PUSHING THE FUTURE OF INTERACTIVE PRESENTATIONS

ATI FirePro™ V8800 and AMD Eyefinity technology help INCAS support an interactive show that capture visitors’ imaginations at Expo 2010 in Shanghai

AMD Firepro™ & INCAS Training

INCAS Training und Projekte, headquartered in Krefeld, Germany, designs and develops real-time 3D solutions for its customers using leading software from Ventuz Technology GmbH. As the worldwide training provider for Ventuz, the specialists at INCAS are experts in the software, which enables them to build stunning, animated presentations for their clients.

At Expo 2010 in Shanghai, which opened in May 2010, INCAS developed the content for an interactive display wall in the City of Dusseldorf’s pavilion. According to Dirk Elbers, mayor of the city of Dusseldorf, the sensational display, “struck the chord of the Expo visitors and numerous guests. Our stand catches on.”

Touch sensitive wallThe installation consisted of sixteen 46-inch plasma screens arranged in portrait orientation to create a 10-meter display wall. The entire wall was touch-sensitive thanks to radarTOUCH technology and ran at a total resolution of 7680 x 1080 pixels.

On the screen, visitors could explore Dusseldorf’s history and learn interesting facts about Dusseldorf using three giant, interactive wheels. A 3D simulator showed cars passing through the Rheinufertunnel, the 6th longest inner city tunnel in Europe.

In addition, visitors could play a game where they could ‘push’ discs across a surface using simulated physics. As many as ten visitors at a time could join to play the interactive game.

“The visitors to the pavilion really had a lot of fun with the interactive wall,” said Stephan Otten, CEO, INCAS Training und Projekte. “It was a lot of work, and we were really pleased with the results.”

Technology challengeGetting the wall to work required solutions to a number of technological challenges. “Christian Kuntze from *ckMEDIA, the company that had overall responsibility for the multimedia at the pavilion, came to us and said they wanted interactive content for a ten-meter-long wall,” said Otten. “We developed the show in the Ventuz software so that we had high graphical output performance on the screens.”

Typically, one high-definition output would drive four screens in a two wide by two high configuration. INCAS’s technical people, supported by rayd GmbH in Munich, determined that they could take each ‘tower’ of two high and flip them ninety degrees to create a single line of four screens. “Having worked out how we could re-orient the screens to create the 10-meter long wall, we knew that we would need four high-definition outputs to run the show,” Otten explained.

With this configuration, INCAS had a choice of three solutions. The team could split the processing across two computers with professional graphics cards and then synchronize the outputs to create the show. They could work with one graphics card and use two graphics expansion modules to achieve the target 7680 x 1080 resolution. Alternatively, they could use a pre-release model of the ATI FirePro™ V8800 Professional Graphics card, with AMD Eyefinity1 technology, which AMD had given them to try.

A key advantage of the AMD card is that it has four DisplayPort outputs. Using it, INCAS could run four independent, simultaneous high definition outputs from a single card. That meant they only needed four ATI FirePro™ V8800 professional graphics cards to run all 16 monitors. It was a simple, elegant solution.

1 AMD Eyefinity technology works with applications that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, additional panels with native DisplayPort connectors, and/or DisplayPort compliant active adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your cards DisplayPort or Mini-DisplayPort connector(s), are required. AMD Eyefinity technology can support up to 6 displays using a single enabled AMD FirePro™ graphics card with Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems – the number of displays may vary by board design and you should confirm exact specifications with the applicable manufacturer before purchase. SLS (“Single Large Surface”) functionality requires an identical display resolution on all configured displays.

© 2012 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD logo, FirePro, the FirePro logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Names used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of the respective owners. PID 52183A

A M D F I R E P R O ™ & I N C A S T R A I N I N G

Cost effective“We chose the ATI FirePro V8800 Professional Graphics card because it gave us the right combination of cost, resolution, stability and performance,” said Michael Taraschewski, project director at INCAS. “Having the AMD card meant we could dispense with multiple cards and PCs. It also made the show easier to develop and set up. We achieved a highly professional result at much lower cost. I would estimate that it cost about 30% less than either of the other options.”

“It also took away all the complexities of having to split and then synchronize the presentation,” said Otten, “which simplified the solution and reduced the chances of problems occurring. Plus, we knew from Ventuz that AMD provided excellent support, which reassured us that we would quickly get answers to any questions we had.”

High performanceThe ATI FirePro™ V8800 Professional Graphics card also provided other benefits, Otten said. “With previous cards we would not have been able to include as much animation. However, because the AMD FirePro V8800 Professional Graphics card processes information faster, we were able to give free rein to our imagination.”

The resolution of the ATI FirePro™ V8800 professional graphics card also proved to be a bonus. “We were the first company to use Chinese characters with the Ventuz software,” noted Otten. “On older cards they were difficult to read but, with the ATI FirePro V8800 professional graphics card, they were much sharper. We were really impressed with the high performance and brilliant output of the card.”

RecommendationINCAS takes on a variety of groundbreaking presentation challenges. One such project called for delivering an innovative weather presentation solution for a German TV station. The goal was to enable meteorologists and presenters to design weather maps in minutes and present them on a large-scale touch screen displays. The project also called for the ability to quickly incorporate satellite or cloud pictures, edit the scrollbar, change weather symbols, temperatures and wind directions and present them seconds later in an iPhone-like graphical user interface.

The solution went live in June 2010, and in the first ten month of operations had already been used for over 1,000 weather bulletins. The solution was based on the ATI FirePro™ V8800 professional graphics card. “Although the TV station had typically used another supplier’s graphics cards, we recommended the ATI FirePro V8800 professional graphics card based on our experience of its reliability and performance in Shanghai,” explained Otten. “The customer was very pleased with the result.”

“We chose to use the ATI FirePro V8800 Professional Graphics card because it gave us the right combination of cost, resolution,

stability and performance.”

Stephan Otten, CEO,INCAS Training und Projekte GmbH & Co. KG