wysiwyg R24 – Really virtually real

CAST Software has announced the third and final instalment in the latest wysiwyg trilogy. wysiwyg R24, with release due July 09 and download available around the end of the month, pre-visualisations and renders are “really virtually real”, according to the company. What users will see in Shaded View visualisation is exactly what they can get on the set, in the venue or on the exterior of a building.

R24 delivers the actual results as visualized for the project – as opposed to a mock-up image not based on industry technology. With wysiwyg’s proprietary library of over 20,000 lights, gobos, trusses, etc., there is no “cheating” needed so Shaded View and Renderings are replicable on stage, in the venue, on the set or where ever – really virtually real.

R24 is built on the significant advances made in R22 + R23. Its new visualisation raises the standard for the industry. In addition to the new features and visualisation, its developmental accomplishments have not sacrificed wysiwyg’s robustness or performance. Indeed, a lot of work has taken place “behind the scenes” to increase its speed, especially for the new visualisation.

wysiwyg Design gives users all the tools they need to compete at $2499 – and all in one piece of software, saving you time and money. (There are other versions available at all price ranges that may better suit your need, visit www.cast-soft.com for more information.) With wysiwyg, you don’t need two or more pieces of software to get the job done. Simply, it’s more economic and these days that counts for a lot.

The “trilogy” of the most recent three releases of wysiwyg have been deliberate, so that users could benefit immediately from improvements while the next release was in process. In R22, wysiwyg introduced new enhanced beam simulation with soft-edge beams, accurate beam colour-mixing, lens flares, and animated smoke. R23 delivered enhanced footprint qualities of the beams with new footprints, accurate shadows, an optional hot spot display, and a new video-in-beam feature to display video content for digital lighting fixtures.

With R24, visualisation is brought to yet a higher level, making it so real that users don’t need to interrupt the creative process and go offline to render. Other new features include:

• LED: New LED models use a point source to better represent a diode for LED fixtures and LED walls, calculating beam intensity using the inverse square law to visualize accurate beam drop-off, applying colour temperature information to account for wattage of different types of bulbs, and time-of-day lighting simulation to visualize outdoor conditions for your show on a particular date/time and for any geographical location. New LED light sources and LED flare capability offer better representation in Shaded Views, LED Fixtures and LED Walls not only look better, but these new models allow for better efficiency and performance when dealing with all LEDs. This is an enormous advantage as LEDs are being used to some degree in almost every lighting design. This also means that simple light bulbs and other single point light sources will be nicely modelled in wysiwyg.
• Improvements in visualisation: including enhanced beams, improved beam footprints and shadows.
• Inverse Square Law: A new upgrade in R24, it calculates accurate beam drop-off in visualisation calculations.
• Colour temperature: Information from wysiwyg Libraries includes different bulb wattages that more accurately displays the photometrics of different bulbs.
• Hot Spots: Hot spots add another aspect of realism to wysiwyg visualisation. Formerly, uniform footprints are now distributed based on the photometric data of the fixture.
• For outdoor events: R24 introduces a time-of-day capability in Shaded Views. Use climatic or environmental conditions specific to the time, place and even weather, specific to an event’s geographical location anywhere around the world to test ideas and demonstrate work.
• Geometry Smoothing in OpenGL: This new shading technique delivers better looking sets and people, plus a performance boost.
• CITP Protocol for Video: The new feature allows consoles supporting this protocol to stream video content across a network into wysiwyg to be displayed on a video screen or DL fixture.

R24 also has more intuitive and logical Design Tools and an Improved Dongle Security System. For more information, visit www.cast-soft.com. Also keep an eye on the website for notifications about release and demo download dates.