Copying and swapping attributes among lights that share scalar properties like Position and Zoom is only the tip of the iceberg when using Natural Language Control. The real power of Natural Language Control can be seen when you start using similar, but not identical attributes and how Natural Language Control works with them. Color is a great example. There are three primary automated color systems in use today; Subtractive Color Systems like CMY, Additive Color Systems like RGB (or RGBA etc.) and Fixed Color Systems that use gel (like scrollers) or dichroic glass (like color wheels). Natural Language Control works with any combination of these three and make intelligent substitutions between them if required.
The proliferation of LED lighting has made common the RGB color space of additive color mixing. With the three primary colors you can mix them to make white or each at various levels to make colors.
More recently manufactures are using more than red, green and blue to achieve 'better' whites by adding either white or amber LEDs. We'll discuss what to do with these later on. In contrast, traditional stage lighting starts with white light and, by various mechanisms, color filters are placed in the path of the light to subtract out different wavelengths. By introducing varying amounts of filtration, a variety of colors can be produced.
Either way (additive or subtractive), the concept is to mix various colors to achieve the desired results. You can easily work with RGB and CMY simultaneously, referencing either or both in any base color space. If you copy those base color attributes to a light that doesn't have color mixing abilities, but instead has a color wheel, a suitable substitution will be made. Since the Natural Language Control Fixture Library stores a lot more data than just the name of a color, mathematical matching can be done. For example, with the color mix below on the left copied to a light which has a color wheel as shown, Slot 5 would be chosen.
By the way, the color value is not stored as Slot 5, it is stored as "Yellow" so that if it's ever applied to a different light with a different wheel (or mixing system), it would produce the correct or near correct color again.
Gobos are also problematic when using stock fixtures. Different lights use different numbers and types of gobos. If you're touring with Cognito but not with your own lights and you travel from one venue on Thursday to a different venue on Saturday, Natural Language Control can greatly reduce the amount of work needed during Saturday's focus session. Here the cues are written such that Cue 1 uses a Pinwheel gobo and Cue 2 a cloud breakup. On Thursday's rig Cue 1 would use Slot 3 and Cue 2 would fade to Slot 5. As the cues are written and stored based on what comes out of the light, not what protocol (bits and bytes) the light is expecting, we know what Cue 1 is supposed to look like. That is why on Saturday night, Cognito would produce DMX512 values to move this venue's lights to Slot 8 and then to Slot 4.
Next: Phantom Abstract Attributes