Case Studies

Iceland's LAVA Centre

Stewart Filmscreen Phantom HALR Heats up Iceland’s LAVA Centre

Large venue screen provides quality image fidelity in high ambient light application

You gaze up at a 21-foot (6.3 meter) wide screen and watch as volcanoes erupt in life-like 4K UHD resolution. The room seems to tremble around you. Nearby, a 39.9-foot (12-meter) high replica of a mantle plume, an up-welling of abnormally hot rock, explodes with regularity.

Audiovisual technology provides the unique capability to simulate situations people normally could not—or may not want to— experience. Visitors to the LAVA Centre, a museum in the town of Hvolsvöllur, Iceland, get the best of both worlds: Engaging and educational exhibits that bring volcanic activity to life, along with a direct line-of-sight to five active volcanoes outside the capital city of Reykjavik. Recently opened in 2017, the museum expects to attract up to 150,000 visitors per year.

Stewart Filmscreen Phantom HALR Delivers Immersive Experience in High Ambient Light
Creating the largest volcano and earthquake exhibition in Europe was not without challenges, however. The movie cinema, specifically, needed to be able to run a continuous loop of volcanic eruptions every 20 minutes, immersing visitors in the experience. But the lights in the room had to be set at such a level that it was safe for visitors to enter and find their seats.

In addition, the room was designed to serve as a multi-function presentation space for meetings and educational programs. To meet these stringent requirements, Feris ehf, the system integrator appointed by the LAVA Centre to design and install AV systems throughout the venue, selected the new Stewart Filmscreen Phantom HALR high ambient light rejecting screen material in a lace and grommet fixed frame AT 1.5 masking system configuration.

The 20-minute video loop is hosted on a custom-built computer with an NVidia 1060 GPU, which feeds the show to a Vivitek DK8500Z 7,500 lumens, 4K UHD projector via fiber HDMI cable. The Stewart Filmscreen Phantom HALR screen paired with an ultra-high resolution laser projector exemplifies how AV specialists can achieve true immersion in any environment with the right equipment.

The content comes to life in the highest resolutions readily available today. The combination of the ultra-bright projector with Phantom HALR projection screen material offers incredible image fidelity in the movie theater that doubles as a presentation space and is never in total darkness.

“With the high ambient light in the room (due to safety reasons) and the fact that it’s a multi-purpose space that hosts meetings, Phantom HALR was our one-and-only choice in screen materials. The Phantom HALR provides such a bright picture, that we were able to create an immersive experience. It really lets that Vivitek 7500 lumen 4K projector shine. Visitors forget their surroundings as they watch the lava pouring from the volcanos on screen.

In addition, Phantom HALR is also the only material available to accommodate such a large screen size, 20.8 feet wide by 11.9 feet tall (6.3 meter wide by 3.6 meter tall), without seams.

Surround Sound Completes the Picture
The audio components further bring the volcanos to life, with seven ONE Point speakers and a Danley subwoofer helping visitors hear and feel every roar and rumble. A Peavey MediaMatrix Nion n3 processor and Powersoft amplifier feed audio to the speakers from the computer’s 7.1 sound card.

Exceeding Audience Expectations
Truly, all the AV elements in the room come together to bring the short film to life, raising awareness about volcanic activity and exceeding audience expectations at every turn.