Simulation tab

Options on the Simulation tab affect the view point, beam quality, and ambient light levels.

Simulation

• Background Color: Modifies the background color used in the Shaded view. This color is visible when you zoom far enough away that you can see beyond the venue.

Ambient Light

The options in this section control the type and level of ambient light rendering in Shaded view.

• Type: Choose how ambient lighting appears in Shaded view.
• Classic: The two-source-based ambient light style that WYSIWYG has used since inception.
• Smooth: (Default) Added in WYSIWYG 2023, this superior ambient light style maintains a smooth constant ambient light level when camera view changes.
• Ambient Light: Use the slider to increase or decrease the amount of ambient light level shown in the Shaded view. The percent box indicates the degree of ambient light you have chosen.
• Ambient Color: Modifies the color of the ambient light. For example, use this feature if you'd like the Ambient light in your file tinted yellow or blue to match the type of house lighting in your venue. By default, the Ambient Color is set to white.
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Quality

The options in this section control the degree to which you want to emphasize beam quality over performance.

• Mode: Choose one of the following beam simulation modes. Note that when you select this value, and then choose the beam control options, you will automatically see the results in the Shaded view, enabling you to adjust them as necessary before you click OK to save your changes:
• Enhanced: Enhanced is the default beam mode. Select to enable enhanced beam control options affecting beam quality.
• Volumetric: Volumetric mode delivers higher quality visualization of beams than enhanced beams. Improved lens flair effects and beam throws are just some of the noticeable improvements. Due to the required system resources need to run Volumetric beams, system performance may be effected depending on system running WYSIWYG.

Note: Deferred Rendering is required to run Volumetric Beams. If this option is not available, it means the graphics card on your computer does not support Volumetric beams.

• Detail: Use the slider to increase or decrease the level of details displayed in Volumetric mode. An increase in details will result in a decrease in performance. The default detail setting is   0.                                                                      

Note: For most users, an increase in detail will not be noticeable, except in certain camera positions and situations.

Tip: You can use the per fixture Detail slider in the Properties of a selected fixture only, to minimize the effect on performance. For more information on the Detail option per fixture, see the Fixture-specific properties section.

• Beam: Lower beam quality affects the beams’ footprint, sometimes making them appear blurry. While it is recommended that this value be set to High, if you notice a reduction in performance, particularly when viewing a complex scene with many moving lights, you can increase performance by lowering the quality to Medium or Low. Note that if you find it necessary to use Low quality for acceptable performance, it is recommended that you upgrade to a more powerful system.
• Enhance Projected Video: This option is available only when High Beam Quality is selected. It should only be used when video is being projected, not when video is being used on a Screen, Surface, Object, or LED Wall. Enabling this feature decreases Shaded view performance, but increases the visual quality of the footprint (video) created by the projector.

Brightness

Use the Brightness sliders (or type a value in the corresponding box) to control the visual brightness of beams, footprints, and lens flares.

Every fixture/bulb in the WYSIWYG library has “brightness value” defined in its properties. The “brightness value” of a fixture/bulb is the relative intensities between light beams from different fixtures based on their published photometric data.

The Beam, Lens Flare and Footprint sliders will alter all beams relatively in comparison to all the fixture beams in the scene. For example, you can see this when a bright fixture is hung beside a fixture that is less bright. (i.e. 10” Fresnel with 2KW bulb is hung beside a 6” Fresnel with 500W bulb, both at full intensity). The relative brightness between both fixtures matches the difference in intensity from both fixtures with reference to their published photometric data.

A scene with many lights may be better visualized when some of the beams’ components are less bright. Note that brightness settings affect all beams in the scene equally and are for aesthetic purposes only; the sliders are not connected to the fixtures’ intensity.

The Brightness sliders enable you to balance the brightness values for different scenes, each scene varying based on the density and intensity of its fixtures. These values are saved into the scene file and will, therefore, change when new scenes are loaded.

Note: The default value of 50 is the baseline value generated by the values from the library definitions. If the scene does not show any beams or footprints, ensure that none of the brightness sliders is set to zero.

