New Gravilux Music Visualizer Outshines App's Typographic Hype
December 24, 2011
"Gravilux 2.0 Lets You Make Typographic Starfields On Your iPad."
That's how FastCoDesign's recent Gravilux review came across the wire, and I was excited to see the update in action. Unfortunately, my interpretation of the headline--my hope for what it meant--didn't mesh with the mind of the article's author, and I was left momentarily disappointed. See, I was expecting the new feature to replace Gravilux' familiar pointed particles with actual letters, perhaps even built atop a custom font family. I wanted triggered italics and mutlitouch bold shifts and interactive toggles for spacing and caps and so on.
No dice.
In this case, "typography" means little more than plain, simple words on a page screen. The app just wasn't going to let me play with the alphabet in the manner I'd hoped. Instead, I was limited to spelling out words and phrases via the app's array of dynamic dots, merging or exploding them exactly as usual.
But, as I soon found out, there's a lot more to Gravilux 2.0 than that misleadingly-touted headline seemed to indicate. Wrapped in a brand new interface, the app is a complete rewrite, with cleaner visuals (including enhanced Retina graphics) and smoother animations than ever before. Social sharing is also included, and an in-app purchase nets users the aforementioned "typography mode" along with the update's true highlight, a fully-integrated music visualizer. This, according to creator Scott Snibbe, "creates gravitational music videos filled with color and stars based on any of the tracks in your music library." And truly, for all it does, that one addition is like a premium app all its own.
These enhancements don't come cheap, though. Gravilux will set you back $1.99, and its new IAP costs just as much again. In the world of iOS particle apps, four bucks is a bit on the high side. There are quite a few solid--and cheaper--offerings out there.
Still, the awesome music visualizer makes it all worthwhile. For everything it brings to the table(t), there isn't a better one anywhere on the App Store.
[gallery]
