Featured Project: Sensory Overload

San Francisco-based Obscura Digital, known internationally for its large-scale architectural projection mapping on iconic buildings around the world, went inside for this featured project, as it was commissioned last December to lend its talents to Radio City Music Hall.

The Radio City Rockettes have been performing their annual Christmas Spectacular in the hall since 1932. This year, audiences experienced a show like they’ve never seen, Obscura Digital’s special effects enveloped the audience members in an immersive experience.

The company says that more than 130 terabytes of data was processed to create more than 23 minutes of animation content for seven scenes. With an all-native 14,000 x 14,000 pixel map, the final delivery was close to 40TB of data (the Library of Congress is 10TB). Delta 7th Sense Media playback servers drove the media to 36 Christie Digital 4K30 Boxer projectors running as 18x double-stacks to saturate the room with “illuminated Christmas wonder.”

Obscura says it laser-scanned Radio City Music Hall to identify and highlight its architectural details, and created a virtual reality simulation of the theater so it could experience the show as the audience would. The company says it got familiar with all the aspects of the show, including the storyline, choreography, costumes, lighting design, timecodes and physical set pieces, just to create content that would dovetail seamlessly.

To watch a video about the installation click here.