Vol. 16, No. 3, Oct-December 2005 

ILDA's 2004 Fenning Award for New Technology

ILDA's 2004 Fenning Award honored an innovative software program designed to help laserists quickly analyze safety factors associatied with their shows and design shows that are enjoyable for audeinces while staying within international safety exposure limits.

The program, ScanGuard Laser Show Analyzer, was created by the UK firm Laser Visuals Ltd. It allows users to quickly and easily assess how much laser energy there is present in laser effects and displays. With it's easy to use interface and clear presentation of results, laserists no longer have to possess the skills of a mathematician to get detailed information about what's in a display. The same product also won ILDA Product of the Year award in the software category.

ILDA's 2004 Fenning Awards for Technical Achievement was judged by a three person during the Advanced Technology Workshop held at the ILDA Conference in Las Vegas. The Fenning award is named after the late Fred Fenning, who pioneered many laser display developments during his 21-year career in the laser field. Past recipients of the award are shown below:



2003 Fenning Awards (note: no 1st place was awarded in 2003)

2nd Place: The LPV File Format and Tools, LaserAnimation Sollinger

The LPV File Format and Associated Tools offer a realistic preview of laser shows on a standard PC without any specific laser hardware. The LPV file format allows realistic simulation of both laser graphics and atmospherics, while reducing file size and securing content for easy distribution across the Internet.

Honorable Mention: LCC Avatar, MediaLas

The MediaLas LCC Avatar is an updated laser control center console with CompactFlash memory that offers many real-time functions for laser output. The console has a crash-immune OS and offers a wide range of features tailored for live performance.

Honorable Mention: Optical Showlink Transcoder, Raven Systems Design, LLC

The second generation Optical Showlink Transcoder allows seamless connection of ADAT to ILDA/DMX/MIDI connections, offers additional signal processing/subencoding, a 1U box for three universes, and supports long-distance optical links via standard telco-fiber. 

2002 Fenning Awards (note: no 1st place was awarded in 2003)

2nd Place: Projection Zones, Pangolin Laser Systems

"The Projection Zones feature of LD2000 software combines the benefits of scanner selection, geometric correction, enhanced laser preview, enhanced scanner safety and additional projector controls into a powerful yet easy to use software feature.
--From Pangolin's Awards Entry Submission

3rd Place (tie): Utopia Software Suite, Xarrin Advanced Technologies and HB Laserkomponenten

"This software, especially designed for Pangolin's QM 2000 board,consists of two sections, UTOPIA 3D Animator and UTOPIA Cell Editor. They will expand every Pangolin based system to a powerful laser frame creation environment with strong and professional features. Utopia software works with the Pangolin settings and is also able to load Pangolin color palettes."
--HB Laserkomponenten

3rd Place (tie): Dazzler, Pangolin Laser Systems

"The Dazzler is a patented, custom lens/reflector assembly which, when combined with standard X-Y scanners and lasers, creates a Wide Angle, Versatile Laser Projector ... The Dazzler reduces the need for large beam/effects projectors by allowing graphics, effects and beams to be projected anywhere in a 360 degree area ...
--From Pangolin's Awards Entry Submission

Honorable Mention: CineLase, Lightspeed Design Group

"CineLase software renders digitally sampled laser data (usually from ADAT but it could be any playback source) into a sequence of bitmap frames which are then re-output to video or film with a 'laser look and feel.' The process eliminates the artifacts associated with videotaping or filming laser shows - namely the abnormal flicker due to competing refresh rates, the improper capture of color data (noise and colors bleached to white, etc.), and the lack of perfect blacks"
--Bob Mueller, Lightspeed Design Group

2001 Fenning Awards (note: no 1st place was awarded in 2003)

2nd Place: Dirk Aptiz received 2nd place for his ScanMaster2 controller hardware

3rd Place: , while LOBO electronic was awarded 3rd place for its second-generation Lacon-5 multimedia workstation.

Honorable Mention: lasers.org for its LaserMAME software package,
and to Laser Fantasy International (LFI) for a new dynamic filtering projection technique.

2000 Fenning Awards

1st Place (tie): AVI's Omnistar. Omnistar is a laser projection system and screen all-in-one. The screen is an inflatable sphere up to 30 feet in diameter that floats above crowds and incorporates AVI's patented 360-degree laser projector. Full-color laser graphics are projected on the inside of the balloon's surface, offering a projection system that can be easily and safely rigged in a wide variety of venues.

1st Place (tie): Pangolin's QM2000 Processor Board Pangolin wanted laserists to have a choice of recording or playing back using the same device (computer board). The company also sought the best balance of features that laserists asked for: power (DSP-type processor, large memory), fast speed (over 100,000 pts/sec output), small size (small enough to fit in a PCI slot), meeting all major industry standards (compatible with ILDA, DMX, Windows and PC computers), having backwards compatibility with older systems, and perhaps most important for laserists: being affordable.

3rd Place: Laservision Macro-Media's Dot.Monkey

Laservision's motivation to develop Dot.Monkey was born out of necessity and a desire to liberate Laserists (Dot.Monkeys) from the repetitious non-creative process of image digitizing, coloring and editing. Alternatives failed to meet standards sought by Laservision's artists and those demanded by clients. Without a viable quality alternative hand finished frames remain costly and time consuming. Put simply, Laservision decided to automate the digitizing process so that creative energies can be dedicated to producing better, cost efficient shows. Dot.Monkey has increased studio productivity by as much as 600%. The software batch processes images (from a variety of sources) and formats them instantaneously to provide truly presentation-perfect results.

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