Building upon the success of our first ground-breaking holographic theatrical system, installed in the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Centre, we were privileged to be invited to the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum to develop and install the second of its kind, an interactive holographic theatre. For the Dallas installation we have further expanded and improved upon our ‘Twilight’ Show Control System, to create a truly unique and immersive experience.
While the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Centre used a dual augmentation technique for their stage projection system, the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum took a slightly different approach where they requested a standard holographic stage projection system, but wished to augment the actual theatre room to give it the appearance of a pre-war living room. This was accomplished by incorporating 8 large format monitors strategically placed around the perimeter of the theatre, where each individual survivor has their own unique video content that is powered and controlled through our ‘Twilight’ Show Control System. This enabled a more personalised and relevant introduction to the survivors experiences.
We have also incorporated the latest digital audio networking technology eliminating the need for bundles of heavy, expensive analogue or multicore cabling, whilst provided a high degree of fidelity. As well as improving our remote monitoring system so that we can not only monitor the ‘Twilight’ systems software, but also visually see and hear what is happening in the theatre in Dallas live from our office in the Elstree Film Studios with minimal latency. This allows us to quickly observe and diagnose any issues that the moderators at the museum may have even when they are unable to describe the problem in any detail.
To create a more bespoke interactive experience for audience members we opened up the ‘Twilight’ system to allow visitors to ask the holographic holocaust survivor a question directly, without the need for a docent to relay questions to the hologram. This was accomplished by incorporating a LiDAR device into the Show Control System and developing a real-time point cloud scanning system that will create a 3D virtual model of the theatre every 0.2 seconds. This allows the ‘Twilight’ system to ‘see’ the audience members within the theatre and determine when someone from the audience wishes to ask the hologram a question.
The real time point cloud system is paired with a highly directional ceiling microphone containing a microphone array of 128 omnidirectional microphones that operate in concert to create 8 virtual microphones (aka lobes) that are steerable to provide coverage across the entire theatre. Where the ‘Twilight system uses these lobes to beamform a virtual microphone over any audience member within the theatre who wishes to ask a question of the survivor creating a truly one of a kind experience that can educate, communicate and entertain future generations for years to come.
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