I was thinking it would be useful for dimming (
intensity or color) or pan/tilt.
Moving to higher
bit depths seems like diminishing returns. Higher grade
LED fixtures already have complex dimming engines to ensure smooth fades so you don't need to move to a higher
bit depth for the sake of
intensity and there's no reason you would need more than 0.0015% resolution you already have with 16-bit in terms of specifying your "resting value" you're fading into. The smoothness of dimming between values is a function of the engine and not a dependency of
DMX resolution -- I think you'll find in most circumstances where there's any reason to have more smoothness of any operation, it's almost a necessity to
build that into the
fixture natively as part of the engine rather than try to bridge that resolution of control directly between a
DMX source and the output motors/dimmers/
etc of a
fixture.
Color-wise, I could maybe see a justification if you were running in HSI or HSIC mode on a
fixture with 6-7 colors -- though I think if you're fine tuning your colors that closely you're already messing around with direct mode anyway.
Maybe it's my lack of imagination, but I have a hard time envisioning where 32-bit control would be practically useful. If you're trying to achieve that resolution of control through a single
parameter, you have a fundamental user interface problem where you are trying to achieve a technical goal through a paradigm that a human being cannot comprehend the resolution of.
As for the subject of media servers, if you're trying to achieve that finite
level of control, for that to be comprehensible and navigable in any meaningful way you need to be doing that control in the video
processor itself. Deadmau5 probably has some of the most advanced video of any modern tour and they're working in a completely different control paradigm than a DMX-controller
media server. They can take
DMX in as a control source but their
dynamic content is largely being controlled/triggered/influenced by Ableton through
OSC. Trying to mimic their
level of control through any kind of DMX-interface, controlled by a
DMX console is simply impossible.
Little
bit tangential to the topic at
hand, but if you're not familiar with how Deadmau5 is using TouchDesigner to drive their video, I highly recommend going down the rabbit hole. Very illuminating. He's probably 10 years ahead of where the broader industry is in terms of media content
dynamic rendering and control.