A Buyer's Guide to Shared Immersive Spaces
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A buyer’s guide to shared immersive spaces What to consider when specifying your new immersive space 1 This guide is for 5. Where will your anyone who is immersive space looking to create be installed? or buy a shared 15. immersive space What will your immersive space be used for? It’s based on our own experience of providing shared immersive spaces 27. to hundreds of clients What support over the last +12 years. will you require? And at the end, there’s a handy checklist to help you compare the options out there. 33. How can you try before you buy? 37. A checklist to compare the options 2 3 What kind of installation will suit your space? One of the first things to consider • Is it going to be a flagship facility is where you want your shared that makes a strong visual immersive space to be installed. statement? (Will it, for example, For example: be taking pride-of-place in a sales suite, or a visitor centre? Or will it • Do you have large, open areas be more of a behind-the-scenes, which can easily accommodate a operational system?) standalone, off-the-shelf structure such as a dome, or a cylinder? • Will it be tightly integrated into your corporate IT systems (and • Do you have limited space? maybe also your room control (Maybe, for example, you’re systems)? restricted by fixed walls and columns? Or by standard ceiling How you answer these questions heights? Or you want to retro- will have a big influence on the type fit something into an existing of solution you buy and the provider meeting room?) you choose to work with. So it’s worth thinking through all the details • Do you want a fixed installation, and developing your specifications which will be fully and permanently accordingly. integrated into your building? (Maybe you’re even considering building a whole new extension to house the immersive space?) • Are you looking for more of a pop-up structure, that can be easily relocated to another spot or another location entirely? Or taken out to conferences and exhibitions? 4 5 What kind of installation will suit your space? Igloo’s answer In this regard (like so many others), amassed the experience needed to we don’t have any vested interests. understand what will work best for any space. Over the past +12 years, we’ve installed solutions for clients with And here’s a quick overview... a huge range of needs, and we’ve Immersive workspaces Cylinders Any size you like From 5-to-9-metres Open-fronted cylinders Cubes Available in 180°, 220° and 270° From 2.5-to-3-metres Domes Custom builds From 6-to-21-metres The sky’s the limit Custom builds - A 4D-experiential projection tunnel at the London Boat Show 6 7 What kind of installation will suit your space? We’ll also work with you to choose the best display and audio technology for your new immersive space. For example, more-and-more of our And when it comes to considering clients are wondering whether to go the display tech, there are big three with an array of LED panels or a rig areas to take into account: of projectors. • How the display itself will look Our Igloo IMP is display-agnostic, as - how bright you need it to be, well as content-agnostic - so it doesn’t how much control do you want matter to us whether your immersive over contrast, how lifelike does installation ends up using projection the image need to be? or LED, and we can advise you on what will suit your installation best. • The cost - what works best for your budget? How about the audio? • And the space you’re installing in - what are the HVAC Part of the fun of working in an For clients who are looking to get considerations, how easy will Igloo is the opportunity to combine a little more from their sound system the tech be to maintain and cinematic 360° imagery with studio- we can specify a range of immersive upgrade? quality 360° soundscapes. sound solutions including ground- shaking 9.1 Sennheiser AMBEO These are some big questions - We typically specify a high-end solutions. and, because they’re so big, we’ve 5.1 surround sound system. It’s already put together a white paper meaty enough to engulf you in to talk through them. We’d urge you sound, and clean enough to deliver to give it a read for the full story. studio-quality audio. 8 9 What kind of installation will suit your space? And we can work with you in several ways to specify an optimum solution for you. A fully turnkey, off-the-shelf A modified structure A fully-custom design Retrofit an existing space Purchase an Immersive solution Media Player (affectionately known as IMP) When you purchase a standard Maybe you’ve not quite got the We can build something totally from If you’ve got a meeting room, You can also purchase an IMP as Igloo cylinder or dome, it comes space for a standard cylinder or scratch. That’s another benefit of or office, or classroom, or any a standalone product. with everything you need - frame, dome, so you want just part of having everything in-house, under space that you want to kit out with cover, screen, display technology, one? Or maybe you want an open- one roof – the software developers, immersive technology, we can help Maybe you’ve already got an sound system, AV cabling, and the fronted cylinder for a more open the draftsmen, the graphic designers, with that too. immersive system (for example, appropriate IMP and software package experience? Or maybe you want the craftsmen, and the muscle-power. an existing CAVE, with an ageing for your use case. to adapt the solution to meet your We use a combination of LIDAR media player), which could be needs (by putting in more doors, We worked with Deakin University scanning and artificial intelligence supercharged with a brand new Although many of these off-the-shelf for example, or adding in floor to specify a custom-built cylinder to map a room, create a bespoke IMP? Or maybe you’re already Igloo systems stay put, an added projection, or making it bigger, that was integrated into a brand new projection template, specify the working with your own designers advantage is that they are semi- or smaller, or whatever). extension for its Faculty of Arts and right display, and configure the and/or AV systems integrators and/ portable, so they can be moved from Education. IMP to suit the space. or facilities manager, and you’re one location to another. There is also These modified solutions account looking for the most flexible and more flexibility about the business for a large proportion of our Igloo Following this route, the room capable technology to power the model - in that they can be rented sales. That’s perhaps because we itself becomes a shared immersive space? or leased as well as bought. use modular systems, which can space. easily be added to (or subtracted Equally, you may be a systems Loughborough University purchased from). Plus the technology can be Mid Sweden University only had integrator working with a client, a standard 9-metre Igloo dome that’s upgraded (or downgraded) at will. a top-floor room available for its and specifying an immersive used in its Chemical Engineering Risk and Crisis Research Lab, space on their behalf? If so, all the Department. As before, you’ll still get everything and a dome or cylinder would functionality that could possibly you need to run the space. compromise the floor space. So be needed is available on tap and we worked with the University packaged together in a single IMP. to turn the room itself into an We installed an open-front 5-metre Deakin University immersive space. cylinder for Cushman & Wakefield, to squeeze into its only available space. Loughborough University Mid Sweden University IMP Cushman & Wakefield 10 11 What kind of installation will suit your space? Also, because we’ve been doing immersive technology so well, and for so long, we’ve already overcome the type of quirks, complications and considerations that are inevitably involved in creating an immersive space. So, for example, we can advise you We can also consult on: on the idiosyncrasies of HVAC in an • Screen options immersive installation, on the best way to handle working with multiple • Roof options projector types in the same space, • Lighting options the acoustics of a 360° design, and • Sound options so on, and so on. • Power requirements • HVAC • Custom software development for integrating with custom peripherals • Ambisonic and spatial sound design • And all the considerations there are when integrating your new immersive space An open-fronted cylinder with floor projection for the AgriTech Centre of Excellence 12 13 What do you want to use your immersive space for? How you and your teams will use the space determines what content you’ll run and the level of technical complexity required for it. Here are a few ways you might use your immersive space: 1. 3. A sales suite? Visualisation? You want to create standout immersive You want to bring concepts and sales pitches and executive briefings designs to life, to engage stakeholders with content that literally surrounds and make it easier to reach better your audience in your brand and its decisions faster. You need to access story. You could use 360° videos or tools such as Building Information CGI content to get your message Modeling (BIM) in a shared space with across - and make it stick.