Andrew,
Thanks for your response.
Yes. While Cinder doesn't directly enable this, you can definitely do it. You'll have to get familiar with your platform's dynamic loading functionality though. Judging from your screenshots, that's probably going to be LoadLibrary() in your case. I am familiar with Windows development and how to load dynamic libraries during runtime, but recently I've made my tool and framework compatible with Mac OSX. My main development machine is a macbook pro. I use
CMake to generate build environments, and there is very little platform specific code in my tool + framework, so it should be possible to compile it on other platforms as well (that is, if Cinder allows it).
It is. In fact on Windows, any app that doesn't use QuickTime simply doesn't link against any of the libraries. We try pretty hard to keep Cinder modular in that way.
I was not able to compile Cinder without downloading the Quicktime SDK for both Windows and Mac OSX and making sure that it was in the right folder for Cinder's build environment to find. From my own experience, and from what I read in other posts in this forum, Cinder may also benefit from using CMake to configure and generate build environments. Having done this for my own project recently, it would take about 3 fulltime days to do for an experienced programmer who does not know anything about CMake.
Unfortunately not yet, though with a bit of hacking on the ci::app:: stuff it is doable. I have done it and I know at least a couple of other people have too. It's high on the to-do list, but probably won't be ready for your project.
I only possibly would need this in my tool. I assume that I can have multiple opengl based Qt widgets, and just call Cinder's functions to draw content in each of them.
The standalone 'player' that loads and plays back previously saved (interactive) animations, for now, would only need one render window. Initially there is no need for me to hack ci::app:: stuff. However I may need the ability to connect to a head mounted display, and render content for the left and right eye separately. When the time comes, I can always extend Cinder myself (and submit it as a patch ofcourse :-)
I will try to get a 'hello, Cinder' version of my tool up and running (on Windows and Mac OSX) and convert one or two Cinder samples into Nodes / Effects. I will post back here with my results. Since (as of today) I am quite busy, I think it will take me two or three weeks to get something up and running.
-Sacha