LAS VEGAS — The fire alarm system went off with strobes flashing as lasers and spotlights pierced the smoky air in the long hall within the Las Vegas Convention Center. But attendees at the LDI show kept greeting one another with hearty handshakes and hugs, kept watched demos of new products and went right on learning about the newest software upgrade while others simply strolled along the mostly-black and occasionally confetti-strewn carpet, absorbing the visual spectacle offered by more than 400 exhibitors. Here are a few of the new developments that kept attendees from racing toward the exits.
• A.C. Lighting Inc., booth # 2110, presented the Chroma-Q LED line, including Color Span, a configurable low profile LED fixture for indoor and outdoor wall wash, cove, effects and feature lighting applications. The Chroma-Q Color Web LED matrix was also shown, as well as the Color Punch, Color Split and Color Block LED fixtures. A.C. Lighting Inc. also featured Jands Vista products, including the Vista I3, a compact, economical alternative to full-size T4/T2 consoles.
• A.C.T Lighting, booth #1615, introduced the full line of grandMA2 consoles from MA Lighting, including full-size consoles to rackmount NPUs. The distributor also featured i-Pix products including the BB 7 beamlight, the 120-watt BB 4 washlight, and the Satellite, a 42-watt RGB self-contained LED wash fixture. Also at the booth was Zero 88’s Jester TL and ORB consoles, A.C.T’s own DistroTech power distribution and motor controllers and Schnick Schnack Systems LED Media Systems.
• ADB Lighting Technologies, booth #763, presented their WARP DayLight and WARP Motorized lighting units, and provide demos for the Mentor desk and Motion Control Wing.
• Barco featured a number of new High End Systems lighting and control products and held the worldwide debut for the Showbeam automated wash luminaire, featuring a jointly developed Philips MSR 2500-watt lamp source that produces 140,000 lumens of light output, and the Showgun 2.5 automated luminaire. Also making its first appearance was the DMX Processor 8000 for Wholehog software.
• Chauvet featured its COLORado 6, an automated and upgraded IP66-rated version of the COLORado 3 wash bank; the COLORado 2, a bigger version of the COLORado 1; the COLORado Batten 80i, an RGBW intelligent color strip; the COLORdash Batten, a compact LED bank system, and also the COLORdash Par; the Q Spot LED 250, a white LED-fitted spot moving head with 6-watt LEDs; the Legend 6500, a 14-channel intelligent LED moving yoke with RGBW mixing capability and the Legend 4500 RGBW wash with high intensity LEDs, a scaled down version of the Legend 6500. Also featured in the 3,500 square-foot booth were the Legend 1200E, the company's first 1200-watt moving yoke spot, and the SkyScan 4000 Spot.
• City Theatrical announced its first eight SHoW DMX technology partners. They include Applied Technology, Easily LED, Electronics Diversified Inc. (EDI), Johnson Systems, Lex Products, LynTec, LSC and Zero 88.
• Clay Paky’s Alpha Beam 300, which won the Award for Innovation at PLASA 08, was the company’s focal point for LDI as well, along with the Alpha Beam 1500.
• Coemar unveiled five new lights at booth #2334: the Infinity Spot XL, which features a color mix system for CMY and RGB colors; the Infinity ACL, designed to create big-beam looks from a compact package; the space, weight and power-saving Infinity Spot S and Infinity Wash S, and the Stage Lite LED, which features an electronic dimmer, electronic strobe and synchronized, random and pulse effects.
• Creative Stage Lighting showed the JB line and other moving lights and consoles at booth # 856. CSL was recently named the exclusive distributor for the full line JB Lighting products for the United States and Mexico, including the new JB Lighting VaryLED A7.
• Daktronics, booth #2822, introduced its latest addition to the PST product line, the PST-10 modular display panel. It combines the cabinet design of the PST series with Daktronics MAG-10 technology, an indoor/outdoor display module that uses three-in-one black-stamped light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for improved viewing quality from shorter distances.
