Innolasers - Legit?

[White-Light]

You are right Bill. For the money, it's fantastically creative software. And yes, time is required, although not so much as learning to programme PangoScript variant of C which I understand is Beyond's alternative to LSX's simple mathematical expressions.

In actual fact Keith Pangoscript is very easy once you realise what is script and what is guidance - I did once suggest that Pangolin colour code the two to distinguish them, but as Pangoscript is aimed at "true" professionals, they chose not to adopt this route.

However, once you realise which bit is which, then it's easy as Pangoscript comes with a complete index of commands and all you do is select the one you want, then enter any variable (if needed). The rest of the script is inserted when you select the required command. You can leave the guidance in, or delete it for neatness at your choice.

To give you an idea of the speed, once understood, to make Beyond run a show immediately at start up, takes less than 10 secs of script work. Obviously if you want long complex sequences of commands, then those items take longer but again the script commands are all pre-provided in the indexed list.

You can also save your scripts so if in the future you need a same command sequence, you can load it from the file.

[norty303]

To be fair Al, most programming IDE's allow you to configure syntax highlighting. I'm a 'true' programming professional for my day job and I have a very specific colour config I like for comments, keywords, literal strings, integers, operators, etc.

[swamidog]

syntax/comment highlighting is not just for amateur coders.

it's one of the reasons i love emacs*.

*mention of emacs is not intended to start a religious war from the vi camp.

In actual fact Keith Pangoscript is very easy once you realise what is script and what is guidance - I did once suggest that Pangolin colour code the two to distinguish them, but as Pangoscript is aimed at "true" professionals, they chose not to adopt this route.

However, once you realise which bit is which, then it's easy as Pangoscript comes with a complete index of commands and all you do is select the one you want, then enter any variable (if needed). The rest of the script is inserted when you select the required command. You can leave the guidance in, or delete it for neatness at your choice.

To give you an idea of the speed, once understood, to make Beyond run a show immediately at start up, takes less than 10 secs of script work. Obviously if you want long complex sequences of commands, then those items take longer but again the script commands are all pre-provided in the indexed list.

You can also save your scripts so if in the future you need a same command sequence, you can load it from the file.

[swamidog]

Was Phoenix developed by Pangolin or bought out? I've seen a few videos but not really explored it.

phoenix was acquired by pangolin in 2013.

[Pangolin]

although not so much as learning to programme PangoScript variant of C which I understand is Beyond's alternative to LSX's simple mathematical expressions.

Hehe. I'm a purist... Since BEYOND was out before LSX, so any comparison of the two should reference BEYOND first ;-)

Nevertheless, you are mistaken. Within a single editor (and indeed a single language) BEYOND supports many syntaxes, even simultaneously. Indeed BEYOND supports the C syntax, but that was, in fact, the very latest to be added, after all of the others. Other variations include a syntax like BASIC and even more simple things where you just double-click on words you want. BEYOND is as simple, or as complex as it needs a user to be.

What's more BEYOND scripting language isn't for simple tasks (like evolving the shape of an image, although that's possible). BEYOND script language is a full-blown multi-threaded language with both local and global variables. The global variables are fun because it allows other parts of the program (including other scripts and external controllers) to influence it.

Many of the features of our APC40 profile are created with PangoScript. It provides feedback, flashes buttons on the console, changes colors, etc. This is just one example...

I had a look at dynamics at DutchLEM and it didn't seem to have anywhere near the functionality of LSX, although it was only a brief look.

Galvonaut, in all fairness and with all due respect, I hope you will admit that you've only been in this business for around a year. Maybe less. So you've not had much in-depth exposure to much of anything outside of QuickShow and LSX.

I would bet money that that vast majority of what you do in LSX can be done with any of the other LDS variants! And although I only know a bit about Dynamics, I know the people involved and I would likewise bet money that there are things you can do with Dynamics that can't be done with LSX. But on the whole, I would bet even further money that all of these LDS variants give the user the same fundamental creation tools, and it is the fundamentals (like drum rudiments) that are used the most.

