Ship’s bridge simulators at two American locations are now offering an enhanced training experience thanks to projectors from projectiondesign.
The simulators, located in Paducah, Kentucky and Houston, Texas, are run by the Seaman’s Church Institute, which asked projectiondesign integrator partner Display Solutions to upgrade its hardware after experiencing a number of challenges with its previous systems.
Both locations offer ‘twin bridge’ simulation using a pair of seven-channel, edge-blended displays, meaning that 28 projectors were required in total across the two sites. Ken Boyd, President, Display Solutions takes up the story:
“The simulators we were tasked with upgrading were becoming difficult and expensive to service. In addition, there were challenges when displaying low-visibility and night-vision training scenarios.
“To address these issues, we chose projectiondesign F32 DLP® projectors with dual lamps and an adjustable lens iris that can be controlled remote via a LAN connection. While the projectors are capable of putting very high brightness per channel on the screen – resulting in far superior daytime scenes than were previously possible – they also have the capability to turn one lamp off and put the second lamp in a ‘low power’ state. Combining this with the closing of the lens iris changes the light output of each projector for superb night-scene visualization.”
“As well as the F32 projectors, Display Solutions took care of the necessary image warping and blending, and equipped the system with projectiondesign’s ProNet asset management software for remote monitoring of projector health. Cabling was renewed where necessary to connect the projectors to a new Kongsberg image-generation system, but other AV elements of the simulators were left intact at the client’s request.”
The projector upgrade has transformed the performance of the simulators in more ways than one, according to Boyd: “The customer is now benefiting from improved brightness for day scenes, improved black levels for night-time visualization, higher contrast ratios for dusk and dawn scenes, less down-time due to reliability issues, and lower life-cycle costs. Daily monitoring through ProNet also allows maintenance to be scheduled in concert with student training, which reduces down-time even further.”
Eric Larsson, Director of Training and Education for the Seamen’s Church Institute, adds: “The design and execution of these upgrades have been reliable, functional, and responsive. The professionals at Display Solutions provided excellent service throughout the installation, training, and support phases. We’re really pleased.”
For projectiondesign, Anders Løkke, Marketing Director, says: “These two installations are a great snapshot of our strong relationship with Display Solutions, which now goes back seven years. The company has great expertise in the delivery of complex, high-quality AV systems for visualization and training, and their skill set is a perfect fit for our own commitment to providing our partners with customizable projection systems that deliver optimum performance for each specific project.
“Whatever time of ‘day’ you are trying to re-create in your simulation environment, you can rely on projectiondesign to deliver quality, service, and a rapid return on your investment.”
Tags: simulator, training, F32, simulation, ship's bridge
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