• Elation Professional and Acclaim Lighting, at booths #521 and #715, featured the EV-LED, a new line of video mesh LED screens from Elation; the ELED Fresnel, an LED white fixture; the Antari HZ-500 hazer, the ELED Strip RGBW, a high-power, 1 meter long color-mixing LED bar; the Opti Tri Par, a high-power LED RGB theatrical PAR can.
• Element Labs won two awards at the show. The Helix P1, a flexible LED pixel string that can bend, wrap, drape, and fold, was named Best Debuting Projection Product. The Versa Ray screen, used for more than 45,000 square feet at the 15th Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, earned an ESTA Rock Our World Award. Made from 20,000 individual Versa Rays, which, laid end to end, would span more than 36 miles, it used a total of 762,000 individual LEDs with a pixel pitch of 77mm.
• ETC's Unison Paradigm lighting control system was named Best Debuting Product at LDI, an honor shared with Nila Lights. The company demoed its Unison, Paradigm and SmartLink control systems. The company also showed the 70-watt version of its Source Four HID products and the 375-watt HPL lamp option for Source Four tungsten fixtures. ETC also demonstrated how ACN and RDM technology can make life easier, and showed new versions of ETC software, including SmartSoft and ETC’s new Congo v5.
• FogScreen, at booth #2125, displayed an interactive one and two-meter walk-through projection screen made of dry fog, which enables projected images to float in the air.
• J.R. Clancy, booth #2504, offered free buttons promoting “Safe Sets.” “We can’t emphasize enough that you’re hanging heavy set pieces over people’s heads,” said Tom Young, J. R. Clancy’s vice president of marketing. The booth also featured a PowerLift Automated Hoist with its outer cover removed to reveal its dual-brake system and moving drum winch. Visitors can watch video of a PowerLift system in action and check out the touch screen-operated SceneControl 500 motion control system.
• Lehigh, booth #1664, introduced WaveRunner, a new feature for Wave 120 console. WaveRunner is a Windows application that provides a full-screen view of the Wave 120 console operation details. By connecting a PC running WaveRunner to a Wave console using a USB cable, WaveRunner shows output channel values, submasters, the cue stack, and other information, including DMX outputs or inputs or previews for cues and submasters.
• Mega Systems, booth #2859, featured Disco, a control system that targets the club and lounge market.
• Pyrotek Special Effects won a Rock Our World award from ESTA for its Aqua Visual FX, a “waterfall billboard” that can display graphics, shapes and text in patterns of falling water droplets.
• Royal Philips Electronics, booth 1538, featured the Philips 750/115 FastFit and Philips 800/230 FastFit lamps, designed for fixtures made by Philips’ U.S. subsidiary, Strand Lighting. The line has expanded in recent months with the Philips MSR Gold, 300/2 FastFit (designed in fixtures of Coemar, Elation and ClayPaky), Philips MSR Gold 1500 FastFit (designed in fixtures of SGM and Coemar) and Philips MSR Gold 2000(/2) FastFit (designed in fixture of High End Systems). Those are some of the 17 manufacturers who have used the FastFit system for more than 30 fixtures and 12 lamp types since FastFit was launched 2.5 years ago.
• PixelRange, booth #2755, featured its PixelMax Wash, an RGBA fixture, which uses 132 high intensity Luxeon K2 LEDs in a six-cell configuration; PixelMax Pro, a combined wash and pixellation luminaire that has 288 RGBA Luxeon Rebel LEDs, and a half-length PixelArt batten with 36 by 6 pixels. PixelRange also introduced a software upgrade to help operators control the video batten fixtures directly via DMX by feeding an ArtNet compliant signal in to the VideoMapper.
• Pulsar talked up its two new LED fixtures using its TriColour technology, the ChromaInGround 50 and ChromaLink.