Was Phoenix developed by Pangolin or bought out?

We acquired Phoenix in April 2013 for 25x the amount of money that we could have acquired source code for LDS. That should tell you something right there...

After we acquired it, we had two full time programmers work on it for an entire year, incorporating some proprietary Pangolin technologies. During that period of time we also did work on the internal structures as well. Although it still can't hold a candle to the smoothness of any native Pangolin product (and the only other thing that can is Lasergraph DSP because we both use the same tricks to get the smoothness), I would be that Phoenix is the smoothest of all LDS variants.

Moreover, Phoenix has technologies that no other LDS variant has or -- indeed -- any other laser software. The visualizer is only one example. We're working to unify the platform such that substantially all Pangolin users have access to the same broad toolset.

I've had 3 issues with Quickshow, the first of which was whenever I let my computer hibernate for a loo break etc, the software requires a restart - easy solution though - Turn off hibernate

I am surprised that you had this kind of problem. As far as I knew, it was fixed years ago. Please let me know if you're still having this problem and we'll get log files from you so we can analyze the situation.

By now more than 30,000 people are using QuickShow and our phones don't ring and we don't have many support emails either. It's pretty solid and anybody at any time can download a free demo and start playing with it.

The second was a security related issue which locked the software on a certain date. This was dealt with very quickly indeed, although not quickly enough for some who were at gigs when it occurred.

I'm not so sure that the latter is true... The very day we discovered the problem it was solved in a matter of HOURS -- and we also sent an email to every single QS user, along with making posts to public forums and social media outlets, alerting users of the problem and two potential solutions. For anyone who did not receive the email, they called 1-800-PANGOLIN (yes, it even works outside the USA) and gotten ME or Aaron on the telephone, who talked them through how to solve the problem with a 2 minute telephone call.

The third, which was maybe after 6 months of owning QS was that I was sold laser design software and then came to realise that the canned cues were not created with Quickshow

I'm afraid you are mistaken! Although around half of the cues were imported from our LD2000 library, the other half were all created in QuickShow and by a single person! But I could ask a similar question -- how much of the content that comes with LSX was created exclusively with LSX? Certainly much of it is original LDS content, some of it started its life as Phoenix content, and yet other content is "borrowed" from other platforms, such as Pangolin and Lasergraph DSP (no kidding!)

I've heard you allude to the fact that *you* are not able to create cues in QS. But after thinking about this and reading your posts, I truly believe that either a) this is from a lack of trying or; b) QS software works in a way that does not resonate with your personality.

I talked about it in another post -- how we worked with a famous UI designer on the design of QS. It is designed for a certain kind of user in mind. It accomplished its goal of making laser show creation easy, as illustrated by the large user base which grows at a rate of 400 per day. But your experience has shown me that this singular design does not work for all people. In that case it's a good thing we have other offerings such as LD2000, Phoenix and BEYOND.

But likewise, I would say that the flip side is true (and have anecdotal evidence to back this up) -- that not every single person who purchases LSX will have the same enjoyable and successful experience that you have had. I have heard this in private conversations and this can also be seen in Facebook groups, where beginners and experienced professionals alike buy it, and then struggle to do anything with it. Clearly some people have been successful, including Swami, CMB and you. But Swami is an "unmarried computer programmer" . CMB is a fricken physicist for god's sake. And you? Well, you're a plant <just kidding>

Anyway, your point and my point alike about a variety of products does make the world go round. On a personal level, I can't use any Adobe products because it's style doesn't resonate with my work style. But this doesn't mean that Adobe products are crap. Nor has it stopped Adobe from capturing a market so firmly, that the name of one of it's products (Photoshop) has turned into a verb...

Bill

[swamidog]

Hehe. I'm a purist... Since BEYOND was out before LSX, so any comparison of the two should reference BEYOND first ;-)

LSX was released on 5/27/2011
The press release for Beyond shows the expected release date by 7/16/2011.

