news!

You can now select your favorite effects and then insert them with just one click. This massively speeds up the show design process, so you can focus on your creativity.

Furthermore:

• Press TAB key to jump forwards to the next beat in the music

• When you move the playback cursor, it snaps to beats in the music and to existing cues on the timeline.

• You might have two cues overlap in the timeline by accident. If that happens, FWsim will make them transparent.

• Effect lines now indicate the actual height of the effect for shells.

Give it a try and let us know how it works for you!

• Automatic detection of beats
• Real location downloading is more stable and faster.
• New star size: XXS

• Fix: FWsim now always uses your high-performance graphics card (instead of onboard graphics)
• Several bugfixes
• Performance improvements
• Updated Italian, Spanish and French translations. You can contribute to FWsim translations by clicking the Help menu.
• FWsim now displays a correct waveform if you load 24-bit audio files.

Show Editor Improvements

Effects Improvements

• Popping Flowers (Crackling) can now be adjusted in a much more granular way
• Ascent Effects can now have strobing
• 57 different kinds of crackling already included

• Completely new graphics
• Load the entire world in 3D, thanks to data from Google Maps*
• Water, which you can add to any existing show, and combine with Google Maps data
• Multi Color Changes
• Mortar Sparks and Explosion Sparks
• Microstars
• Easier placement of fireworks on buildings

List of new features in this release

• Completely new graphics
• Load the entire world in 3D, thanks to data from Google Maps*
• Water, which you can add to any existing show, and combine with Google Maps data
• Multi Color Changes
• Microstars
• Easier placement of fireworks on buildings

Want to try the new update right away?

Loading the entire World in 3D

• New Dark Design (you can go back to the old design by disabling “Dark Mode” in the preferences)
• Improved Camera Animation System
• Saving and Loading of camera positions
• Topdown Camera View
• Improved “Create New Effect” dialog with many more sample designs to choose from
• Fullscreen Mode available (press ALT+ENTER to go fullscreen)
• Preferences are now easier to navigate
• When snapping in the timeline, we are now showing indicators to indicate what snapping
• Russian Translation

• New firework selection window with better filters and animated preview. Helping you to understand the different types of firework effects, even if you have never used FWsim before.
• Effect Editor: Pause, scroll forwards and backwards in time, and see your updates instantly. That way, you can pause on an important moment in the effect, make your changes, and easily understand the changes you make.
• Even more performance improvements
• Right-click in effect selection window to delete effects you no longer need
• Some very old effects were removed from the library, and replaced with new designs. (The old effects are still included as a ZIP file in the FWsim program directory, located in your Steam folder - in case you want to get them back for any reason)
• Effect Editor: Special tail components now available. These tail components can be inserted instead of a normal tail, and they represent real types of tails. This is a good way to immediately make your effects more realistic! There are also some components available for realistic ascent effects on shells.
• Effect Editor: Stars can be configured to not change color when using the "change color" option in the show editor.
• Effect Editor: Ascent Stars can be configured to change color when using the "change color" option in the show editor. (this is off by default)
• New option to automatically go back to starting point after playing in the show editor.
• Users without a middle mouse button can now use the CTRL key plus left mouse button to move the free camera.
• Improved layout on 4K monitors

• Improved realism of included effects: We will replace some of the old effects in the database with redesigned versions, to take advantage of all the latest improvements in our fireworks rendering.
• Improved performance. FWsim already runs well even on old computers, and with this update we’ll make it even faster to load and run.
• Improved effect selection window: Thanks to new icons, new users who are unfamiliar with real fireworks can get a quick sense of the different types available. Animated previews will help you understand how the effect will look like once it’s integrated into the show. And the window will load slightly faster, therefore making your show design process more fun.
• Improved camera moves: We plan to add a new camera animation timeline. This will make it easier to animate camera moves. It will also allow new types of camera moves that have not been possible previously.
• Improved camera positioning: In FWsim 3.3, you will be able to select from a range of predefined viewpoints, or create your own. That will make it easier to view your show from different angles, and see how your design really looks like.
• Improved effect editor with more beautiful tails. As you perhaps know, “tails” are trails of sparks that are pulled behind the stars of a firework. These tails will be highly realistic and have been carefully designed by our pyrotechnics expert. This is a great way to instantly make your effects better: Simply add one of the presets to your effect, and you’ll get amazingly realistic tails.

• In video export, MP4 is now the default format.
• MP4 format details changed. It should now be compatible with most video editing software. (If the file doesn't work in your favorite video editor, please let us know)
• Effect selection filters more comfortable to use
• Bugfix: Crash when adding a new firing line at the same position as a previous one.

The short-term development roadmap will come in the next days

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