I think it would be great to have an option that when you hit stealth mode your dmx signal would be cut of but what you’re editing in stealth is already passed thru via streamACN. That way you could program in stealth using an external visualizer and see even more easy what it will look like when you hit ‘‘GO’’. Let’s call it a sort of semi stealth
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Had the same thought. Way too complicated. sACN and Artnet that visualizes see is the same signal that can output DMX with a node.
Yes I know it’s the same as what nodes could see. That’s why there maybe should be an option to toggle it on and off. I think I would mostly use it in small scenarios where I don’t know what is comming. The moments I am using an artnet node is in my use case mostly the same time as where I pre programmed the entire show anyways and I don’t even use stealth since it’s just simply playing cuelist after cuelist
The trouble with this as proposed is that you would have to send double the data over sACN because the “previz” data would need to be on completely separate universes as your live data. This is just the difficulty in the output and does not address the double processing that the Vista application would need to be doing as well.
Ideally in order to do this correctly the previz data would stay internal on the machine which is similar to how q-view and stealth currently work in the fixture chooser. For now I have to say this falls under the built in visualizer category, not a high priority due to the complexity of the process.
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The only thing I think that should be changed software wise is that there needs to be an option under user preferences orso where I can change what ports should be blocked by stealth and what ports should get the data that is already displayed and changed on the screen. That way i even could hang a €20,- usb to ethernet dongle on my pc and keep using the internal port for a artnet-node and use the cheap usb dongle for pre-viz. So that way I am able to see on a laptop with an visualiser what I’m doing when programming in stealth. This would make it way easyer to create effects etc and already know what they do before I hit go 
I am afraid it isn’t as simple as that.
When you press “Stealth” we do not switch, pause or stop the data output. It keeps going. For example: If you have a red/blue effect active and you press Stealth (to change it to cyan/magenta) the red/blue stage effect continues to run, whilst you work on modifying the upcoming look.
Ben is correct. For it to function as you expect we would need to embed a specific visualizer API into Vista. (So even then there is still a chance that your preferred visualizer couldn’t offer this functionality).
An API integration is on the wish list, but it’s a very large task and not in active development at the moment.
As far as I understand Art-Net is sent via UDP. Isn`t it possible to specify the destination Ip Adress and if so cant Vista developers implement that possibility in the Connect Universes Tab, with the option to add the programmers stealth output?
Am I not seeing something?
From what I understand reading this thread, it looks like the issue is less about the specifics of outputting the data (via sACN, Art-Net, etc) than the double processing that Vista would have to do (like Ben mentioned). Rather than just processing each universe for active output, Vista would also have to process the “blind mode” version of each universe. This would essentially double the amount of resources vista would need (CPU, RAM, etc) and probably wouldn’t be worth it for such a niche feature.
In my opinion, something like this isn’t really even super necessary anyway. Vista has so many options with presets, FX templates, etc that if you’re smart about how you setup your show, you can use your presets and templates to create lighting looks in blind without needing to use an external visualizer.
Drew