Table of Contents

Boygrouping

Debuted in 2001 with vvvv beta, Boygrouping is vvvv's distributed rendering system. It allows to run a project from a single PC and have any number of PCs connected that render individual views of the same scene n'sync.

Like this, vvvv can drive projections or screens of any size with realtime or video content while the app is being live-edited.

Think large-scale, interactive and immersive rooms, like e.g. in Dataland. Combine boygrouping with the stereoscopic rendering feature and building applications for a CAVE is not more complicated than for a single screen.

What it does

Primarily, boygrouping synchronizes your projects patches (ie. the source code), from a server to all the connected client PCs. Any change you make to a patch is instantly transmitted to and applied on all clients. So there is no need to manually deploy the app and re-start it on all clients!

This also includes any pack referenced in patches. Assuming the clients have internet access just like the server, they will automatically download all packs as needed.

In addition to source code changes, Pausing [F6], Stepping [F7], Stopping [F8], Starting [F5] or Restarting [F9] the app on the server will also execute those commands on the clients. And when you close the server vvvv instance, also all connected client instances are closing.

Usage

In order to run a boygroup, you need to start vvvv with the following commandline arguments:

Server

The server is your main PC. Here you start vvvv with the "bind" argument to specify which IP to run the server on. If no port is given, it defaults to 5000:

--bind IP:Port

The "working-directory" argument is needed so that vvvv knows which .vl documents to synchronize. Only .vl documents residing in the specified working-directory, will be transferred to the clients!

--working-directory path\to\working-dir

Examples:

--bind 192.168.0.10 --working-directory C:\MyProject
--bind 192.168.0.10:34556 --working-directory C:\MyProject

You can verify the command has taken effect when you see the blue boygrouping icon in the top right corner of vvvv's window:

The number in the icon shows how many clients there are currently connected. If you see a red "0" it means that the binding address is not available. Hovering the icon shows additional details like a list of all connected clients IPs.

Clients

On the render PCs, start vvvv with the "server" argument to specify which server to connect to. If no port is given, it defaults to 5000:

--server IP:Port

The "working-directory" argument is also required. The specified directory is the one that vvvv resolves relative paths to.

--working-directory path\to\working-dir

Any assets referenced in a patch need to be available in that path! For mirroring assets, see below.

Examples:

--server 192.168.0.11
--server 192.168.0.11:34556

NOTE

  • The working directory does not have to be the same on Server and Clients!
  • The order in which you start server and clients, does not matter: The server is always listening for new connections and clients periodically try to connect to their specified server.

You can verify the command has taken effect when you see the blue boygrouping icon in the top right corner of vvvv's window:

If you see a blue circle, the client is connected, if the circle is orange, the connection to the server failed. Hovering the icon shows additional details.

Status nodes

The BoygroupServerStatus node returns:

  • Is Server
  • Connected Clients: currently connected clients
  • All Clients: a history of connected clients in the current session
  • Working Directory
  • Binding Address

The BoygroupClientStatus node returns:

  • Is Client
  • Is Connected
  • Server Address
  • Working Directory

ClientID node

In case you need a unique ID on each of your clients, you can use the ClientID node. Feed it all IPs of your clients in the desired order and on each client the node will return the respective ID. On the server it returns -1:

Client ID

In scenarios where you don't want to tie the ID to the clients IP, you can can start each of your clients with a unique id passed as a commandline argument. Have a look at "HowTo Use Configuration" in the Help Browser to learn about parsing custom commandline arguments.

Debugging

When there is need to debug behavior on a client, simply remote into it with a thirdparty tool like RustDesk. This gives you full access to the clients vvvv editor to inspect values and even make changes to the patch.

In case you want to apply such local change you made on a single client back to the server, do as follows:

  • On the server enable the Setting "Auto reload documents"
  • On the client save the document

This transfers the clients' local changes back to the server which subsequently distributes it to all other clients.

Mirroring Assets

Boygrouping does not automatically sync any assets! As of now, boygrouping really only works for .vl documents. Any referenced .sdsl or .csproj files or any kind of content assets still have to be mirrored manually.

No need to reinvent the wheel here, check out Remoter that will help you with this.

Synchronisation

If you need frame-perfect sync for applications like LED walls or stereoscopic rendering, first make sure you have a hardware genlock in place using e.g. NVIDIA Quadro Sync cards which you can configure with VL.Nvidia.NvAPI.

As alternative to working with a synced framecounter from NvAPI you can use PTP to sync your system clocks and then simply rely on that. Configuring PTP is a bit tricky, here are your options:

For synchronizing values, we recommend working with Public Channels and Bindings.

Splitting Views

Splitting a single cameras perspective over multiple outputs is often needed in boygrouping scenarios. Have a look at the help patch of the LookAtRectCamera node shipping with VL.Stride. With it you can create seamlessly connected off-axis camera frustra for multiple outputs sharing a single perspective.

Launching Clients

Once in a while you'll want to re/start vvvv on all clients simultaneously. Be it because you need to change launch arguments or recover from a crash.

For those scenarios please have a look at Remoter which allows you to do this for vvvv but also for any other app you may need to manage on a range of clients.

Projection Mapping

Large-scale often means projection-mapping. Since requirements here are rather diverse, vvvv comes with support for different options including auto-calibration systems by Scalable Display or VIOSO.

Stereoscopic Rendering

Assuming you have the required hardware, stereoscopic rendering can easily be activated. Have a look at the help patch of the StereoSettings node shipping with VL.Stride to learn more.

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