Barco : lights up the Nanjing YOG opening ceremony

Following the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China hosted its second Olympic competition in six years' time. While the Beijing opening ceremony was one to remember, this year's ceremony in Nanjing raised the bar once more. State-of-the-art video projection technology provided by Barco transformed the entire floor of the stadium into a giant canvas. According to Sha Xiaolan, a well-known lighting design master in China, and the chief designer for the lighting and video at the ceremony, the spectacle was the largest projection project of its kind in the world to date.

Breathtaking spectacles and a wealth of ever-changing scenes were projected onto the stage, presenting the audience with a striking and immersive experience. To achieve this, 112 26,000-lumen Barco HDF-series projectors were deployed. Barco relied on its unique SIMCAD virtual stage design software to manage the project. The projection area was divided into 14 sections with 2x7 stitching and blending, and in each section, the same picture was projected by 8 projectors. Fiber-optic cable linked the 112 projectors to 56 sets of media servers, creating a projection on a scale rarely seen before.

Mr. Sha was delighted with the setup's performance. "Barco's projectors enable the powerful image processing necessary for this kind of large-scale stage performance. That gave us the confidence to avoid using large numbers of LED screens, which, in turn, helped us realize greater cost efficiency."