VenueMagic Adds Device Virtualization Allowing Users to Replace Hardware Quicker and Easier

VenueMagic, a platform of Show Control software, adds Device Virtualization to its Classic, DMX+AV, and SC+ versions making swapping fixtures faster and easier.

Device Virtualization allows a specific device's behavior and actions to be applied to a different device, allowing easier programming of different hardware and quicker swapping of problematic hardware, the company says.

Lighting professionals and enthusiasts are quick to discover how useful this is: "When I had programmed Parvati's show YIN: Yoga In The Nightclub based on one kind of four-channel RGB dimmer and then had to use a different four-channel RGB dimmer I thought I would have to reprogram all the lighting cues" explains VenueMagic user Rishi Gerald. "But with VenueMagic, all I had to do was add the new device, select 'remap' and the wizard remapped everything without a problem."

The wizard which Seiden refers to is Device Virtualization, which asks the VenueMagic user if the device routed should behave as the device outlined in the timeline. Before Device Virtualization, a lighting engineer would have to completely reprogram the new device, often times an impossibility if the change occurs too close to show-time.

Similarly, mobile lighting engineers and performing artists can now use a venue's lighting hardware rather than bring their own and can quickly incorporate that venue's devices into their programmed show, according to the company.

"Along with VenueMagic's DMX matrix, Device Virtualization is a way we have made once complicated DMX and lighting programming easier and faster," says Don Nolan, CEO of ESG-VenueMagic. "We are constantly striving to improve Show Control's capabilities while also making it more accessible."