I use a 3D visualizer to pre-program an entire setlist in my studio, sometimes takes weeks to do. With not being able to calibrate the fixtures to perfectly match the speed time movement of Pan, tilt, iris, zoom, color wheel rotation, gobo rotation prism and other features of the real life fixtures ill haft to spend a full work day on the real rig to fine tune the show before the rig goes out on tour or start of rehearsals.
Especially with now, china fixture is flooding the market and a lot of venues more and more is using the cheaper fixtures, when i advance a show with a local venue i will haft to use capture to prepare my show file for that day, normally i do that on the in route to that venue. Most of the time day of the show not alot of time to update Presets of a Rig with 200 fixtures sometimes including a house rig. If all I or another LD had to do is just update Position and Focus presets thats a good day.
I am a many year MA lighting console user and have used their 3d Visualizer and on MA3D you can fine tune every feature of the fixture until it is really close to how the fixture reacts in real life, i have got the fixtures on the MA3D Visualizer dialed in so good all i haft to do on show day is update 12 Position presets and i am ready for show.
However, I have recently Purchased some strobe fixtures that is just too new for the MA software to build on the visualizer Multi Instance fixtures is a huge weak point for MA3D. So i purchased Capture 2024
Symphony Edition took a few days and built my rig on the 3D software. and i quickly notices the moving heads really quickly snaps to position unlike real life fixtures that takes some time to move around. that quickly becomes a programming prolbem when a timed cue looks good on 3D but in real life the lights barly even moves for example like a wave cue.