Out of curiosity, are people using Vision for screens that operators will be interacting with to control machines etc, or are they moving towards using Perspective?
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I still recommend using Vision for machine controls mounted on the machine.
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What about a "remote" screen? For example, we are building out a new waster water treatment facility, and our old facility will still have some pumps/tanks etc that will be monitored and controlled from the addition? Its still controlling a PLC and ultimately replacing a PVP1000. I've already got a Perspective page showing all the pertinent info, but its just for viewing. I could certainly make some changes to allow for people to turn pumps on and off manually, if they so choose, but ultimately would rather do what makes the most sense from a best practices standpoint.
+1 for Vision for machine-control. Would entertain the conversation for Perspective if 'mobile access' is a requirement.
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At this time we have ZERO mobile access at all. This would be probably a 21inch touch screen monitor in the new Waste Water office. Ultimately the new plant would run on this as well
We do both ways. Most of the time it depends on the asks of the customer.
If it is a standalone machine and they are doing say and edge panel for instance a vision application will make more sense.
For more monolithic SCADA where you can see and control the entire plant from one application like a Wonderware application we prefer to use Perspective.
In this case I am "the customer". We currently have 100% perspective, but our new refrigeration system will be Vision as its being provided by the vendor. As I'm embarking on building out this portion of our addition, I have pretty wide leeway to do as I see fit, as long as it works and makes sense. Up to this point Ignition has only been used for information purposes, so this is a bit of an expansion for us.
This detail could start to tip the scales. Managing two separate projects for the same data is never high on my want-list. While Perspective has now been around long enough (and has a substantial user base), the underlying technology is different, and why some people might never recommend Perspective to replace a high-availability touchscreen.
That said, some customers want Perspective, are comfortable with the technology, and like the idea of using EAM to sync one project between all gateways.
So, in this case you'd modify the current page to allow for control? What if i were to tell you that ultimately, 50% of the old system will go away, and the remainder would be controlled by the new system? I'm thinking it makes sense to modify the current Perspective page to allow for control. But then, do I make a new Vision page that will ultimately control the new system and the remains of the old system?
There are just a few things that Vision can do that Perspective cannot that I think are relevant to on-machine HMIs:
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A Vision application can interrogate its environment, like MAC ids or firmware serials or permanent security enclaves, to enforce regulatory requirements for "within sight of" operator actions. Geofencing in Perspective can be disabled, and most mobile devices have developer modes that can deliver false coordinates. NAT between HMIs and gateways prevent reliable use of IP addresses.
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A Vision application can be tailored to offer Momentary buttons for machine Jogging or other similar operations that really, really, need to cut off an operation immediately when the operator lifts their finger, or any comms or workstation failure occurs. Not even on the horizon for Perspective.
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A Vision application can monitor local serial ports for barcode scanning/badge scanning/RFID reading operations that need to work even when the application is not in a specific window or with a specific field in focus. Perspective can only use external scanner/readers in keyboard wedge mode.
Let me add:
- A full-screen Vision application can replace the normal desktop environment (on competent operating systems--not sure about Windows on this topic) while retaining the option to run a restricted set of other applications. Vision can launch and monitor arbitrary such applications (from menus, buttons, background event, whatever), without yielding control over the desktop. Perspective simply cannot do anything like this.
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One other thing I like about Vision is I can have a popup window for users to log into in classic mode. The HMI is still visible/functional while logging in. In Perspective (unless I'm doing something wrong) when logging in, the page is redirected to the login prompt, so the operator is blind during this time while they login.
And until 8.3 is released, no native drawing tools.
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Is it an option to keep (and update the project on) the PV? Slight contradiction to my previous post (re: maintaining two projects). Maintaining existing "PV+Perspective" might outweigh "New Vision+Perspective" if the changes to the existing HMI project are within reason.
Well, the PV that is installed is older and is at the limits for memory. It is also in a completely different building. The new Waste plant is its own building and the intention is to save the operators from having to go into the old building if necessary. Also this would be a temporary situation as ultimately the old system will be decommissioned with some parts being integrated into the new system.
Over the past several years the majority of our projects have been perspective but we do occasional vision projects also. We do what the customer wants. Sometimes the customer wants perspective but their PLC programs aren't built in a very compatible way so we have to refactor PLC logic to make it work properly. We have been doing a lot of legacy SCADA migrations to Perspective. Most of our migrations lately have been Wonderware InTouch to Perspective.
Only one of our active projects right now is Vision.
We do a lot of custom graphics in Inkscape as there are not drawing tools in 8.1.x. I think the lack of drawing tools is one of the bigger limiting factors for using Perspective for SCADAs.
Generally speaking the design tasks required for device control can be done in both Perspective and Vision. I prefer Perspective, personally.
I've only done responsive perspective apps on smaller systems and generally not on device control screens. We typically only use the responsive design capabilities of perspective on data dashboards and stuff like that.
Perspective has been particularly popular in municipalities. I find that water and wastewater plants make heavy use of mobile capabilities. Of course, you have to flesh out the security characteristics of the system when you go down that path.
I've found it hard to switch to perspective for on machine HMIs. We still do mostly vision for HMIs that are either mounted on a machine, or one the wall controlling the entire room/area. We mostly serve the Food/Bev industry and the only time I've gotten to use Perspective is for the Water industry or situations where mobile is a must.
I actually work for a Food manufacturer, so I totally understand. We're expanding soon to an additional facility and will likely use Vision for the on the machine controls.
Its especially disappointing to see Inductive stray so heavily away from Vision. There was only 1 or 2 mentions of Vision at ICC last year and they only had to do with minor bug fixes.
I understand that it must be very challenging to have such a divided product, and I do believe Perspective is going to become more and more popular, but everyone need to stop ignoring Vision. We have customers with Vision applications only about 2 or 3 years old who are questioning if their system is now outdated because its not Perspective
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Ignition has a learning curve to begin with. I would argue that Vision's is less steep than Perspective's, especially if you're coming in from the typical SCADA development realm.
That said, most things that Vision can do, Perspective can also do (see @pturmel's post above).
I'm not a fan of Perspective, but of course that's the only option if the customer wants mobile/tablet support. If we do go the Perspective route, all of my screens are still laid out horizontally in a coordinate container. On the monitors and iPads it takes up the full landscape display area. On smaller devices it takes up the full vertical space and the user scrolls left/right.
Personally, I would've rather had a better mobile module add-on to the Vision module, like before, than an entirely separate module. It makes existing Vision projects almost impossible to get mobile because you now have to pay for an additional module and development time for whatever information you need to be mobile and now you have 2 environments to maintain.
I'm not as down on Perspective as @amarks. As long as I can use my toolkit, and do not have to use the native charts. 
In general, I think it is simply beautiful, and so much better at handling varying screen sizes that I want it for anything other than fixed machine workstations.
I will continue recommending purchasing both modules.
These older topics are still useful:
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Thanks for these links. Your assistance and insight is invaluable as always.
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