VILAMOURA, Portugal — The refurbished Casino de Vilamoura has a new projection feature for the domed ceiling in its entranceway, created with eight Robe DigitalSpot 7000 DTs, the first use of those fixtures in Portugal.
Local engineer Joel Pais and entertainment technical director Jorge Sousa were in charge of the project, which was also coordinated by Luis Vidigal, technical specialist at Robe’s Portuguese distributor NAN.
NAN also supplied the DigitalSpots — all of which were running the new 2.0 version software.
Each of the fixture’s two onboard LED modules consist of 48 Luxeon Rebel RGBW LEDs, making them well-suited for adding color washing effects onto black and white content.
Pais and Sousa also wanted a unit that would handle projections from different sources including SDI inputs, internal content and visuals that streamed across a network.
The DigitalSpot also has an external SDI input to make it easier for LDs and operators to connect professional video gear. Pais and Sousa were already familiar with the Robe brand — the casino’s main stage lighting rig is equipped with 12 Robe ColorSpot and 12 ColorWash 575E AT moving lights.
The projected content includes abstract graphics, promotions, advertising stings and live images from cameras dotted around the venue. These show onstage action from the various stage shows, jackpot “moments,” slot machines and general casino buzz and activity.
Robe’s technical team developed a special new dome shape for the DigiMerge function, enabling the images to be fitted exactly to the surface area of the dome while maintaining all perspectives. Robe also sent Ales Grivac from their technical sales team to ensure that the installation, setup and initial programming went smoothly.
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The perimeter of the dome measures 69 meters. The fixtures are rigged 11 meters away around the edges on a custom built platform, which is concealed from public view, each projecting onto its opposite side. They are controlled via a MA Lighting grandMA2 ultra light console.
The latest DigitalSpot software has improved the versatility of both the DigiMerge and DigiWarp functions, both of which have helped with the Vilamoura installation.
DigiMerge now allows different widths to be selected for the soft edging overlap. Full RGB Gamma correction of the “blend” helps find an ideal color correction to make the edge overlapping invisible.
Pre-mastered content can now be mapped into the merged matrix, allowing utilization of the full native resolution of the projectors. “Mirroring” mode helps create “endless” projection, and different DigiWarp effects have been added to support DigiMerge, including the dome shape effect that is used at Vilamoura.
“Everybody should go there to see it, it’s an amazing screen surface and I have never seen anything quite like it,” said Luis Vidigal.
For more information, please visit www.robe.cz.
