I talked to an old college not so much in theater anymore.
He started with Jands vista around 2007 and asked if they had implemented more midi options around now.
I didn’t know what to tell him :')
We switched to Onyx.
Definitely a +1 from me
Hi @jack.moorhouse,
Can you give any update on this? This feature is suggested for so many years from so many Users now.
R4 Beta is out now but no mention of OSC oder more MIDI options in the release note, so I guess it will not be a part of the R4 GA release.
For me its such a huge downside of using Vista is the missing support for external Hardware (except controlling Cuelists via MIDI)
@Simon your observations are correct. The R4 feature set is now finished and will be released as stated in the current public beta release notes.
Our software development is actually very agile, we constantly adapt and change. This might be to fix some newly discovered bugs or add new features that allow specific projects around the word to happen.
At some point in time we have to make a call on drawing the line at a specific release’s feature set. This allows us to get it out there as an official release. Otherwise, we’d constantly be in development and end users would never get to see new releases. When this happens we usually bump features to the next release. More midi triggering options is towards the top of R5s to do list. If all goes well, we are aiming for a much shorter release cycle from R4 to R5. I’ll send you a private message when we have something in Private beta stage for you you to test and provide feedback on.
We’ve been working on some incredibly powerful new features, that will benefit all users. We are already above 300 versions into R5 behind the scenes.
To summarise, more midi options are not in R4, but as it stands today, they are marked on the official road map to be in R5
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@jack.moorhouse Are you also including Midi Fader / Potentiometer control? I understand that you dont want to destroy your console market but a rental company and theatre would most likely still buy a console just to be safe and have a common tool for all users. But as a individual light operator you just get so much more out of the program if you can use the devices that are most intuitive to your workflow.
@jack.moorhouse could you write me up to for a private beta when there are more midi/osc implementations?
@Till you could question if it would destroy the console market or if it will open for new customers to buy more licensing dongles?
For me vista is great and powerfull because it’s incredibly user friendly and easy to use but you can do still complex shows. The only thing it really lacks is external control.
Vista would be an excellent software for venues to use as a total control surface like the etc puck. you can put a touchscreen anywhere in the building and practically everybody can select a fixture and turn it on/off/color without doing a 2 day course first.
If you had a dmx/artnet/sACN input where you could patch it trough everyone with any desk could use your lights where you as a venue still have total control.
With midi or osc pan/tilt/zoom control you could create follow focus systems for movingheads or sync those up with livestream pan tilt camera’s and what not or use Qlab or Ableton to let colors or intensity sync with music or other kind of audio and video (Although the NDI input is a big step forward to!)
I think the possibilities for vista increase big time with more external control but thats my opinion of course.
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Generic I/O is being worked on.
We expect midi improvements and the likes of OSC in the near future.
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Just switch to MA
Or wait for the R5 Public Beta to drop 
or not! At this point i would just switch to MA3 or Hog4
In a week or 2 R5 is aimed to be released.
oh sweet
I hate MA3 for the fact they ask to much money for hardware running software what (atleast was for a very very long time) buggy as hell.
i lost my confidence in MA.
It’s overly complicated, and many things are not logical.
its fine if you sit behind a MA al day and work out all the kinks and build your show file through and through until you have something you can work with, i get it when you have an enormous rig with multiple failbacks and operators and 3D systems or moving rigging and what not what needs to be sync.
But for just normal lighting gigs its just stupid software, its like driving a regular car with the cockpit of a Apache AH-64
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Hi there!
Thank you for your response and your opinion.
I believe that yes, MA3 was buggy the first couple versions but they were still and still are offering MA2 which wasn’t buggy when MA3 came out and is offered on all MA3 consoles.
Yes, MA3 can be complicated but I know some 14-year olds that can program a show from start to finish on the console. It’s not a stupid software but from your POV it could be.
It’s a expensive but amazing software; and ngl you can get a 2-Universe license and node for the same exact price as a Vista 3 EX console.
How Vista 2 and 3 did things was logical but MA has a lot more features that are great and can be much better than Vista.
Feel free to reach out more if you have any questions,
Thanks,
Jackson
Out of intrest what features or functions in MA3 are you missing in Vista ?
(I can only speak from my own experience)
Ive been using Vista for 14 years total now on a wide variety of projects that range in complexity and ive never been unable to achieve what was needed, its a big part of why ive stayed with the platform for so long,
What would you like to see specifically added to the software that would improve your workflow ?
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Hey Robert,
I’d like to see some macro functionality and to be able to at the end of a cue list have a command to say now go to this other cue list like you can in MA. It would make to be a lot easier. We chose Vista 2 i3 a while ago because of its user friendliness and its great just going between MA’s way of doing things then Vista I just have idk why but I have a problem because on MA it’s so easy to link cue lists together and then you can have a much cleaner workflow. But on Vista you can only copy cues into a cue list so we have to have a service cue list then other cue lists with songs that we copy cues from.
Vista has had this functionality for a long time, you can use Insert commands and snapshots to achieve this,
Here is a tutorial i made that might help,
Thanks for your video, I’ve tried to do this but it just idk how to say it but it like doesn’t work for us
How do you need it to work ? There might be a way thats not showen in this Video ?