Here's some info from the first round of playing with the new iTunes Visualizer that's part of iTunes 8.0 (September 2008) (and based on Magnetosphere). I wanted to see if it can be controlled and customized like the Original iTunes Visualizer.

Some keys with useful functions:

Documented
Key	Function	Comment
?	Toggle help screen, i.e. show a few available commands
M	Change mode	(cycles through 20 modes, see below)
P	Change palette
C	Toggle auto-cycle (on by default)	(cycles to a different mode for each song)
F	Toggle freeze mode	(switches to slow motion camera panning around a frozen configuration of objects)
N	Toggle nebula mode
L	Toggle camera lock	(works only in freeze mode)
Undocumented
A	Add 100 light particles	(there seem to be only about 5 levels total)
S	Remove 100 light particles
+	Increase the light intensity	(there seem to be only about 5 levels total)
-	Decrease the light intensity

Here are screenshots of the twenty modes, all with the camera locked in the same place for easy comparison. Some of these look quite similar to each other in static screenshots - there seems to be only about 12 obviously different types. I haven't watched them long enough yet to know how they are different dynamically. One subtle difference seems to be how shiny the balls are. Some look very "real" considering how fast they're rendered: high resolution, shiny, and very 3D!

Let me know if you discover more secrets, especially a randomization/auto-cycle mode that changes during a song!

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Last modified: September 20, 2008 (sr@csli.stanford.edu)