• Robe featured its new Digital Series of products, including the DigitalSpot 7000 and 3000 DT moving heads and the REDWash 3-192, the first of Robe’s new moving head wash lights based on RED (Robe Emitted Diodes). They were shown along three other new RED technology products: the REDFlash 3-192, the REDStrobe 3-192 and REDMix 3-192. Robe’s “workhorse” AT Series moving heads rounded out the booth, staffed by an international sales team and animated with hourly new product demos.
• Robert Juliat introduced two new products at LDI 2008: Victor M and Flo. Both products are designed around a hot restrike MSR 1800-watt DE discharge lamp from Philips. Victor has a zoom range of 7º to 14.5º while Flo is a short-range model with a 13º to 28º zoom range. Victor M is equipped with a DMX controlled motorized shutter for smooth dimming and precise shutter control.
• The Ron StageMaster wireless load monitoring and overload prevention system, which is designed to reduce the risk of uneven load distribution and dangerous overloads, appeared at Eilon Engineering Weighing Systems Ltd.’s booth #2132.
• Stage Technologies, booth 356, featured F:light, which allows moving lights to automatically track moving scenery of performers, while remaining under the lighting designer’s control, and the Acrobat:G6 console.
• At TMB, new products included the ProTester 19 MOBAL cable tester by GDS; PufferSphere spherical display system from Pufferfish; ProFan high velocity DMX-controlled wind machine; and TMB’s ProPower NCB Series: non-conductive power distribution, without the rubber. Kinesys motion controls debuted the Libra loadcell, a system that uses a load-measuring shackle and Kinesys’ K2 motion control software. TMB also featured Green Hippo’s HippoCritter mini-server; HippoPortamus, a Hippo in a laptop; Hippotizer V3 R2 tour-ready chassis; and demos for Hippotizer’s V3.0.12 software release. Hippotizer classes were available for beginning and advanced students through the LDI Institute.
• W-DMX presented its first Visionary Award to Nathan Barmer, Moving Lights Operator Le Reve at Wynn Las Vegas and Jason McKinnon from Electric Aura Lighting Design in Vancouver. McKinnon has been using W-DMXTM in a number of major motion pictures in Hollywood such as Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer and The Watchmen, in addition to Bon Jovi and a variety of other special projects.
• White Light’s VSFX Optical Effect System, which was originally launched in 1990, celebrated its 18th birthday in Las Vegas with the launch of VSFX3, which further updates the VSFX drive unit with on-board DMX control, a new digital stepper motor technology for more consistent and repeatable movement speeds across multiple projectors and an improved drive system that reduces the chance of the effect disc slipping while also offering slower minimum speeds than was possible with earlier units. City Theatrical in New York manufactures VSFX3 for White Light, and will also be distributing VSFX3 in the U.S.
• Wybron’s Gel Swatch Library won a 2008 ESTA Member’s Choice Product Award in the Widget category. Miles Dudgeon, co-developer of the application, accepted the award on behalf of co-developer Scott Longberry and the company. Wybron also played a role as a sponsor of Backstage Las Vegas, which gave close to 100 industry professionals a backstage tour of showrooms at the Palazzo, Planet Hollywood, the Venetian, the Luxor and Cherry, a nightclub at the Red Rock Resort and Casino.
• Zero 88, which sponsored a daily prize drawing for a free Universe LightFactory software package at PLASA 08, held a similar promotion at LDI.
• ZZYZX, Inc. featured its Vision 3.0 pre-visualization software, which has the ability to run natively on the Mac OSX without the need for Parallels or Bootcamp. It can run on Mac OS X 10.4.1 or greater, and any video card that supports OpenGL 1.4 or greater, including both Intel chipsets and legacy Motorola chipset Macintosh computers, including the Mac Book, Mac Book Pro, iMac, Mac mini, and PowerPC computers. Vision 3.0 has also added User Preferences, allowing users to choose between Imperial and Metric display settings, Cut/Copy/Paste, Undo/Redo functionality, improved navigation and true full-screen.
