Q Light Controller+

Hi, I'm Daniel Manea, an Italian university student who studies scenography that is very passionate also about the world of light design. I have been experimenting with many programs including QLC+ for some time and I really appreciate the choice to leave it free and open-source.

This is my first post, I will do my best to contribute to problem reports of this software.

Also, I translated this post with google translate due to time constraints, so forgive me if you read something grammatically not too accurate. Thank you.

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I'm using QLC+ 5.0.0 Beta 2 - 19.01.2023

Ambient light:



The problem I encountered is the following: The ambient light of the space is set to 80% but I can't see anything (roof, floor, ecc) except the lights on from the fixtures.

Furthermore, the fact that there isn't a "Gizmo" that indicates or suggests where my point of view is with respect to the selected object or objects (medium/individual point), all of which creates a sense of great disorientation for me.

Gizmo/orientation reference:



For this reason, in addition to pointing out the problem of ambient light, I suggest implementing the "Gizmo" by taking the 3D space of the free and open-source Blender software as a reference.

Multiple view (2D/3D) at the same time:

Edit 27/06/23: I discovered that by right clicking with the mouse it is possible to "detach" the "2d view" and "3d view" windows and eventually put them next to each other or drag them to other screens as you like. Handsome. As I wrote, I think the best choice is to have more windows visible at the same time by default to facilitate the understanding of the 2D/3D space and have more orientation.



I think the best thing would be to not have separate 2D and 3D space in different windows (I can't see both at the same time).
But have a "viewport" space where I can see both 2D (top, down, front, under, left, right) and 3D space, window side by side with the ability to "maximize" or "minimize" one of the selected windows or see them all together at the same time. I share viewport examples from free open-source software e.g. Blender and Unreal Engine 5

Viewport shading:

Maybe it would also be very useful to have more alternative "Viewport shading" modes where you can see the elements in "Wireframe", "Solid", "Semi-transparent", "Render"/Normal mode. I say this because since there is the possibility of importing 3D objects into the 3D space, perhaps it would be useful to be able to see them also in the 2D view, for example in wireframe mode, without having the problem that a 3D object obstructs the visibility of fixtures that are hidden behind.

Ctrl+A:

Another problem I point out is: when I'm writing a number for example in the "Position X" box if I press "Ctrl+A" while I'm writing to select everything written inside more quickly, it also selects all the fixtures of 3D space. This thing is a bit unusual considering that usually when you press Ctrl+A it selects all the elements only belonging to the window/context of which you made the last left click.

Disproportionate layout:

I also notice that QLC+ 5 compared to the latest versions of QLC+ 4 has a very massive display of windows, very often visually intrusive or disproportionate compared to other more balanced windows in terms of layout.

I prefer to be able to adjust the aspect ratio of the layout to my liking. In my case I have a 17 inch 1920x1080p display and I find it strange to see some windows using small text font sizes while others use excessively large ones. I think there is an aspect ratio problem between the various different windows of the program. In QLC+ 4 I didn't encounter this problem because everything seems homogeneous, constant and well distributed.

Okay. Thank you for the work you are doing. Now I try to test the program further and try to be active enough.

Thank you and good evening.
See you in the next post.

- Daniel Manea

Sorry, I'll go deeper into the "massive design" issue of the layout here because the post didn't let me publish more than 3 images.

I post 2 comparison images below. The first is the input/output screen of QLC+ 4, while the second is that of QLC+ 5. I think the problem is that I used too much space to display too little information. I prefer to have a complete and exhaustive overview of information and to see it equally distributed in the visual space rather than having to open/close side windows than to display hidden information.





Thanks.