Fiesta - views and experience?

[Ben Robertson]

I have been involved in lighting for the club scene for over 15 years and am in the process of starting to play with lasers. I want to move beyond DMX control which is obviously limited.

I see pangolin is pretty much the tool used by most professionals, but am interested in anybody’s experience with Fiesta.

As Fiesta offers a more affordable entry point to ILDA control, i am interested to get feedback from anyone who is currently using it or has in the past.

My plan is to purchase a cheapy leaser from china with ILDA control for about 650.00 US and test the waters progressing to 500 MW RGB unit for around $1600.00 US to get familiar with the software and limitations of the equipment (i am told these use 30 K scanners) As this is self funded it is not to big a mistake if the hardware is Crap.

If this works out i will then progress to more expensive SW and hardware as revenue is generated from the laser equipment.

Any opinions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[Laser_shows_srl]

Hi Ben,

Yes pangolin is the choice of the professional but for a club I would recommend fiesta especially for a single low power laser like you plan to buy.

Fiesta is very easy to use perfect for use in a club, it has most of the features you would require and the author of the software is constantly updating. The fiesta II style box is also pretty rugged, just what you need in a club. I have plenty of Pangolin cards but I still use Fiesta for clubs as I do not want to have beer on my pangolin cards. I don’t want it on my laptop or fiesta either but I guess you got the point.

Pangolin is excellent, fiesta is too. Depends really what you want to do, for high speed extremely stable professional graphics then Pangolin; if you want a lower cost solution with very reasonable graphics and effects then Fiesta is the next best choice. Anyway a 650 USD laser isn’t likely going to look any different.

Don’t miss-understand me, they are both very good products, Fiesta is a very cost effective and practical solution for a club, Pangolin is the best cost solution for the professional laser show company so the system is a bit over powered for just using in a club with a budget Chinese laser.

You should download the demo of fiesta, it will run but without the USB controller you will not have any output. Visit here for more info.

http://www.dpss.ro/lasers/systems/kvant_fiesta_USB_laser_show_controller_and_softwar e.htm

[Pangolin]

If you are on a budget, don't forget the FB3 system from Pangolin. You can read about it here:
http://www.pangolin.com/flashback/flashback3.htm

The single-piece price is $595 and this includes frame/show creation and live performance software...

Best regards,

William Benner

[Laser_shows_srl]

Yes BIll you are right, Flasback is also another alternative but the question was....

"I see pangolin is pretty much the tool used by most professionals, but am interested in anybody’s experience with Fiesta."

Andy

[Ben Robertson]

I thought i would post regarding my experience so far with Fiesta.

To date it has been pretty good, unfortunately the 500MW RGB projector i purchased has a blue Diode that went on the fritz in transport so i have not been able to really see how the software behaves with two projectors attached.

I am reasonably happy with the software over all and for the price i paid approx AUS$1200, i haven’t seen any other solutions out there. For near that sum that will drive a number of projectors out of the box. ( i still aim to get a LD2000 package as the budget allows) the internal file format use by the software is apparently based off the pangolin format so any effect i hope to be able to transport between system in the future.

Out of the box it only took me 10 minutes to have something happening with the laser, the preset shows effects are good and indicate what can be achieved with a with some patience learning how to make up effects.

The English manual get its major points over but i feel some of the finer element are lost in translation, Kavant have been great responding to any queries i have had to clear up any thing i was not clear with.

Quazar the included imaging tool is very basic and its a bit of a shock having to go from advanced 3 D apps like Light wave and Max back to a system where point counts are a real issue in design again

I will post again in the future to let you know how things proceed as i get more familiar with the Fiesta solution