I would bet money that that vast majority of what you do in LSX can be done with any of the other LDS variants! And although I only know a bit about Dynamics, I know the people involved and I would likewise bet money that there are things you can do with Dynamics that can't be done with LSX. But on the whole, I would bet even further money that all of these LDS variants give the user the same fundamental creation tools, and it is the fundamentals (like drum rudiments) that are used the most.

it's safe to say most laser show sequencing apps share a subset of features. i know that LSX has some custom abstract generators behind the scenes. andrew has put quite a lot of work into the engine, even if the gui is not as modernized.

Moreover, Phoenix has technologies that no other LDS variant has or -- indeed -- any other laser software. The visualizer is only one example. We're working to unify the platform such that substantially all Pangolin users have access to the same broad toolset.

what is the "visualizer"? i have never worked with phoenix so it's a large unknown to me.

I'm not so sure that the latter is true... The very day we discovered the problem it was solved in a matter of HOURS -- and we also sent an email to every single QS user, along with making posts to public forums and social media outlets, alerting users of the problem and two potential solutions. For anyone who did not receive the email, they called 1-800-PANGOLIN (yes, it even works outside the USA) and gotten ME or Aaron on the telephone, who talked them through how to solve the problem with a 2 minute telephone call.

absolutely. pangolin and you have clearly gone the extra mile on support issues.

I'm afraid you are mistaken! Although around half of the cues were imported from our LD2000 library, the other half were all created in QuickShow and by a single person! But I could ask a similar question -- how much of the content that comes with LSX was created exclusively with LSX? Certainly much of it is original LDS content, some of it started its life as Phoenix content, and yet other content is "borrowed" from other platforms, such as Pangolin and Lasergraph DSP (no kidding!)

are you implying that LSX is distributed with pangolin owned content?

But likewise, I would say that the flip side is true (and have anecdotal evidence to back this up) -- that not every single person who purchases LSX will have the same enjoyable and successful experience that you have had. I have heard this in private conversations and this can also be seen in Facebook groups, where beginners and experienced professionals alike buy it, and then struggle to do anything with it. Clearly some people have been successful, including Swami, CMB and you. But Swami is an "unmarried computer programmer" . CMB is a fricken physicist for god's sake. And you? Well, you're a plant <just kidding>

it's funny. i had no problem figuring out QS, and very few problems figuring out LSX, but LD2k totally eludes me. i can recite emacs keybindings like a litany, but vi makes me want to eat ground glass.

we all respond differently to buttons and levers.

Anyway, your point and my point alike about a variety of products does make the world go round. On a personal level, I can't use any Adobe products because it's style doesn't resonate with my work style. But this doesn't mean that Adobe products are crap. Nor has it stopped Adobe from capturing a market so firmly, that the name of one of it's products (Photoshop) has turned into a verb...

Bill

yes. exactly.

[Pangolin]

LSX was released on 5/27/2011The press release for Beyond shows the expected release date by 7/16/2011.

I guess "released" is in the eye of the beholder... Surely many people had BEYOND prior to July 16, 2001 (which is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon -- chosen to commemorate my fathers role in that historic launch)...

what is the "visualizer"? i have never worked with phoenix so it's a large unknown to me.

I spend my time in development, not marketing. We may have a marketing-related video or information about it on the Phoenix web site, that I am not aware of. But one thing I am aware of (because I uploaded it) is a video of another visualizer that also works with LD2000 and BEYOND. You can see the video here, and then you'll understand more about what a visualizer is and does. Note that what you're seeing in this video is a) three years old and b) all happening 100% in real time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im2n9ZHK2nU

are you implying that LSX is distributed with pangolin owned content?

One thing you may not know Swami -- At one point in time Pangolin, along with six other companies took Lennart to court for copyright infringement and distributing other people's content with his system. We collectively won the suit and Lennart had to pay damages, court costs, etc...

I've never been much for world history or American history but when it comes to the history of this business, I know a lot about it, since I've been involved for more than 28 years. So I know where these softwares (and shows) came from, who was involved, where they got their ideas, etc.

