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Standards and Practices

    Standards help laserists and help the industry by insuring compatibility and interoperability between components and systems.  Practices are methods of doing things that simplify operations or save time and effort.

Standards

  The only body within the industry that currently sets standards is the Technical Committee of ILDA (the International Laser Display Association).  ILDA is a non-profit trade association and some members donate volunteer time and expertise to the technical committee.  Since the setting of standards is done by consensus, it can take some time to get a preliminary standard in place, and then to refine the standard based on input for ILDA's membership at large.
  ILDA maintains a web site at http://www.laserist.org which contains a Technology Section.  Many of the ILDA standards are available for download from the Technology Section web page.  The emergence and growth of ILDA and the pooling of technical talents has made these standards, which benefit laserists and the industry, possible.  Adhering to the standards allows for the interoperability of systems and is highly recommended.

   Standards are a relatively new phenomena in the laser industry.  Most of the standards reproduced here date back less than 10 years.  Standards came about as the industry grew and co-production (multiple laser companies involved in a show or event) become more common.  Laserists found themselves spending a lot of time to convert frames from one format to another or soldering cables and adapters to interconnect hardware.
  File format standards and hardware interconnect standards eliminate this wasted time and effort by allow laser graphics and animations to be exchanged using a common standard, or hardware to be connected with standard signals and connectors.

Practices

    Practices are ideas and methodologies that are in common use in the industry but which have no official sanction and are not entrenched in a recognized standard.  They are presented here as information that many have contributed to this web site as they are commonly used.  There is no consensus on these practices, and it is not required that laserists adhere to these practices in order for systems to work together.

   We welcome contributions to the practices pages, where they can be discussed, scrutinized and modified to meet the needs of laserists.  Send your ideas and suggestions, as well as your constructive comments, to info<at>LaserFX<dot>com

DISCLAIMER: Some of the information in the Backstage area is provided by the persons or companies named on the relevant page(s). Laser F/X does NOT endorse or recommend any products/services and is NOT responsible for the technical accuracy of the information provided.  We provide this information as a service to laserists using the Backstage area. 

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