DIGITAL WORKPLACESSpecial report: Making the transformation; BYOD pros and cons; Wireless presenter showcase p26

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Issue 203 / July/August 2017

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Global industry trendsInfoComm’s IOTA study reveals what’s in store

Theatre sound optionsWhen is a permanent system worth having?

California beamingInside the spectacular Academy of Sciences

48 SOLUTIONS: CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, SAN FRANCISCO July/August 2017

Founded in 1853, the California Academy of Sciences is one of the world’s largest natural history museums. It also carries out a considerable amount of original research, via the prestigious Institute for

Biodiversity Science and Sustainability.The Academy is located in San Francisco’s

Golden Gate Park. Following earthquake damage to many of its buildings in 1989, it was eventually decided to rebuild most of the facility. Celebrated architect Renzo Piano was commissioned, and construction began in 2005.

As befi ts a temple to science, it uses various building technologies to reduce its carbon footprint: it was built using recycled steel and concrete; it recycles rainwater and draws in plentiful amounts of natural light; it has an undulating green roof, which helps to cool the building and avoids the need for air-conditioning; and the canopy around the roof contains 60,000 photovoltaic cells, which generate around 5% of

its energy requirement. These all contributed to the building gaining LEED Platinum status.

Among the various exhibition halls and aquaria are two spherical spaces: the Rainforests of the World enclosure and the Morrison Planetarium.

Dating originally from 1952, the Morrison Planetarium was completely rebuilt in 2007. In recent years, it became apparent that much of the AV technology was in need of an update. With the venue getting almost daily use, management at the Academy were keen for the refi t not to interrupt the planned programme of events. In March 2016, consultant Blair Parkin worked out that the only available window of opportunity was in September and October of that year – otherwise it would be necessary to wait another two years.

The 300-seat Morrison is built at a 30º angle, unlike traditional planetariums, which are designed to simulate what you see when you look up at the night sky. Parkin, a principal at

All life is hereGreen building, research centre, natural history museum, aquarium and planetarium, the California Academy of Sciences makes a point of showcasing its current research in its public exhibits. Paddy Baker took a tour to look at how AV plays its part

UNITED STATES

Video Sony VPL-GTZ270 4K SXRD 5000-lumen

laser projectors Mechdyne Dome Display Manager software Mechdyne ClusterTools software SDT Scalable Display Manager software GBvi Chronos optical edge blending 7thSense Delta media server Digital Projection E-Vision Laser 7500

WUXGA single-chip DLP projectors Digital Projection 0.78-0.99:1 short-throw

zoom lenses Exxact Quantum TXR430-0512R head node PC Datapath Vision HD4 4-channel capture card

Control Medialon Manager V6 Apple iPad Air 2

Installed

PROJECT OFTHE MONTH

the consultancy TEECOM, explains: “The tilt is to give the people making the content the ability to take you on a journey. The auditorium is unidirectional – everyone is broadly facing the same direction.” The seat rows are curved so that everyone’s viewing distance to the screen is more than 6m, he adds: “At 6m your eyes collimate, so you feel like you’re looking at the horizon rather than focusing on a TV screen. That’s why it’s more immersive than looking at a flatpanel display – you’re drawn into this virtual world.”

Range of demandsAnd yes, it does feel immersive, so much so that it almost seems like 3D, although it isn’t. My visit takes in two shows: Incoming!, which looks at asteroids and comets, and Habitat Earth, which is about the diversity of lifeforms supported by the planet. Between them, these two shows highlight the range of demands on the projection system: depicting space requires strong black levels and high contrast to pick out the stars, while showing the wide variety of life on Earth demands colours and textures.

Parkin joined TEECOM last year, but was involved with the 2007 project at his previous company.

The AV for ‘Morrison 2.1’, as the project was known, was designed and installed by integrator Mechdyne. The hemispherical surface of the dome is covered by the warped and edge-blended output of six Sony 4K projectors – five around the circumference of the dome and one covering the zenith.

Prepared show content comes from a single 7thSense Design media server. Each projector is served by a Mechdyne Dome Display Manager (DDM) system. (A seventh is provided as a spare.) Kurt Hoffmeister, technologist and co-founder of Mechdyne explains: “It takes care of the input from multiple sources and switching or fading between them, and it’s also where the warp and blend is done before the image is sent

49 SOLUTIONS: CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, SAN FRANCISCO

Headquartered in Marshalltown, Iowa, Mechdyne employs more than 200 people worldwide

The company was founded in 1996 by three Iowa State University graduate students, all of whom still help lead Mechdyne

The company specialises in AV/IT, visualisation and software solutions, immersive VR technologies, managed services, technical support and help desk services, and desktop and infrastructure management

About the integrator

50 SOLUTIONS: CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, SAN FRANCISCO July/August 2017

to the projector. There are six of those boxes, synchronised together, one for each projector driving the display.”

A DDM is fundamentally a customised high-end PC, supporting up to six DisplayPort 1.2 inputs – each of which can capture uncompressed 4:4:4 video at up to 4K60 resolution – and four DisplayPort 1.2 outputs.

Live elementAn additional dimension comes because the Academy makes a point of including a live element within each show, highlighting an area of current research activity. “Every show has its own presentation that is based on the latest data that we have available to us,” says Michael Garza, senior planetarium & production engineering manager.

