LAS VEGAS — The montly tally of residential foreclosures keep hitting new records, in both Las Vegas’ Clark County and nationally. But the Fontainebleau Hotel isn’t just relying on just a stack of dusty brochures to sell the 1,018 condo units it’s building on the north end of the Las Vegas strip. In a welcome center that recently opened near the future resort’s construction site, three video pods are immersing visitors in curved-screen imagery shaped by a pair of Vista Systems’ Spyders. The Arnel Group, a branding firm, came up with the idea of the video pods, according to Paul Bell, vice-president at Miami-based Audio Reinforcement Technology (A.R.T., Inc.), the sound, lighting and video contractor for the project. Arnel Group, in turn, hired Jim O’Connell of O’Connell & Goldberg Public Relations to help accomplish the branding vision, Bell added.
O’Connell & Goldberg’s Dreamwalk Creations division is known for its multimedia real estate “ride” experiences. The attractions feature a full-scale model apartment set-up within a cyclorama, where a virtual guide takes prospective buyers on a virtual tour replete with visual effects.
While the Fontainebleau Las Vegas experience differs from the typical Dreamwalk Creations “ride,” it leverages O’Connell & Goldberg’s experience at crafting new ways to deliver a real-estate developers’ message.
Prospective buyers entering the Las Vegas Fontainebleau Sales Center can find the three video pods in the form of partially open Plexiglas cylinders washed with abstract colored lights. Each pod features video screens displaying luxury lifestyle videos, complete with text and graphics.
“With the limited amount of space available, we didn’t have room behind the screens for large projectors,” said Bell. “So we decided to use edge blending and short-throw projectors. Once you walk inside a Plexiglas pod there’s a 150-degree curved screen.
“Essentially, when you’re on axis and project onto a curved screen, you have a nice square pixel,” Bell added. “As the screen curves away, your pixel projects on the screen at an angle and it gets elongated. Multiple projectors allow you to reduce that and the Vista Spyder allowed us to use multiple projectors.”
In addition, “in some cases we only have seven feet of throw and need video that’s 7-feet-by-15-feet wide. We wouldn’t have been able to achieve these short throws without the Vista Spyder.”
Bell used the Vista Spyder 213 and the Vista Spyder 234 to provide the solution. One Vista Spyder runs one video pod and the second system runs the two remaining pods.
The Vista Spyder is a windowing processor that takes content from a variety of graphics and video sources and can output it in real-time across a multi-image display. Vista Systems’ switchers are often relied upon for live multiple-destination video and data mixed-signal switching.
Bell has been a fan of the Vista Spyder since he configured them in an AV display for Pinstrikes, the bowling component of the first IPic Entertainment complex at Milwaukee’s Bayshore Mall. “I love the Vista Systems Spyder,” Bell said. “It’s straightforward and not complicated at all.”
The result, however, is significantly more immersive than a stack of brochures, and echoes the words of Fontainebleau Miami architect Morris Lapidus, who said, “If you create the stage set and it is grand, everyone who enters will play their part.”
For more information, please visit www.vistasystems.net.
