[dlavery]

I have to disagree with part of the post. Yes, many of the newer competition venues (e.g. the Siegel Center at the VCU/Richmond Regional), or those intended for broadcast environments (e.g. the Great Western Forum at the SoCal Regional) will have metal halide lighting. However, many of the older venues in which regional competitions are held were never intended to source broadcasts and still use sodium vapor and mercury vapor lighting (e.g. the Halsey Field House for the Chesapeake Regional and the Matthaei Field House for the Detroit Regional). In addition, many of the events - particularly the "low-cost regionals," which will be more than half of the events this year - will not have any supplemental lighting, and the entire lighting environment will be determined by the house lights.

A quick initial survey of all the regional venues with FIRST makes me believe that the light levels and mean color temperatures from event to event will be all over the place. I will attempt to get more details on lighting environment for each of the competition venues from Steve Sargeant and provide that information. But the short, simple message to all the teams is "bump up the light levels in your test environment A LOT, and be prepared to pay a lot of attention to the calibration numbers provided by FIRST for each event."

-dave