One of the least talked about but amazing things to come out of the recent FLEM was a demonstration of a feature built into Pangolin's BEYOND called Emulaser. It's be talked about before but, after reviewing the video tonight which I will endeavour to post here tomorrow, I think any thread started by a US newbie asking about audience scanning, should be directed to check this out. The recommendation to them should be... before buying a laser, buy a good high contrast LCD projector. Especially for DJ's and nightclubs.
We set up an Epson projector with a laser on top of it with the intention of having the powerful laser beams above the horizon and the video projector below and study it for a bit. All I can say is, wow. I'd be willing to bet to a room full of untrained eyes, all of them would think they were watching a regular laser beam show. No special CDRH variance, no jellybeaning, mode hopping, or any of the inherent problems with lasers. Eye safe. Color saturation was a little bit evident but certainly not objectionable. Nearly as bright as the 2.5 watt RGB on top of it. Seriously. As flecom said, we've spent all this time trying to get lasers to look like video and now we've got video projection that looks like a laser.
I'm already investigating where I can rent a couple for testing. I'd like to see it in a larger venue than the boathouse to get a real sense of how viable it is but, initially, this looks like an absolute no-brainer. Amazing how much like real lasers the Emulaser looks and, cheaper than buying most decent lasers! And CERTAINLY cheaper and easier than the real thing. As I said, I hope to get the video up tomorrow. If we had JUST shot video of only the video projector... and said, "Here, this is from FLEM", you would all be commenting on how good the lasers looked!
And for show programming... also a no brainer. Why put hours on your precious lasers when you can do it with a video projector?