ProPixel™ Promotes Kaleidoscope of Moving Color
The Challenge
As the casino capital of Asia, gamers know Macau for its opulence and entertainment excitement. With the latest resurgence in this popular gaming market, Macau gaming mogul Stanley Ho wanted to create a landmark property to complement the famous Lisboa Casino. The answer: build the Grand Lisboa, an adjacent casino and hotel across the street from the existing property.
Sociedade De Jogos De Macau, S.A. (SJM), the company Ho co-founded, hired architecture firm Dennis Lau & Ng Chun Man (DLN) to design a property to awe patrons before they stepped on a casino floor. DLN designed a contemporary Chinese-style casino with an exterior inspired by Macau's lotus symbol, the flamboyant headdress plumes of Brazilian dancers, and the exquisite elegance of a Faberge egg.
DLN designed the Faberge egg to combine a glass and aluminum triangular structure with a kaleidoscope of moving color. The design evolved into a jeweled spectacle capable of showing full-motion video on the egg podium, as it became known. The technical demands DLN laid out stipulated the podium show more than just color washes and the technology used to light the podium evenly fill the surface area, a unique challenge given the podium's curved, oblong construction.
As the project progressed, SJM needed to provide a spectacular marquee at the front of the property. The sign design included plumes and English and Chinese channel letters that SJM wanted to light and animate with the same capabilities as the egg podium.
The Daktronics Solution
After demonstrations provided by several different manufacturers, SJM and AV consultant Shen Milsom & Wilke (SM&W) chose Daktronics' revolutionary ProPixel™ technology because it was the only product that could fulfill each and every technical demand.
ProPixel technology uses independent, full-color LED elements that may be freely arranged to fill an area of any shape or size. Each element is individually addressable and fully programmable, meaning that an array of ProPixel elements may be combined together to display animation and full-motion video no matter what shape or arrangement the elements are combined in.
For the egg podium application, Daktronics plotted an arrangement of ProPixel elements to affix to the structure between the glass triangles. Daktronics then provided the pixel pattern to the manufacturer who constructed the glass panels and the metal channels. The manfuacturer included pre-fabricated mounting points for the elements in each of the over 12,000 custom channels.
Once Daktronics determined where each of the elements mounted to the structure, engineers blueprinted the wiring and control systems for the arrangement.
For the marquee display, Daktronics hired a local company to build the Chinese and English channel letter structures. Once built, Daktronics populated the channel letters with the same ProPixel elements that populated the egg.
A local sign company also provided the marquee structure, and Daktronics worked with the company to incorporate the ProPixel elements along the front and rear plumes of the structure. The channel letters were then mounted to the face of the marquee.
The end result for both the egg podium and the marquee fulfills the architect's vision to create a bold, eye-catching media façade of full motion video and lights. The finished Grand Lisboa takes casinos to the next evolutionary step in glitz and glamour.
Equipment Description
- ProPixel LED pixel elements (58,000)
- Venus® 7000 controller
- ProPixel LED channel letters (2.4 meters tall)
- Venus® 7000 controller