LightShow Pro 1.x (the new version)

[dmoore]

This is a re-post from: http://www.lightshowpro.com//showthread.php?1595-Lsp-2-0&p=8791

LightShow Pro Development Update
Thank you for your patience in getting an update!

I would like to start by saying thank you for your continued support, your support makes the LSP development possible.

Through our effort to deliver an exceptional feature set and provide solutions to massive channel growth and emerging lighting capabilities, lets be honest, we took some design and architecture risks. some paid off while and others bit us through compatibility and functional customer issues. Although many customers designed and rand incredible displays using the new LSP features and functionality, we learned some hard lessons.

For that reason, the focus of LSP development this year has been on improving the stability, efficiency, functionality and design of the current LSP feature set. Delivering on the promise, we have refactored all core areas of LSP, those including: file format, memory utilization, grid functionality, undo/redo behavior, effect optimization, copy/paste logic and behaviors, timing management, output plugin architecture and output plugins.

As you can imagine this undertaking was a massive redesign in many regards and required a lot of attention (under the hood) whick hopefully explains the lack of my presence in the forums while building the next solution.

Although we are not prepared to discuss delivery, pricing and upgrade options, we are planning a deployment in late spring pending successful testing cycles and team acceptance.

in addition to backward compatibility and core rewrites, including an open file format and exponetial performance increases in many areas of functionality, you will find multi-core / threaded behavior and reduced memory and disk utilization...

although these numbers are very subjective, for what it is worth, these are the types of performance gains that I am currently seeing through development efforts.

Example:
a 3000 channel sequence in v1.8
v1.8
-load time:1:45*
-file size: 100mb*
-in memory size:800mb*
-effect optimization: 10-20 minutes

v1.x
-load time:0:15
-file size: 25mb
-in memory size:400mb
-effect optimization: 2-10 minutes

**these values are subjective to hardware and sequence complexity

Please look forward to more information as development procedes.

 

[fasteddy]

Latest news on the LSP release from the LSP Forum


A quick update_
LightShow development has been progressing as scheduled with no major setbacks.
Moving forward, LSP will return to a regular beta testing cycle in the upcoming week with release once we pass beta user acceptance testing.
as we enter testing we will be publicizing many specifics around the enhancements and perfomance metrics you can expect in the release.

Thank you for you patience!
David Johnson
LightShow Pro

 

[dmoore]

Wooo Hoooo!

Christmas is a comin'

 

[Wombat]

But I bet Version 2 wont be free to V1 licensed users

 

[neilric99]

I dont think this is version 2.0, I think David is still keeping it version 1.9 which I suspect will be a free upgrade to 1.8 users, of course David may have a different idea if its going to be free or not to upgrade.

But I bet Version 2 wont be free to V1 licensed users

 

[fasteddy]

I dont think this is version 2.0, I think David is still keeping it version 1.9 which I suspect will be a free upgrade to 1.8 users, of course David may have a different idea if its going to be free or not to upgrade.

But I bet Version 2 wont be free to V1 licensed users

A quote from David in the same thread

2.0 will be released when it is ready, an intermediate version will be released in late spring.

So i would expect this to be LSP 1.9

 

[dmoore]

I dont think this is version 2.0, I think David is still keeping it version 1.9 which I suspect will be a free upgrade to 1.8 users, of course David may have a different idea if its going to be free or not to upgrade.

But I bet Version 2 wont be free to V1 licensed users

A quote from David in the same thread

2.0 will be released when it is ready, an intermediate version will be released in late spring.

So i would expect this to be LSP 1.9

It makes you think that this release will fix the UI issues and speed issues and that 2.0 will be all the new features version.

 

[taybrynn]

He's been saying/inferring that the next upgrade would be free. To me, I just want the stability fixes and UI stuff fixed. I'm not sure what the new features are going to be, but I'm just hoping this next release gets the basic sequencing stuff down cold ...

 

[Wombat]

He's been saying/inferring that the next upgrade would be free. To me, I just want the stability fixes and UI stuff fixed. I'm not sure what the new features are going to be, but I'm just hoping this next release gets the basic sequencing stuff down cold ...

This is what I want as well. LSP was unusable for me last year as it was too unstable and would not scale well to the moderate RGB levels I tried to accomplish last year. 1000RGB pixels is small compared to what will be used in years to come. I had to change computer 3 times last year, had two hard drive failures due to i believe high usage due to LSP and even on my 4core processor could not even successfully sequence a basic simple routine without falling over and corrupting the saved file.

I really dont think it is unreasonable that we get free upgrades to the next level (2.x) for free. This is a seasonal useage and Releases only seems to happen in later part of the year closest to showtime.

Wombat

 

[fasteddy]

He's been saying/inferring that the next upgrade would be free. To me, I just want the stability fixes and UI stuff fixed. I'm not sure what the new features are going to be, but I'm just hoping this next release gets the basic sequencing stuff down cold ...

This is what I want as well. LSP was unusable for me last year as it was too unstable and would not scale well to the moderate RGB levels I tried to accomplish last year. 1000RGB pixels is small compared to what will be used in years to come. I had to change computer 3 times last year, had two hard drive failures due to i believe high usage due to LSP and even on my 4core processor could not even successfully sequence a basic simple routine without falling over and corrupting the saved file.

I really dont think it is unreasonable that we get free upgrades to the next level (2.x) for free. This is a seasonal useage and Releases only seems to happen in later part of the year closest to showtime.

Wombat

This update (1.9) i would expect to be free for existing users, but for version 2 when ever that releases would be an additional cost unless you have bought the 1.x version within a year of the release of version 2. This will be the same as other software packages like LOR S2 to S3. In the end the developer has to have some form of motivation to write the software and update it.

As for why you had so much difficulty with LSP with 3000 channels im unsure but it did work for me with 2200 channels.

 

[Beacy]

Cant wait to get my hands on it hopefully will be able handle the big channel counts

 

[taybrynn]

I just hope the 1.9 LSP software is stable, performs well and is released within a timeframe which allows its user base to sequence and/or convert&sequence their 2011 shows in time ... which means in 1-3 months max.

I know there are about 4-5 (and lets say up to 7-8) well known users of LSP that had luck on a larger scale in 2010 ... and good job in getting it all to work despite the enormous LSP shortfalls! ... but I've heard from a far larger number of distinct users that LSP didn't work for them for one reason or another ... and for that reason, 1.9 is as much of a mandatory bug fix as it is an upgrade.

LSP has tons of potential, but just like a stealth bomber ... must be able to perform take offs and landings as well, or the rest doesn't matter.

 

[dmoore]

There seem to be two issues when people discuss LSP -

* Complexity of the application as a result of its rich feature set
* UI and functionality bugs

I'd consider myself pretty capable but I won't kid you that it is a really complex application. People coming from S2 or vixen which can be learned in in a day or two compared against LSP which takes several weeks to get on top of. Of course that learning curve is complicated when you are not sure if what you are experiencing is a bug or you just don't understand how to configure it.

When we had our beta user conference call early in the year, performance and bug fixes were at the top of the list over any new features. So, hopefully that's what we'll see when it comes out, because even without additional features, it's already ahead of anything on the market today (IMHO).

 

[fasteddy]

I do believe many lessons were learnt last year with LSP. Last year was more of a focus on getting LSP out there to the masses quickly, that appears to have changed and the focus looks to be on getting LSP to function stable in all areas. The fact that David has held out on releasing version 2 and instead focussed on the current 1.x series tells me that he is serious about getting LSP to be workable for all. The next few week should hopefully be proof of that.

 

[taybrynn]

I agree with both of your comments.