Visitors to the Maritime Experiential Museum at Resorts World Sentosa, Singapore can now get an up-close look at a shipwreck thanks to an installation carried out by Electrosonic.
The experience begins with a pre-show set on the pier in China’s Guangzhou harbor. The scene is set in the harbourmaster’s hut. Electrosonic provided a Christie DHD800 1-chip DLP rear-screen projector with mirror bounce to achieve the short throw required for the compact space, plus a pair of Renkus-Heinz ICONYX line arrays and subwoofers. A Doremi Labs Nugget HD video player acts as the video server.
Visitors proceed to the Typhoon Theatre for the main show. The 15.5-meter diameter circular space seats about 150.
A curved-wall surface, treated with an extremely smooth Level 5 finish, is the display area for a Sony SRX-T420 4K SXRD projector customised by Electrosonic with a fish-eye lens to fill a 180º space about six meters high. The projector is mounted on an isolated platform on the catwalk to eliminate vibration. A DVS Cine4K server supports the Sony projector; a 3D Perception system handles image processing and warping. A sub-system of the Medialon show controller controls the attraction.
Electrosonic’s Design Consulting team, working with senior project engineer Niel Overton, originally specified seven projectors for the Typhoon Theatre then opted to engineer a more elegant solution using a single Sony projector with a custom fish-eye lens. A mock up of the theatre was built to test the concept, which proved to be extremely successful.
“Using the single Sony projector saved the client money in terms of cost of ownership and the price of the installation: there was no need for a projection booth or power and air conditioning for seven projectors,” explains Electrosonic project manager Thursby Pierce. “And equipment upkeep is less costly.”
A 13-channel audio system plays a key role in setting the scene and giving visitors the sensation of the storm. Five Renkus-Heinz speakers are mounted atop the wall screen pointing down, five are mounted on the front platform angled up and bouncing off the screen and four are placed on the catwalks for left and right surround. A Peavey MediaMatrix digital signal processor controls the audio components.