Even setting aside the law suit and fonts, many of the graphic shows that came along with LDS started their life on the Pangolin platform -- either exported from LD2000 (there's that interoperability you're always talking about) or simply rendered in our Lasershow Converter MAX or Lasershow Converter 4D plugins and then brought into LDS. I saw this quite a bit at Laserfreak meetings.

Aside from folks like you, CMB and Galvonaut, it seems to me that it must be pretty difficult to create content on that platform. That's what I hear a lot in private conversations. In fact, there is a guy here on PL who you and Galvo convinced to go with LSX instead of Pangolin. A few days ago he wrote me a private message that he felt he'd made a terrible mistake, and that he should have gone with Pangolin, he can't get bug fixes, etc.

Moreover, in all of the years that this platform has been available (originally starting in 1998 as "LasCoNetwork"), only a two ILDA Awards were ever won by clients using it. One award was yours, not for graphics but for abstracts. The other was by Tobias Gebhur on the Phoenix platform, for a beam show. (Since then Tobias moved to LD2000 and BEYOND.) On the other hand, over the past 15 years more than half of the ILDA Awards were won by Pangolin clients, around 1/3 by LOBO, and the rest to Lasergraph DSP. If LDS and all of its variants are so great, then why was there only two awards won using it?

Nevertheless, to reply to your question very directly, I didn't *imply* anything. I asked a question:

how much of the content that comes with LSX was created exclusively with LSX?

Galvonaut seemed to be complaining (or at least disappointed) that not everything that comes along with QS was actually created in QS. Since I think it's fair to say that Galvonaut is an LSX fanboy, but since Galvonaut has not been in the business for very long (and -- unlike world history or American history, much of the laser and software history is unrecorded) Galvonaut likely does not know the history of where any or all of this came from. So while he became disappointed that not everything that comes with QS was created with QS, I have to wonder if he believes everything that came with LSX was also created with LSX? I would be utterly amazed if -- before LSX was distributed, Andrew removed all non-exclusively-LSX content, or even sanitized the shows for content that might have started its life on platforms other than LDS.

A lot of people don't know the true origin of content, especially since the ILDA format does not contain any originator information or anything else. And so there is quite a bit of content that started out on the Pangolin platform -- some of which even created by Patrick Murphy and myself, (including nearly every single test pattern that serves this industry) and yet people use this blindly, assuming it is public domain or that it came from Mars or something...

Just as one example, I remember people showing Pangolin shows on Spaghetti. When I asked Gary about it, neither he (originator of Spaghetti) nor any of his clients knew the origins... I can't say anything about the latest versions of Spaghetti, but certainly a few years ago during the initial releases of Spaghetti, every single show I saw played at a Photon Lexicon event was really a Pangolin show (most of which were exported and distributed without authorization).

Putting Galvonaut's disappointment into perspective, if he was unhappy to discover that some of the QS content wasn't created by QS (but at least originated on other Pangolin platforms), imagine how upset he'd be if he found out that substantially none of the content that came with the software was originally created by the platform! Then imagine how he'd feel if he started asking around about the true origins, but nobody really knew?

Bill

[White-Light]

what is the "visualizer"? i have never worked with phoenix so it's a large unknown to me.

It's like a built in version of Light Converse / Capture Polar / Depence. From memory you can build you own custom rooms so you can visualise your laser shows in situ (or show the visualisation to your clients to demo your shows in their "venue"). I also seem to remember from memory that the room modelling is very very good. However, I admit to only having seen it once or twice in the Phoenix demo prior to Pangolin purchasing them.

For Beyond users, it's worth mentioning that Light Converse can be bought direct from Pangolin for a discount. I'm unsure of the other packages although they're all in partnership. I've tried all 3 and certainly my favourite one is the closest thing you can get to actually running lasers in reality, although each has it's own strengths (some have better beams, other better modelling etc).

[LaNeK779]

this thread is terminally derailed, me thinks... ... ...

this is a typing war, he who types the most, wins, meaning long lost

[Pangolin]

Good point!

To the main topic and the bottom line is that Innolasers is "legit" insomuch as not being a scam or rip-off, but responsiveness seems notoriously slow.