Poland – Sixty million pixels of content is being driven to 18 HD projectors and three LED screens as part of an immersive installation at Poland’s Bieszczady Cultural Heritage Center, with tvONE’s Green Hippo Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers at the core of the visuals. More than 200GB of animated graphics are being handled by the Boreal+ MK2s in a show designed to educate, inform and entertain.
The Center, called Bieszczadzkie Centrum Dziedzictwa Kulturowego in Polish, is located in the southeast town of Ustrzyki Dolne. Its multimedia rooms, exhibition zones, and concert hall have been constructed in an old refinery, offering ample space for the AV show, which takes visitors into a virtual reality space to tell stories about multiculturalism, the richness of nature, and economic development. The room in which the project is installed measures 15 x 15 metres.
Group AV’s technical director Tomasz Zalewski worked with the Center’s team to deliver the project, alongside Radosław Katarzyński, product manager for Green Hippo at ESS Audio. “We chose the Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers because they have the right number of inputs/outputs, and they work great in permanent installations,” explains Katarzyński. “They can be managed centrally, they synchronize themselves and offer many additional options apart from just displaying the image, such as Timeline or support for TCP/IP, ArtNet commands, and so on, enabling simple control of external devices. Additionally, they allow you to combine different types of screens or projectors into one whole.”
The 18 full HD projectors project graphics onto the walls and floors, and three different types of LED screens are on the ceiling and rigged in a cylindrical form in the center of the room. The visuals run alongside a 32-channel immersive sound system, fog screens and infrared heaters that emit heat at appropriate moments, adding a further element to the experience. Additionally, there is also effect lighting installed, which is controlled by a grandMA console. Everything is synchronized using Timecode and a user-friendly control panel was created on AMX devices.
“Due to the fact that the system consists of a total of four different types of displays, we used a configuration in the form of flat screens and part modelled in 3D, which allowed us to quite easily achieve the required projection effects in a quite complicated space,” adds Katarzyński. “All of the data is held on the Boreal+ MK2 servers, and they are handling a lot of information. The Hippotizers enabled us to create a very advanced project with lots of options and possibilities which at the same time can be controlled in an easy way. The Boreal+ MK2s are working very well in the installation where it is ’on’ virtually all the time without even the slightest break.”
Day-to-day operation is being carried out by the Center’s team, and Katarzyński reveals that practically no training was required because the installation is designed so that daily control is simple and intuitive using the AMX devices. “These made it possible to design a personalized touch panel that allows the team to select all the options needed to operate the show in a clear and easy way,” he adds. “Everything else has been programmed to happen automatically each day.”
Katarzyński notes that the Green Hippo team supported the project at every stage of design and implementation, providing assistance from design to the last stage of implementation.
The animations and graphics focus on imagery of the nearby Bieszczady Mountains, the heritage of the region, and local customs. It is designed to educate the community as well as aid tourism.