Apple introduced Quartz Composer in 2005, creating an impressive platform for interactive media content creators. Now Kosada has introduced Vuo 1.0, an alternative to Quartz Composer.

Media producers and digital artists have enjoyed the simplicity of using Quartz Composer's visual system of patches and cables to create interactive media and use it in their workflow. Designers could mix audio, video, and 2D and 3D effects in creative and innovative ways.

However, with a last major update in 2009, is Quartz Composer in decline? One group is not waiting to find out. The team that developed a set of Kineme plugins and apps for Quartz Composer decided to write their own tool: Vuo 1.0.

Kosada says its goal is to make Vuo useful to all multimedia artists, producers, and media-making non-programmers who want to create mixed, interactive media. To that end, they have worked extensively on user documentation, tutorial videos, and example compositions to make learning it easy. They say they've implemented several key features for designers, such as:

° Support for a wide variety of inputs for interactive graphic displays, including the motion capture devices Kinect and Leap Motion;

° Automatic multi-threading and compiled code for speed and efficiency;

° Modern shader-based OpenGL graphics implementation;

° Support for 64 bits-per-pixel images;

° A first-class API [application programming interface], so others can add to it. Go to http://vuo.org for more information.