• Beam: Controls the brightness of the beam cone. A scene with many overlapping beam cones will tend to saturate, which can be reduced by decreasing the brightness.
• Footprint: Controls the brightness of the beam footprint. A scene with many overlapping footprints will tend to saturated, which can be reduced by decreasing the brightness.
• Lens Flare: Controls the brightness of the lens flare, which is the dominant visual effect when the camera is aimed directly into a fixture’s lens. In addition, when you are behind a fixture that is directed away from the camera, the lens flare component is used to create a simulated beam cone.
• Beam Exposure: Use this slider to adjust the overall exposure of the beams. The default value is 50 which is the baseline value generated by the values from the library definitions. Increasing the exposure causes all beams in the scene to become brighter exponentially. This may be required if you feel all beams seem too dim. Decreasing the exposure causes all beams in the scene to become dimmer exponentially. This may be required if you feel all beams seem too bright/saturated. If you wish to correct the relative brightness of one fixture, it is best to adjust its beam brightness by going into Fixture's properties and using the Beam Intensity Multiplier on the Beam Options tab.

Note: Beam Exposure works similar to the exposure control of a camera but the values are not based on the F-stop. The fixture’s output is affected relatively; and beam, footprint and flare are all affected at the same time. For example, when you adjust the exposure of two Fresnels at full intensity - a 10” and a 6”:

• When increasing, the beam, footprint and flare of the 10” fresnel stops getting brighter at a value of about 95, but the value from the 6” fresnel goes up to 100.
• When decreasing, the 6” fresnel stops getting dimmer at around 20, but the value from the 10” fresnel goes down to 0.
• Scattering: Use this slider to enable and control the simulation of the light energy that deflects and scatters when passing through the imperfect medium of air filled with various particles/molecules. Light is deflected off of its straight path and scatters in many directions.

Use the Scattering slider to increase or decrease the scattering effect. When Scattering is set to 0, no scattering effect is applied to the light beam from a selected fixture.

When Scattering is enabled, the intensity of the light beam from a fixture appears to vary when viewed from different angles.

Note: By default, Scattering is only available when the Simulation Quality is set to Volumetric mode.

Shadows

• Enable: Select this checkbox to display shadows. Turning Shadows on creates a more realistic Shaded view, but adds extra complexity, which may also slow down performance as more calculations are required.
• Soft Shadows: Select this checkbox to display higher quality soft shadows. Use this option to soften the shadows for best visual quality, for example when capturing a screenshot of a look.

Note: Enabling Soft shadows while running cues in LIVE mode is not recommended, as it will drastically slow down performance.

Alpha Beam Shadows

• Enable: Alpha Beam Shadows in Shaded view is enabled when Volumetric Beam quality is selected. Select Enable checkbox to display Alpha Beam Shadows.
• Num. Levels: Select the number of levels to be calculated for Alpha Beam Shadows from this drop-down list.

For example, if you select 2 from the drop-down list, a beam’s color and intensity will be calculated based on alpha levels only that pass through 2 surfaces, and any additional surfaces with alpha levels will be ignored as the beam will just pass through them.

Note: Each Alpha shadow level supported for this feature requires additional video memory from your graphics card, and can impact performance, depending on your scene and computer hardware.

Footprint

• Hot Spot: Select this checkbox to display hot spots. Hot spots are usually noticeable with conventional fixtures, which have lenses that refract the beam non-uniformly; the center of the beam is bright and it gradually drops off moving outward to the edge of the beam. Conversely, the majority of automated fixtures have a different type of lens that corrects the beam refraction to have a more uniform footprint.
• Footprint Focus: Select this checkbox to enable footprint focus functionality. Enable this option to visualize the footprint focus, otherwise, fixtures for which you have defined footprint focus will not display. This toggle also offers an easy way to turn off the display of the footprint focus when not needed (for a performance boost) without losing the footprint focus settings of the fixtures.
• Focus Lines: Select this checkbox to enable the display focus lines, when the Footprint Focus option is enabled for conventional fixtures in CAD mode (fixture's Properties) and/or automated fixtures in DESIGN mode (Footprint Designer tool).

Materials 

• Enable: Select this checkbox to enable materials functionality. When a material is applied to an object, it affects how the object interacts with light. This interaction is visible in Shaded view and in rendered images from the WYSIWYG Render Wizard.
• Reflections: Select this checkbox display reflections on materials. When a reflection is applied to an object, it will reflect light depending on the material settings. This interaction is visible in Shaded view and in rendered images from the WYSIWYG Render Wizard.

Screen/LED Wall Glow

• Enable: Select this checkbox to toggle a glow that will emit from screens and LED walls, increasing the realism of visualizations. When enabled, use this slider to adjust the intensity of the glow.