Laserlover;
I appreciate what you're trying to say, but it doesn't HAVE to be that way. Just because someone likes to do lasershows doesn't automatically mean that there is a market big enough for them to make a living doing that sort of work, nor should they automatically expect one to exist. Furthermore, just because they NEED to charge $1500 in order to make a living selling their shows doesn't mean that I'm willing to pay it just so they can have a job that they love and still pay the bills.
Example: Back when I was the president of the local Amiga Users Group here in Charleston, I spent *hundreds* of hours cranking out all sorts of cool stuff that showcased the Amiga's abilities. 3D animations, digital sound sequences, Dpaint animations, even full-running demos. I used Amigavision to pull together most of the demo stuff, Imagine for the raytracing, and Audiomaster for the looping samples. Some of the stuff I produced is still available on Aminet. And believe me, there were *lots* of other Amiga users out there that had *wayyy* more talent and creativity than I did, and most of them were quite prolific...
Sure, it would have been great to get paid for that work, but I was willing to do it for free because I liked doing it. There were several other members of our group that were equally interested in playing with the Amiga - showing off what she was capable of. Jack Dekemper was a long-time member. He spent WEEKS putting together some incredible raytraced animations of rocket launches, balls rolling down roller-coaster-like tracks, and other neat animations. He never got a dime for his efforts.
Remember Eric Schwartz? Though he wasn't part of our group, he put together over 60 hilarious cartoon animations for the Amiga - most of which ran for several minutes. Everything drawn by hand. And this was back in the day when editing tools were nowhere near as advanced as they are today, and graphics tablets were only used by drafting firms running Spark workstations. All of his work is available on Aminet for free.
Given that the Amiga is closely related to the development of laser entertainment (Pangolin hardware used to be Amiga-only, remember) I am surprised that there isn't more public domain stuff out there for the laser enthusiast. Spec has a good point; a lot of laser show folks are tight-lipped about what they've learned, and there isn't a lot of sharing within the community.
I'm glad that PhotonLexicon exists, and that at least in here people are willing to share knowledge and ideas. And for the record, I don't mind sharing my work either. Case in point: Astroguy was having problems getting a corporate logo converted to an ilda frame using his Alphalite software, so I gave it a try and was able to get a fairly decent looking frame for him to use. Granted, this only represented a few hours of tinkering on my part, but if more people adopted that sort of attitude we would have lots of cool frames to play with.
I don't begrudge people that try to make a living doing this sort of work. But I do reserve the right to complain about the high prices they charge for their work. The argument that "I need to charge this much because I can only hope to sell 5 copies a year" may be valid from an economics standpoint, but it's also a sign that you probably picked the wrong business to support yourself in the first place.
Yes, laser frames are tedious to create. But lots of things are tedious, and free to boot... I'm honestly surprised that there aren't more public domain files out there.
As for an "in-house" laser show created by the members of PhotonLexicon - now *THERES* a good idea! And I'd be quite willing to contribute to such a project... We'd need to select the music, and pick a theme... Then we could slap together a brief scrip/storyboard and parcel out the various pieces/scenes to different memebers. I'm up for that...
Adam