Hexogon Solution Japan Inc., the Japan branch of Hexogon Solution Pte. Ltd, a creative video production company whose head office Singapore, created a sound space where you can enjoy an interactive visual experience in their demo room (Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo). Our ultra-short throw projector, the FP-Z5000 has been adopted here. It achieves projection in a special form space by combining its ultra-short throw lenses and the wide lens shift range features.
The demo room in the Hexogon Solution Japan office is about 15 square meters of a pentagon-shaped space surrounded by five walls. The lengths of the sides vary; the longest of which is about 5 meters wide and the shortest is about 2 meters. The ceiling is in a tent shape and its height is 5 meters. It was this special form space where a projection performance was made this time. The visual effects were projected onto the space as if to cover the floor and walls, and two FP-Z5000 projectors were installed on the floor and one FP-Z5000 was installed on one of the walls.
We had an interview with Mr. Hatake , who oversaw the projection engineering of Hexogon Solution Japan and asked about the installation of the projectors.
“There is a beam installed as if to pass through the center of the demo room, and here, in order to project images as if to cover the entire space, there is no other spot where we can install a projector other than on the beam. As we used the FP-Z5000 from Fujifilm, the adjustment was very easy, but it would have been extremely hard with other companies’ projectors. It was impossible to cover the entire floor unless we installed a projector in such a way that the projector went beyond the beam.”
With the unique features of the FP-Z5000, which other manufacturers’ product do not provide, the projection design this time has been successfully achieved.
“FP-Z5000 offers not only the ultra-short thrown lens but also a lens shift range of ±82% vertically and ±35% horizontally. These features helped us a lot, especially for the projection onto the floor. It usually takes about 30 minutes for the adjustment, but we only needed 10 minutes. Also, as for the projection onto the walls, we would not have been able make do with one projector without using the FP-Z5000. We installed the FP-Z5000 on the edge of the beam to project images, and it covers the entire special form space by shifting the lens to the maximum range. With other projectors, two for projection to walls and three to four projectors to the floor would be needed.”
The FP-Z5000 allows the position of the projected image to be adjusted within a wide range of ±82% vertically and ±35% horizontally (in 16:9 transverse projection). When the projector installation location is limited to a narrow space, you can expect these features to be more effective.
The visual images used for the demo room of Hexagon Solution Japan this time were mainly geometric designs and particle visual effects.
We also had an interview with Ms. Rodríguez Umaña Mariana, a Creative director from Hexagon Solution Japan, who was in charge of the content development.
“I thought when we have people to enjoy surround experience with visual content in a narrow space, they would fit into the atmosphere more smoothly by adding visual effects with geometric designs and particles rather than by adding specific images or movement. Therefore, I tried to choose abstract content as much as possible. However, I think that natural visual effects related to the natural environment of the oceans could be leveraged in such a limited space.
In the content development, I also especially put effort into make each visual effect well fit and cover the entire space.”
“I made the content not for specific people but more versatile so that the content has a wide application even if a concept is applied. We also have many other ranges of content to be applied to various environments.”
When you actually experience the projection performance in the demo room, you can feel a sense of immersion. Regardless of the age and gender, a broad range of people can enjoy the performance.
Hexagon Solution Japan said they would like to aim to deploy their projection system of the demo room to various places.