Reverse-setting of XY-pad affecting normal scenes

[stkrumm]

Hi all,
thanks to all who worked so hard to provide this wonderful software and to all giving support in this forums.

I am not sure if it is a bug or a feature.
For my moving heads, I created eg. some scenes that affect the pan-setting only. In the virtual console, all works as expected. When I add a xy-pad for on-the-fly control and I reverse one of the channels there, it changes also the behaviour of the conventional scene. This occurs, as soon as I clicked in the xy-pad. Prior to the click, everything is as I expected.
Is this behaviour intentional?

Thanks!
Stefan

I attach a simple workspace and pics of the movements that may make my question become more clear.

[stkrumm]

The fixture definition used didn't make it into the post. Here it is:

Varytec-Hero-Wash-712-Z-RGBW-Zoom.qxf

(4.72 KiB) Downloaded 41 times

[edogawa]

I've played with your workspace and think this behaviour is to be expected.

Pan and Tilt channels are LTP channels ("latest takes precedence"). Your scenes only contain coarse pan values, while the XY pad generates pan and tilt, coarse and fine.

Depending on the tilt value, pan will point your fixture head in different directions.

You can further experiment with "clamping" your fixtures' tilt channels in simple desk and see how that affects movement.

Or include tilt in your scenes to make sure they do what you want them to do.

One could argue that it's counter-intuitive that you can "clamp" an LTP channel in simple desk and later VC-generated values don't get honoured, in contrast to meaning of LTP.
But I think it's pretty useful in live situation to have "top priority" control in the program

[stkrumm]

Hi edogawa,
thanks for your quick answer and the time you spent on this.
In my real scenario coarse and fine channels are active. It doesn't change the behavior. I tested that on a extented version of the above workspace.
Including tilt values is not an option as the single pan and tilt scenes are used to built more complex scenes and collections.
I'm aware of the LTP things, however, I still feel that the settings in the xy-pad should not influence how all the other scenes work. Ie., their channels shouldn't be inverted if one channel in the pad is.
On the other hand, if it is a feature, I can live with it. The problem was, not knowing about that, that I used the pad to create scenes that worked different after restart.
I thought a workaround would be to have another small xy-pad with normal channel settings. A click there then should restore the normal behavior for the scenes triggered by the buttons. I had to learn, that xy-pad is special. Clicking into the second pad left the first pad without function until the programm was restarted. I will have a look into the source code. Just to understand (or try to) how things work.

Have a nice weekend and thanks again,
Stefan

P.S. I attach the new workspace, although it behaves not as I hoped it would. Please, don't spend too much time into this.

[edogawa]

Oh I'm always a bit too detailed in my writings, trying to avoid ambiguity I didn't mean to imply that omitting the fine channels in your scenes has any impact on the demonstration.

I'm aware of the LTP things, however, I still feel that the settings in the xy-pad should not influence how all the other scenes work. Ie., their channels shouldn't be inverted if one channel in the pad is.

That's the part in your first posting that I could not quite understand or reproduce (being at home and looking at the DMX monitor or Simpledesk channels only):

After loading the workspace, all channels are at zero of course.
In playback mode, clicking any of the scene buttons, the Pan channels jump to their respective values, latest value stays as-is until new values arrive.
Clicking in the XY Pad area "grabs" both fixtures and controls them as intended, one symmetrical to the other.
Activatng any of the scene buttons after that, again sets their respective Pan values to their programmed value, not in any way influenced by the XY Pad as far as I can see.

I can understand the need/wish, but no possibility to reset the XY Pad to the state after workspace loading (release the fixtures from XY Pad control), once it has been clicked, but that's a different issue I guess.

[edogawa]

I'm not spending much time on it, but still being interested, I loaded your second version and had an idea while playing and attach a 3rd version of the workspace.

The two XY Pads now each control their own fixture, the second one being reversed as before.

I added a loopback input, and accordingly set up a 2nd universe for loopback output, to create 2 sliders to control the axes of both XY Pads (a MIDI controller would also have done if I had one available).

I think now it becomes clearer to observe what happens. The output of the 2nd XY pad gets reversed, the screen display stays the same. There's an option to reverse the Tilt/Y axis display, but not for Pan/X.

[stkrumm]

Hi,
I really appreciate your effort.
Things are indeed weird:
I tested your latest workspace and the DMX monitor showed correct values, even after I again added a pad with one channel reversed.
No matter what I did, it showed 051 & 015 for the first scene, 084 & 051 for the second one.
However, the moving heads physically showed the strange behavior as in the picture in my first post. One head points in the wrong direction even when the DMX monitors shows the correct values (after the pad with reversed channel was clicked.
I think, we should take a break and let things settle.

Just for completeness:
tested with 4.12.5 GIT and 4.12.4a
Mac Mini M1, Montery 12.3.1

Best regards,
Stefan

[stkrumm]

Hi Edgar,
You were right and I just a little bit blind. It was a tilt left over wen using the pad. One of the heads was turned over and as the scene included pan values only, it only seemed as pan was reversed. Had I only read your comment more carefully and taken a closer look at the DMX monitor.
Sometimes I am too slow in understanding.
Thanks again,

Stefan