Wire: instances should be dynamic

[subset]

I'm enjoying playing with Wire so far! But I'm puzzled about why there isn't a way to dynamically control the number of instances. In Arena/Avenue, sources like 'metaballs' and 'lines' let users control the number of objects on the screen - this doesn't seem possible in Wire. Am I missing something here?

[Zoltán]

Changing instances count requires the patch and the shaders inside to be recompiled.
This is quite expensive, and takes some time, so we don't allow it to be changed on the fly.

Imagine a parameter which changes instance count animated in Resolume, then Resolume waits half a second for every parameter update. FPS will be really low.

[subset]

Makes sense from a technical perspective.

But it makes it tedious to experiment. If I'm making an effect that has ten instances and then find out it's better when it has five instances, then I have to re-wire every element. And if I decide five isn't right either, I have to do it all again.

[Zoltán]

We have some plans for the next release to make this easier

[subset]

Oooh, interesting!