Without directly quoting and addressing various members questions or concerns, here is a bit more info I can give you all to chew on.
Shimmer. First off, if you are looking for "Kessil/Red Sea" type shimmer, you will not be happy with the SKY alone - you could for sure augment with some K180 I guess to get that hard, fast-frequency kessil shimmer lines. The SKY was designed for the tastes of the 80% of the top end reefkeepers. No offense to those that run them, that is not really the place Kessil has been playing to date save for hybrid configurations of all sorts of bars, T5, etc. Again, if hard shimmer is your game, go with the Kessil A500 or augment the SKY with small kessil options. With other LED you can only choose to have no shimmer with their diffuser option, or have shimmer that has a disco or static TV effect on the sandbed. The Shimz solution on the SKY enables the best of both worlds. If you want the full flat look of T5, the optional diffused Shimz are available.
Emulating the Sun, Trying to be MH
The SKY was designed to mimic the spreading and diffusing effect of the Earth's atmosphere, not the sun. If you watched the video closely, that was made clear. Other lights try and emulate the sun. MH, on its own, was never a great solution. Spread, color, etc. just weren't there. So VHO then T5 and then LED strips were added to help it along. The SKY more closely emulates that lighting solution than it does other lights out there - that even with diffusers will not match the spread and more importantly, the mixing of separate LED, at the fixture, like the SKY does.
Area of originating light
The size of the light panel, and the light engine technology employed is what is necessary to get this homogenous light going everywhere. There is a trade off though. You certainly could make a huge panel but with the trade off of it getting in the way, creative ways to cover off sized tanks, etc. We think this rectangular size is the perfect balance of coverage and versatility.
What LEDs inside
The SKY uses a mix of 8 different LED for main LED and moonlights. Nearly all of them are Cree or Luxeon LED. It does have "UV" LED whose peak is at 405nm.
Sale price and availability
The SKY will be shipping to dealers in 4-6 weeks. There will be a larger demand than there will be supply. This is the case with popular product releases in many other markets (cameras, game consoles, etc.) with much bigger companies than ours. Like all of our products, they will be made available first to dealers in the USA, following shortly after that with the ROW. The price in the USA will be $869.95 (same price as G5 XR30 when you include their optional diffuser)
Manufacturer involvement in discussions
One thing Neptune Systems does I think more than any other major manufacturer is engage the public in social media, forums, etc. We do this despite often having to endure a lot of honest an d sometimes harsh feedback. And thats OK - we do it because we want the feedback. But please realize that the form and content of what you post does affect how much involvement people like myself will have with a particular community. If it is not welcoming (and do not read that as it has to be all sunshine and puppy dogs) then I and others will not participate as much. I think one person above actually mentioned this above. Now, please understand that given the many things my job requires, I will not be on here responding or posting all the time. Its just not possible. However, I always try to do my best to stay engaged.
