I concur with Steph....I've been invested into WYG for a VERY long time.
I almost jumped ship to ESP, but R22 came out (R23 due out soon) and I'll stay....for now. If Cast can fix all their issues with the "Presentation" mode in WYG then I will stay for good.....otherwise I'll be forced to go the Vectorworks (which I use , but HATE:684: ) coupled with ESP route.
The same here Marty, the new versions of Wyg looked very promising. So, I also decided to stay working with Wyg. I also hope they get Presentation section better. Plotting is just awful in Wyg.
I too am a Wyg guy...we've had it for 5 years. I seriously was thinking about jumping ship to ESP, but unlimited, plus the cost of Vectorworks was cost prohibitive. We paid up through 2010 so, at that point, we'll see if we stick with it or jump the shark....
As most of my lighting is non-professional and small scale, I can't justify buying into the other systems. Besides, i like Capture - easy to use, does everything I need it to, graphics are vastly improved with the latest Polar edition and there are no ongioing subscription/support costs.
The other problem I have is that as well as running H3PC and Capture on the same computer, I have a slow computer when it comes to complex 3-D rendering. Its funny I know, but I actually like running Capture 2005 because it is older and doesnt have as good graphics...it just makes a look and thats all I need
I must admit, I much prefer the Polar graphics, though I understand where you're coming from. One thing I liked about 2005 was the ability to be able to match fixture brightnesses - useful for programming/focusing. Also, Polar tends to oversaturate filter colours - my pale straw tint is now very yellow!
I've never tried to run Hog and Capture on the same machine. My laptop only just copes visualising full screen, so both programs together may cause melt down! If I'm demo-ing at a rehearsal, I borrow a friend's laptop to look after the Hog side of things, and hook it up to mine. Not been able to try polar graphics on the laptop - the ATI drivers can't cope with it and there are no up-to-date ones on the HP site. Very annoying! Give me NVidia anyday!
I started out using Wyg 21 about a year & a half ago. It was the first CAD platform for me. The beauty with Wyg is that the GUI and CAD design aspect is very easy to use. In no time at all I started producing some pretty cool venues which I work in. Now that Wyg 22 has been released the rendering looks infinitely better and I am happy to stay with Wyg for now.
The downside of Wyg for me is 1) Very expensive software subscription which has to be paid yearly. The amount payable seems ok for large scale buisnesses, but for your average lighting Joe it's harsh. If your'e running Wyg Perform It's gonna cost you $1,119 US yearly just so you can aquire the new fixture & software updates. 2) Presentation mode still crashes a lot. Make sure you save your work before you go there. 3) Autofocus feature is not compatable with all lighting consoles. Just because a console can be used with Wyg as a visualizer, it doesn't mean that it also has the Autofocus feature. ( eg Strand 500 series consoles ). 4) I don't exactly love the control GUI in Design mode. It seems very dated to me now & is too small & fiddilly. So I pretty much control everything in Perform mode via an offline editor.
I havent used ESP vision too much (i.e. few days!). The main problem that I found, and that I mention above is that you need a powerful computer to operate it, and as I've found out from experience its not too good to have H3PC and the visuliser program on the same machine (ESPECIALLY if you've only got one screen!) because you cant see everything at the same time. It is doo-able though
ummm..... what I'm trying to say is that if youve got a fast new computer she'll be right! It does what it's programmed to do and that's what matters
Running my software on a Dell XPS M1710. CPU 2.33Ghz 2G Ram 512k Graphics Accelerator.
Can run Wysiwyg & Hog IIIPC quite well on same machine via the loopback adaptor ( I only do this because I only have one computer ). GrandMA ole works well too ( minus some CAD orientation issues ).
Works quite well until I start to tax it with lots of movers & fx running. Then things get jittery. This arrangement works well enough for pre-programming shows though. Would of course never do it on a live show.
ESP vision ran very slowly on my laptop. Of course my lappy is underspecced in the CPU dept for its hungry requirements.
you would have to talk to some people who have used both WYG and Vision to get a good idea.
Personally I think whatever works best is what's worth doing, if WYG works fine why bother change?:dunno: especially if vision doesnt run properly.....
