Are my expectations just too high?

[tonyski]

Greetings All,

Like everyone, I've been busy sequencing for this year's display.

My display has 35 - 16 channel controllers and 12 CCRs

I have a visualizer built that shows a pretty good representation of what's going on and I must say, it is an enormous improvement over the old one. I really enjoy using it.

Like others, I've noticed that the visualizer lags a fraction of a second ( about one beat from the song usually) from what the sequence editor is doing. Although it is manageable, I'd like to get it to sync up exactly.

My image size is 1920 x 1080 to fill my 24" monitor. I've read in other posts that getting the file down to 800 x 600 is helpful. When I do that, I do see an improvement, but it isn't perfect. The resulting image ends up being too small to be particularly useful. It is about 1/4 of the screen.

I do have a relatively powerful computer:

i7 3930 CPU

16GB Ram

solid state drive

3 x 24" monitors The one running the visualizer has a GTX680 Video Card. The other two share a GTX670 Video Card.

My hope was that although the computational demands were pretty hefty, I could brute force the desired result with computer horsepower.

Back to the title of my post. Are my expectations just too high??

I've read where others actually use a second computer for the visualizer, but I'm unsure how to do that. Does anyone know of documentation on "How To"?

Well, back to work...

Tony

[Aaron Maue]

I've read where others actually use a second computer for the visualizer, but I'm unsure how to do that. Does anyone know of documentation on "How To"?

Tony

Check post#5 in Jeff Millard's how-to thread.

http://forums.lightorama.com/index.php?/topic/21349-A-How-To-Checklist-Thread

[LOR Staff]

I'm surprised with what you are pushing it's only a little behind! You are pushing north of 2400 channels, and emulating 47 separate processors. That is a TON of stuff to simulate

To improve speed:

1920x1080 is simply going to be too big. If 800x600 is too small, try to find something in the middle that trades visibility for speed.

OR divide your visualizer into multiple files, each showing a different part of your stage.

Ensure that you have turned OFF the unneeded stuff in the Sequence Editor (like vary channel button colors, etc).

[tonyski]

DevMike,

I knew the emulation was substantial,but didn't know it was that much.

If I remove the CCR data from my sequence and paste it in last, does that help the visualizer, or do I need to actually remove them from the visualizer to see an improvement?

[MCas4380]

WOW that sounds like one big display. were are you located?

[tonyski]

Decatur, GA

www.christmasinthegrove.net

site still shows 2011 info. Another thing to do.....

we are going from 16 controllers to 35 and adding the Superstar tree (Thanks Brian)

Also increasing to 72K lights.

[MCas4380]

Thanks I'll check it out.

[friskybri]

I noticed my Vis having issues on my laptop but when I get to the Main pc where It has more power it works fine. If you have that big of a show I would build a monster pc. 2gb video card ect.

[tonyski]

The video cards are 2GB each

I think the GTX 680 is Nvidia's fastest single GPU card

I think the answer to my question is "Yes" it is just too much! but when I get some Free time "LOL" I'm going to try running the visualizer on a second machine and see what that does.

Hey friskybri... who do you work for?

I fly 737's for Delta out of Atlanta

[friskybri]

Eagle beagle ORD. Not flying now. Ear problems. Gives me time to catch up on my halloween and christmas display. When are you guys hiring. I heard this december. There are many here ready to jump at the chance.

Let me know how the two PC's work on the display. I think you got that fastest Video card. I'm impressed and still having issues. wow.

Edited October 25, 2012 by friskybri

[seankovacs]

Tony, I really believe it's a limitation or trade off with the new visualizer. LOR is written in an older language (VB), which is a double negative as far as performance goes (VB itself its slow, on top of it being old so it can't take advantage of newer technology). In essence, you could run this on IBM's Watson super computer and still see the problem.

It's time for LOR to embrace newer languages such as C# or even VB.NET, if not C++ at-least.

[LOR Staff]

There is nothing wrong with VB, and the code that VB produces is nearly as fast as other compiled langs.

As far as technology improvements, we leverage all of that from the OS itself.

The critical parts of the suite are already in C++, so I question your statement that we embrace newer technologies. Instead, we use the correct tool for the job. Why write 100 lines of C when we can get the same performance and result with 2 lines of VB?

We have performed some serious load testing and can show the largest delays in the Visualizer are actually within Windows and its API calls (which BTW, are written by Microsoft in C++), and not within the VB code.

[tonyski]

Thanks guys,

I didn't want to stir things up, just hoping for an easy fix. I love an excuse for more computer hardware.

When I consider what the visualizer is emulating, it does a pretty respectable job, and is still very useful.

The timing seems so close on my system, I was hoping to to be able to tweek something and sync it up.

No worries, I have plenty of other things to do, like put up all my FREAKIN' lights

All the best to everyone...It's almost SHOWTIME!