u/paskudna_rozchepirka

Disclosure: I'm the developer.

PROBLEM

Lighting manufacturers publish photometric data as .ies files (IESNA LM-63).

Working with them on a Mac is awkward: most desktop tools are Windows-first,

web viewers ask you to upload client files to someone else's server, and

several viewers draw the polar diagram in a way that doesn't match a real

photometric report (beam pointing sideways, asymmetric distributions mirrored

incorrectly). I wanted to point an app at a folder of .ies files, click

through them, and trust what the diagram shows.

COMPARISON

vs Eulumdat Tools (Mac): it supports more formats (EULUMDAT/LDT) and more

view types (Cartesian, 3D, heatmap). LumaScope has none of those. Where

LumaScope wins is focus and speed: it's IES-only, opens instantly, and the

polar diagram follows report convention out of the box (nadir at the bottom,

C0-C180 and C90-C270 principal planes, gamma grid, cd and cd/1000lm units).

If you need LDT or 3D, Eulumdat Tools is the better buy. If you mostly open

IES files and want a fast native reader, LumaScope is lighter.

vs browser-based IES viewers: those require uploading the file. LumaScope

runs fully offline and sandboxed, so client data never leaves your machine.

No accounts, no telemetry.

vs DIALux / Relux: full lighting design suites, free but heavy, and overkill

when you only need to inspect a file. Neither is a native Mac app.

PRICING

$11.99, one-time purchase. No subscription, no in-app purchases.

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/ua/app/lumascope/id6759007715?mt=12

Requires macOS 14 or later.

What changed in 1.2.0, briefly: the polar diagram was rebuilt to match report

conventions, asymmetric (0-360 degree) distributions now render correctly, a

metadata inspector was added (manufacturer, catalog number, luminaire, lamp,

total flux, input power, efficacy in lm/W, dimensions, peak intensity), and

the LM-63 parser got a lot more tolerant of real-world files (mixed encodings,

all TILT modes, CRLF, non-standard headers).

Happy to answer questions or take feature requests. The two I hear most are

Cartesian view and LDT support, both of which I'm considering.

It all started with a simple question: “Is it possible to build a game for the PlayStation One using Unity?”

My initial research showed that the answer was technically “yes,” but the process was extremely complicated. So I decided to take a different path and build my own engine capable of exporting projects to the PSOne.

Today, I reached what I can call the first MVP of that idea. For the first time, I managed to complete the entire pipeline — from creating a simple cube in the editor to running it in a PlayStation One emulator.

Of course, this is not a full-fledged game engine yet. But as a foundation, it’s a very promising start. Along the way, I also had the opportunity to learn a lot of fascinating details about the original PlayStation hardware and development process.

There’s still a long road ahead, but seeing that first cube appear on the PSOne screen made all the effort worthwhile.

Hey everyone,

Over the last few months I’ve been building **LumaScope**, a macOS app for viewing and analyzing IES photometric files.

The original motivation was simple:

Many existing IES viewers feel outdated, display polar diagrams incorrectly, or fail on real-world files that don’t strictly follow the standard.

So I built a tool focused on:

• Support for legacy IESNA91 and non-standard LM-63 files
• Fast local parsing
• Folder-based workflows
• No cloud processing — everything stays local

One of the most interesting parts of development was making the parser robust enough to handle “messy” files from real manufacturers like ERCO, Lithonia, BEGA, and others.

LumaScope is now live on the Mac App Store.

I’d genuinely love feedback from anyone working in lighting design, architecture, or photometry.

https://apps.apple.com/ua/app/lumascope/id6759007715?l=uk&mt=12