PHILADELPHIA – Niles Creative Group used the 10-million pixel Barco LED wall at the indoor Comcast Experience to a new dimension for Comcast's 2009 Christmas Spectacular, producing the world's first daylight-viewable 3D experience. The Comcast Experience was already the world's largest Barco NX-4 display, with 6,771 Barco NX-4 LED modules that have attracted visitors since it opened in June 2008. With the new 3D twist, the display attracted standing-room-only crowds for the 18-minute 3D Christmas Spectacular, which was expected to run hourly through the end of the year.
The Christmas Spectacular, designed by New York-based Niles Creative Group, posed several challenges for David Niles, founder: how to produce a show in 3D at five times the resolution of high-definition television, how to switch the LED wall between 2D and 3D playback, and how to achieve the level of brightness and contrast required to properly display 3D in broad daylight.
"The creation of a stereoscopic 3D image is the more difficult part of the puzzle, but that's exactly what we do here," said Niles. "The next part is the technology to actually display it, and here's where we're breaking barriers. Creating effective 3D in a daylight environment is a challenge, and to that end, we have to give credit to Barco's 4mm LED screen. It has a light output high enough, and a contrast ratio great enough, to be able to use the anaglyphic display method."
To solve the technical challenge of compositing a dual stereoscopic image into a single anaglyphic image that the LED wall requires, Niles partnered with Sirius 3-D, the creators of the ColorCode 3-D system. "They've perfected a blue-yellow anaglyptic method of encoding which is quite spectacular, and which preserves colorimetry," said Niles. "Even in broad daylight, the results on Comcast's existing, unmodified 4mm wall are beautiful."
For the challenge of switching the wall between 2D and 3D playback modes, the video system itself at The Comcast Experience accomplishes the task. "Using our content delivery system, we were able to program changes into the way the wall operates," said Niles. "When the Christmas Spectacular is running, we increase the wall's output level to make it optimum for anaglyphic viewing. Then, as soon as the 3D Christmas show is over, the wall returns to its normal viewing levels."
Comcast's Christmas Spectacular opened just after Thanksgiving and has been seen by thousands of viewers per day. "The Niles Creative Group is truly at the forefront of extraordinary photo-realistic environments," said Steve Scorse, vice president of sales and marketing for Barco. "Using our NX-4 wall, he's demonstrated that LED is a viable technology for large scale 3D presentations, and moreover, ones that can take place in a daylight environment."
For more information, please visit www.nilescreative.com and www.barco.com
