While ShowSim is ideally suited to designing shows that will be computer fired, you may also use it to design manually fired shows as well.  Not only will this allow you to take advantage of all the setup reports that ShowSim will generate, it also gives you a chance to practice actually firing the show using a simulated firing panel.  The firing panel, shown below, is a generic representation of a typical firing panel complete with toggle switches, LEDs, mode switch and module select switch.


The firing panel being used to manually fire a show.

When you click the fire panel button on the main button bar, all windows will close and the firing panel will appear armed and ready to go.  Just as in a real panel, all the live cues will be indicated by a red LED.  The module switch can be used to select the various modules, which is done by clicking on the module  names listed below the knob.  The switch panel will refresh to show the state of the selected module.

The switches are flipped by clicking on them, which momentarily makes them flip up.  This will fire the cue and turn off the LED to indicate that the cue has been fired.  If the show has a music soundtrack, the music will begin to play when the first switch is flipped.

While the firing panel is mainly intended as a practice tool, it can also be used to record fire times for each cue by clicking the Save button following a firing session.  When saving a firing session, all previous cue times will be replaced by the times recorded during your firing session.  This allows you to replay your exact firing session and review how well you paced your show.

NOTE: caution must be used when using the Save feature, as the cue times on your entire show will be replaced with your firing session and there is no way to restore the original values.

If you run a large display company that trains new operators to manually fire shows, this firing panel is a great way to let them get a feel for manually firing the show prior to doing it in real life.  For seasonal display operators who may only fire one or two shows per year, the manual firing panel also gives them a way to “warm up” prior to firing their shows.