The appearance of ACTIVISION Blizzard at gamescom 2013 in Cologne was an absolute eye-catcher – the various products of the American video game producer were presented on a stand space of about 4,000 m². The highlight of the stand concept developed by Walbert-Schmitz from Aachen was the 190-degree panorama cinema at the entrance to the stand. The combination of panorama image, light effects and pyrotechnics attracted visitors and achieved a considerable “long-distance” effect due to the screen size of 32x6m.

The exhibition building contractors Walbert-Schmitz, as general contractor, entrusted the professionals from tennagels Medientechnik, Düsseldorf, with the coordination of the light, sound and video technology for the technical implementation of the panorama cinema. Ten BARCO HDQ-2K40 video projectors, each having 40,000 lumen, were used in portrait mode for the panorama. Together with 12 kW sound technology, 80 LED moving head lights which are integrated in the sequence and 2 flame jets the spectators on the circular stage were drawn into the thick of the digital action worlds.

Tennagels was assisted by the Content Competence Centre of publictec, Herdecke, which synchronized the high-end projection technology and the content that was pre-produced and delivered by the end user on site and in an optimal manner. Their task was to condense high-resolution single frame sequences of over 250 GByte image data into a presentation loop approx. 45 minutes in length and to synchronize this with sound, lights and pyrotechnics. In the run-up, publictec’s specialist department examined the contents to be displayed and prepared the programming of the server so that the video technicians at the trade fair had no problems in starting up the presentation. The C3 technicians were even able to implement short-term requests for changes made by the customer at the trade fair.

An important element in the stress-free implementation was the choice of a suitable media server system which was not only able to set up the soft-edge panorama and the geometric correction quickly and in high quality but also to adjust the show sequence on the spot thanks to its efficient compositing features.