Snowy Hydro Discovery Centres Immersive Theatre
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Details
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Pro AV Solutions were recently engaged to deploy and deliver the uplift of the Snowy Hydro Discovery Centre’s Immersive Theatre in Cooma.
This upgrade and refurbishment of the existing theatre focussed on delivering a delightful user experience through innovative design, engaging and impactful content, and integration of next-generation technologies.
The client’s goal was for the new theatre to be an industry-leading high-definition, interactive, immersive public installation for Australia presenting the story of the Snowy Hydroelectric Scheme.
Snowy Hydro engaged Queensland University of Technology (QUT) to advise on the technology solution required to meet these requirements. Working closely on the design with the team at QUT, the Pro AV Solutions QLD and NSW teams worked together to fully deploy and commission the technology solutions comprising the Theatre providing a robust and reliable end-result.
Key Technologies
Our Solutions
The Theatre has a primary display and interaction space comprising a wall and floor projector array, multi-channel audio, 3D motion sensing, and presenter tools. This design provides a unifying and immersive space, suited to representing and visualizing environments at many scales and in many usage modes.
Featuring seven Panasonic PT-RZ970 laser projectors and four downward-firing projectors for floor projection, the high-quality projection mapping is impressive. With two Hitachi USL901A projectors on fixed to specific load points within the ceiling void, they provide a 3D simulation projection with active shutter glasses.
There are three virtual reality stations which are a discreet user interaction zone for optimal immersive experience. The Christie Digital 3D active glasses with glass emitter. The glasses synchronize to flash (open and close) based on timed refresh rates of the left-eye and right-eye images. An emitter is used to time the shuttering of the glasses with the data and the projector giving the 3D effect.
Bose PowerMatch amplifiers and Bose speakers provide amazing high-quality audio in the open space theatre rounding off the entire immersive experience. Tying in with the visual, the audio complements and boosts the environment and plays a key role in meeting the customer’s goals.
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A big challenge
The primary challenge faced with ensuring the content was displayed on the wall and floor was the venue at Cooma resides next to the main highway and when heavy trucks roll past they cause the building to vibrate.
It was deemed essential to design a rectangular truss rig to fix all projectors to with minimal structural points. This would then essentially ensure when building movement occurred the rig was a single point of movement, not multiple mounts all moving differently.
To be confident the rig would be assembled on site correctly the Brisbane engineering and build team pre-assembled the whole rig at our build office and identified each part to allow the on-site install team to assemble the structure 100% correctly. It was then packed and shipped to site for deployment.
The Immersaview Simvisuals software was utilised to blend, warp and mask the projection system to fit the curved wall and floor area and deployed by QUT staff.
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