Vari-Lite, makers of modern moving head light fixtures and Signify (Euronext: LIGHT) entertainment lighting brand, is announcing that the VLHive 151 Digital FX, the all-digital entertainment lighting fixture, is now shipping. This next-generation luminaire, designed and manufactured at Vari-Lite’s Dallas, Texas, USA factory, includes a digital light engine, with 45,000 lumens of output and innovative effects that can be controlled from a standard lighting console—no media server required.
The VLHive, which features a 151-emitter LED array, has already appeared on multiple productions, including The Wombats European Tour and the iHeartCountry music festival. The fixture offers a variety of digital effects, including 360° rotating digital shutters, full-close digital iris, and a library of built-in digital gobos and multichromatic animations. Users can create their own shapes and animations using the HiveCreator software tool. Rosie Haigh, the lighting designer for The Wombats and Vari-Lite Business Development Manager at Signify, says, “The VLHive was such a powerhouse on my recent tour. The flexibility of using the mix of animations and images, custom content, and beams and aerial effects was really something special and unique.”
The IP65-rated VLHive features an RGBL additive color mixing engine that provides a wide range of colors, from soft pastels to vibrant saturated hues. To improve the output and colors, the VLHive features technologies such as SmartColor+ and FluxBoost. Signify’s exclusive FluxBoost technology is designed to give lighting experts more output across the color spectrum, along with more saturation and more consistent light quality.
Haigh commented on the color mixing as well, saying, “The colors the unit can create are incomparable to other fixtures, and the color effects you can do via the built-in animations have never been seen before in a light.”
“The VLHive 151’s exclusive, patented technology gives designers an endless range of unique effects, including effect smoothing, polar positioning, transition effects, and gobo keystoning—all of which can be controlled on the fly by standard DMX with no need for a media server,” according to the announcement.
Haigh adds, “In terms of ease of use, everything is where you would expect it to be. Being able to keystone, rotate and move around my ‘gobos’ or shapes gave me fresh inspiration, and I found myself utilizing these attributes as effects, along with the framing shutters. The contrast channel is a tool that shouldn’t be overlooked either, as it helped create definition in the aerial effects.”
“The Vari-Lite VLHive 151 Digital FX has the widest and most customizable feature set ever offered in an entertainment lighting fixture, and it’s all designed and built right here in our Dallas factory,” says Martin Palmer, Vari-Lite Marketing and Product Management Leader at Signify. “As such, response to this once-in-a-generation fixture has been tremendous. Featuring the widest range of design possibilities of any fixture on the market, the VLHive platform promises to provide fresh design looks for years to come.”
