Since its opening in March 2024, Flyover in Chicago by Pursuit at Navy Pier has offered visitors an immersive experience, culminating in an aerial journey over the city. Flyover constructed this 61-seat theatre, installed a Brogent ride system and brought in other specialists to work on the AV elements.
Kraftwerk Living Technologies (KLT), designed and supplied an AV setup featuring projection, control, and audio further enhanced by Iosono spatial audio system supplied and supported by Encircled.
Encircled has provided Iosono systems not only for Flyover in Chicago but also for an upgraded system in Vancouver, Canada.
At Flyover in Chicago, KLT’s multichannel loudspeaker design ensures riders receive a tailored soundscape and experience. The system features 34 JBL AM7215 loudspeakers positioned behind and to the sides of the 435 sqm perforated screen from Endurescreens plus 4 2x18” JBL ASB7128 subwoofers stacked on the floor, all driven by Crown DCiDA series Dante enabled amplifiers. In addition, there are integrated in-seat speakers powered by Innosonix multi-channel high-density amplifiers, and the advanced Encircled Iosono spatial audio processor powered by Iosono inside software, which manages calibration, content playback, and live input rendering.
The spatial audio system's design allows precise localisation of sound both horizontally and vertically, enhancing the visual content displayed on the giant screen. “Unlike traditional immersive audio formats, which often have limited possibilities in vertical panning of audio sources, the Iosono rendering system’s unique multilayer approach uses multiple loudspeaker groups to achieve sound positioning across the screen,” said Kevin Murphy, senior VP sales and biz dev, KLT.
The middle layer’s high-resolution speakers enable accurate sound localisation through Wave Field Synthesis, creating stable point source objects on the screen and ensuring consistent sound perception from all seats. A significant challenge was the playback of existing content, which Encircled using Iosono’s Spatial Audio Workstation. This tool treats multichannel content as a virtual speaker setup within the newly built dome, allowing precise matching of each channel’s position to the existing speakers used in other flight ride attractions. Newly produced content benefits from an object-based workflow, where individual sounds are stored with 3D position metadata, allowing the same content file to be rendered across different loudspeaker layouts, ensuring quality and easy content transfer.