Abstract control model, whaaat?
It is a cool feature, which Strand supports as well. Pioneered by Horizon Controls, see Horizon Controls - Abstract Control Model WhitePaper-2005-02-21-ACM.pdf . One wonders why other manufacturers haven't adopted a similar philosophy? Perhaps it's that, once the "DSL" position palette is made, no one cares if that is P/T at DMX 105/243 or 65°/-27°. Or that "Slow Rotate" means more to an operator than 2.7 rpm....I just started using the Jands Vista a couple weeks ago, and it has a really cool feature called the generic fixture model. ...
Being the guy that works with the Palette every day, I'm obviously partial to it over other desks. My thoughts...
The Universal Attribute Control is complete and not partial like many other desks. You have a show programmed with a Mac, move the show, now you have VLs, change it in patch and you are done. I did this on a Broadway tour a couple of years back and it worked very well. ...
...In the interest of fairness and educating us all, could someone from ETC comment on how Ion and Jr. handle these topics of real world terminology, abstract control model, and instrument swapping.
Hi everyone. Well, I'll speak to the Eos family of products and Sarah will weigh in on behalf of the Congo line. Regarding swapping out of fixtures, yes, that works very well. If the color data is stored in HS (which is the default mode when using the Color or Gel picker - and when working in native space the data can be easily converted to HS with the Color Format control), the HS values translate to any mixing color system. Similarly with pan/tilt, if the ranges of the original fixture are different from the new fixture, the data is converted appropriately for the applicable ranges of the substitute. Linear data and "framed data" such as scroller, color and gobo wheels are no problem. One area that we are looking to improve in the near term is the handling of device modes - right now those are translated as DMX values but will be stored as modes shortly. ...