“We wanted the ability to cross-fade from one source to the next as part of the storytelling,” says Hoff meister. Unable to source any commercially available products that could cross-fade between two sources running 4K60 video, Mechdyne instead engineered its own solution. It took the Mechdyne Canvas software, which is used for putting multiple windows on one display – and adapted it for use within the DDM units, giving each unit the ability to display and cross-fade between any of its six inputs and its four outputs.

Rather than warping and blending the individual sources, this functionality is centralised within each DDM, using an automated warping and blending solution from Scalable Display Technologies.

Rob Rouland, sales manager at Mechdyne, explains: “This system gives the Academy a lot of fl exibility, which is critical for them because they wanted it to have a lifespan of 10 years.”

Hoff meister continues: “Right now it’s accommodating four inputs [of six 4K channels], though it could accommodate up to six. Those four are split into public, production and development – so there’s a media server and a real-time computer cluster that’s used for the daily shows and live presentations, and the same thing with another media server and cluster being used as they develop new content. All of those can be switched back and forth.”

The real-time computer clusters, which run Uniview, a specialist planetarium astronomy visualisation package from SCISS, are a legacy of the 2007 system. Mechdyne worked with the CAS technical team, led by Michael Garza, to integrate the Uniview cluster as a media input to the DDMs.

Another legacy is the audio system: a 13.1 Meyer Sound system, which the manufacturer helped to design 10 years ago. The speakers are installed behind the projection screen, which is perforated. Parkin comments: “Dean

Do [director of AV and electronics engineering] had the foresight to insist that additional spare loudspeakers were installed in the zenith; they’re not in use but can be switched over if ever a loudspeaker up there fails – because of the miserable task of trying to climb up there and change one. You’d be climbing on the outside of a sphere, inside a second, off -centre sphere – a very narrow, dark space.”

He adds: “I think it’s the best sound system in a planetarium anywhere in the world, but I’m biased!”

Show controlMechdyne integrated the audio system into the Medialon show control system, which also controls all other AV components, the show media sources and the house lighting. Medialon sits on a control PC along with Mechdyne ClusterTools and the Scalable Display Manager software.

Selecting quiet projectors was important for this project, says Parkin, not least because of the dome’s properties for focusing sound – which is one reason why they are installed just below the circumference of the dome. “The Sony projectors we chose were among the quietest we looked at, although I don’t think the Sony

people knew that. But some of the projectors that were being marketed as appropriate for planetariums, we couldn’t believe how much noise they made.”

Mechdyne was also involved in the refi t of Hohfeld Hall, which is used by audiences waiting to enter the planetarium. Informative content is projected onto a large wall – made complicated by the fact that there are two large columns immediately in front of it. The projection is carried out using three Digital Projection E-Vision Laser 7500 WUXGA single-chip DLP projectors, fi tted with short-throw zoom lenses. (The previous version of this installation required six projectors.)

Rouland comments: “The real magic here is projecting behind those columns. And then the wall is a challenge too, because it’s part of a sphere, and we’re very low down on the sphere here. It’s a bit of an odd shape. But it came out quite well.” The warping and blending is carried out on a PC that also hosts the content, and show control is via an iPad Air 2 running Medialon Manager version 6.

World of exhibitsSo far we’ve only mentioned a small part of the Academy. There is a multitude of other exhibits

51 SOLUTIONS: CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, SAN FRANCISCO

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addressing different aspects of the natural world, including the four-storey rainforest (the lowest part of which is accessed via a glass-sided elevator which appears to take visitors under the Amazon river); numerous aquarium exhibits, both salt and freshwater (the Academy concocts its own seawater, mixing together various salts to an exact recipe); and a nod to the past in the Africa Hall, reconstructed following the earthquake, which features a penguin colony and projected dioramas of the kind that older museum visitors recall from their younger days – except that, here and there, an elephant will briefly appear and then disappear into what is otherwise a static image (to tease visitors? surely not!). In all, the Academy is home to 38,000 live animals, from the smallest fish, to the penguins, to Claude the albino alligator.

Many of the exhibits use a mixture of digital and traditional graphics. As Parkin points out: “This is a living research project with field stations, and the content is going to keep changing. The digital layer gives them the ability to do that without changing the graphic panel.”

Projection mapping is used in a couple of places among the aquarium exhibits. In a central auditorium section, projections are mapped around the aquarium tanks. In fact, Parkin relates, there used to be a short show here every half-hour, but it became so popular that visitor flow ground to a halt, and so it was discontinued. Projection mapping is also used on the curved outside wall of the auditorium, illuminating the physical lettering of the ‘Coral Reefs of the World’ sign.

IP infrastructureA startling fact that emerges as we tour the remainder of the Academy is that all the AV is run off an IP network infrastructure that was put in place 10 years ago. This gives the Academy’s in-house AV team a large degree of flexibility and convenience. On the audio side, for instance, “we use a MediaMatrix multi-zone building PA system,” says Dean Do. “The exhibit audio also gets sent through this system so we can route audio to whichever zones we want. We try to automate

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things rather than have someone go and set up a PA – we can just program it and automatically switch the input to the correct output.”

The infrastructure was carefully designed for future flexibility before the concrete was poured, adds Parkin: “So for the planetarium upgrade they didn’t need to upgrade any infrastructure – they just put equipment in the equipment room, projection in the projection

gallery and control in the control booth.” This didn’t happen by chance, though. “For

two or three years, Dean was in all the design meetings. If an architect doesn’t understand the reason for something on day one, they’ll put it lower on the priority list. So getting the infrastructure for the future into the building was an amazing job – and I think it’s going to continue to serve the Academy very well.”