case
study
Twinkling winter wonders with Advatek SHOWTime
"Advatek's E16-S Mk3 controller not only provides a wealth of functionality, it even looks professional. I never have any fears of opening the box and showing the client what's inside..”
Jeffrey Holmes
IWG ProductionsExecutive
Summary
The Digital Fountain at Boar’s Head Resort in Charlottesville, Virginia, is part of the resort’s popular ‘Winter Wander’ light attraction. The Digital Fountain was a turn-key design and installation project by IWG Productions comprising steel infrastructure, pixels, power distribution, and standalone playback control, with Advatek's E16-S Mk3 controller at its heart.
The lighting effects of the Digital Fountain were achieved through careful collaboration between the design and fabrication departments to ensure each pixel was precisely where it needed to be to allow for realistic water simulation.
In this instance, lighting software xLights was chosen for its flexibility in custom-mapping and liquid-physics generation capabilities. A series of non-musical scenes were created to provide a varied experience, from gentle watery flows to exciting, fast-moving sprays and a glittering finale.
(Image supplied by: IWG Productions)
IWG Productions
IWG Productions offers Creative, Technical, and Rigging Leadership for live experiences throughout the year.
www.iwgproductions.comThe Challenge
The Digital Fountain consisted of one large fountain and eight surrounding smaller fountains.
Sending data to the eight smaller fountains was a challenge due to the size of the hillside that needed to be covered. Thankfully, the E16-S Mk3 long range solution was powerful enough to support data lines to each smaller fountain without any additional hardware.
Advatek Lighting’s Role
The E16-S Mk3 controller allowed IWG to control multiple independent fixtures at nearly 100 FPS (which was crucial to achieve realistic liquid simulation).
Advatek’s SHOWTime feature and Expanded Mode functionality allowed a single controller to manage the entire Digital Fountain project, including standalone playback on power-up.
Results
Even the simplest pixel project is never truly simple, but IWG were confident that with Advatek’s Mk3 device running the show, they would not receive any support calls regarding the display.
“Even if we did get any calls, the fact that we were able to download the complete device configuration and access the device via VPN, if we were needed to reconfigure it remotely, it would not have been an issue,” said Jeffrey Holmes from IWG Productions.
LocationCharlottesville, Virginia - USA
Went Live – 2022
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