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QLC Matrix Fork

Welcome to the qlcplus ⭐ matrix fork ✨ wiki

This wiki describes what's been built on this fork of QLC+ 5 — a browsable summary of the fork's scope, so it's clear what's here and how it differs from upstream.

Everything below is running in regular use on real shows/rehearsals. Most changes are also queued as individual pull requests, or as grouped "bundles", against upstream — each page lists features and improvements first and bug fixes second, most significant first, with the upstream PR and its state (at the time of the last update: 2026-10-08) noted under the entries sent upstream. Entries without an upstream note are still only on the fork.

Some new or experimental changes are incubated and tested here before being proposed.

Features in this fork

These new features and changes are not yet upstream:

3D View — much cheaper rendering (redraws only on change), a responsive UI while a busy 3D view is open (experimental), photometric (Lumens) rendering, soft beam edges driven by the focus channel, light from pixel bars, a stage curtain mesh, custom item and stage colours, bulb colour temperature
Show Manager — Show selector in the toolbar, mouse wheel zoom, box selection, cut/copy/paste, group moves with axis lock, insert/remove time range, split and join items, playback shortcuts, remembered Show and per-Show zoom
Show Tempo Sections — per-song BPM sections for beat-synced Chasers across a Show, a Chaser tempo converter, and BPM auto-detection from the audio
Function Manager — container-from-selection, F2 rename, clone/duplicate selects the copies
Input/Output — a configure button on every input and output patch, opening just that plugin's settings, and a Replace mode for universe passthrough so a mirroring QLC+ can follow its input exactly
UI Settings — automatic saving, and load/save profiles for sharing a UI setup between machines
Virtual Console — a channel selection panel for Level mode Sliders, with search, type filters and a list of the channels already controlled

A few items have made it upstream — LED Bar (Beams) beam rendering, Show Manager auto-paging and its preview memory fix, the Function tree rename fixes, among others. Each page marks which.

Key fixes in this fork

Engine and Playback Fixes — DMX output delayed by a busy UI (e.g. a heavy 3D view), paused faders that never finished fading out or were left stuck by a paused Chaser, a one-tick flash of the next step at the end of Chaser items, a VC Adjust slider stopping a just-restarted Function, a Show's clock starting before its audio was audible, channel modifiers quietly deleted from the project file, plus app-wide UI fixes (mouse wheel changing combo box values, a crash opening one Function editor over another)
Input/Output — the app appearing to hang after configuring a universe's outputs when two different plugins were patched to it
Show Manager — a crash when the open Show was deleted by Undo, runaway zoom and timeline memory use, items refusing to sit back to back, snap edges misplaced on mixed tempo types
3D View — incorrect lighting angles from an unnormalised G-buffer normal, render quality changes not taking effect until the view was re-entered, the camera off-centring behind the settings panel
Function Manager — tree corruption when cloning the same Function twice, duplicate rows after a rename, new items landing at the root instead of inside the selection
Virtual Console — widgets lost in edit mode: a crash pasting a frame into its own child, vanishing after a move and its undo, cut/paste onto hidden frame pages, undo after a project load unable to restore page-level widgets, a hang loading a Virtual Console with no pages
Fixture Library — the fixture name painting over its own icon (new and corrected fixture definitions are on the same page)
AI Code Scan Bugfixes — 27 upstream bugs found by an AI-assisted scan of the QLC+ 5 UI and engine, most reproduced in the app or a unit test before fixing: Show items sharing a Function never playing, a folder vanishing when a same-named Function is deleted, undo replaying undone actions, a running RGB Matrix using its deleted group, moved fixtures keeping their channel setup at the old address, VC Frame widgets lost on removed pages. 26 of them fixed, in nine bundles ready to go upstream

Experimental features

3D View → Lumens (Rendering setting). Renders the 3D view photometrically — each fixture scaled by its real light output and falling off with distance — instead of every fixture emitting the same flat light. Off by default; existing projects are unaffected. See 3D View.
3D View → Output trim (per fixture). A manual 0–400% correction on top of Lumens, for fixtures whose datasheet output doesn't match how bright they look in the room. Only appears when Lumens is on. Still an open PR on the fork, not yet merged. See 3D View.
3D View → Frame pacing. Keeps the UI responsive while a busy 3D view is open by limiting how often the 3D scene changes to what the GPU can draw without stalling the UI. On by default; QLCPLUS_3D_PACER=0 turns it off. Merged on the fork, still being tested on a real rig. See 3D View.