Superbowl.... Lasers or no, what is your guess?

[slicklasers]

With it being an indoor stadium, I think that they will have some lasers... What do you all think???

[neutrino]

Lets hope so. I still don;t understand the rules of American Football. I watch it for the commercials and half time show. Oh and the beer of course.

Cheers
Rich

[slicklasers]

No lasers... ton of led screens..

[neutrino]

Yea it looked real sweet

[Shawnb]

32 barco projectors and image mapping that was the "GAG" this year

[DrEvil]

Madonna - Growing old without aging. lol The HT show wasn't too bad. It could've been better though. I'll watch the commercials online sometime. All I got over here was horrible AFN commercials. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't want to know.

[telmnstr]

I think there are some new moving heads that have really tight beams on them, that's what you saw running behind the stage. I ran across a press release somewhere about them, maybe 12 degrees or something.

As someone else pointed out the field projection. High End Systems (bought by Barco I think? and Cisco bought Barco?)
was big into that.

[Jem]

I think there are some new moving heads that have really tight beams on them...

Probably Clay Paky 'Sharpies', see here...

http://www.thomann.de/gb/clay_paky_s...oving_head.htm

They seem to be using these a fair bit on British TV at the moment.

[mixedgas]

Lasers for big stadiums have a downside. TV broadcast rules the game, either football, or soccer, from the game timing to half time, to what effects are used in the stadium.

The reason being the metal halide lighting can take a good six minutes to come back up to the color temperature and stability needed for broadcast. If not fitted with "Hot Restrike" the lamps can take 10 minutes to cool down before restart is possible. No producer will want to readjust the color balance and white balance on a matched set of broadcast grade cameras if he does not have to.

Few facilities, be they stadiums or car dealerships, are fitted with a means to kill the lighting.

I've gotten burned by this before. The Solution is to pack in enough tungsten lighting or moving fixtures with shutters to bring the field close to broadcast grade lighting. This is expensive.

This restart time is a eternity in the TV world, and is why you do not see lasers at more events. TV is far more important then half time.

The cost of adding hot restrike is less then 1% of the total lighting install cost. However it is just not thought of by the architectural lighting designers who do stadiums, as a significant issue. In other words its not on the lighting installation specifications.

Steve

[Shawnb]

im sure all the stadium light had the roller shutters on them there the MUSCO ones most arenas ive been in on tour are fitted with them also

[mixedgas]

The two major stadiums I would have to deal with are sadly, not so equipped. Nor are the local college ones.

The local arena can black out.

Steve

[telmnstr]

Yes! I know. A local lighting dealer had some Clay Paky moving mirrors listed for sale. I went to Clay Paky's site just to see what they had, and there were ads for the tight beamed thing. It's full brightness at the tight angle AFAIK, not just iris'ed down.

[telmnstr]

I have a DVD from Lighting Systems Design, Inc. They were gracious enough to send me a copy. It has a full stadium laser show.

http://www.highend.com/news_events/n...asp?news_id=21

Video is supposed to be here:
http://lsdi.com/gallery/gallery3.html
Top link.

[mixedgas]

Long ago there was the High End Systems "Emulator", which was a 300 or 500 watt parabolic xenon lamp and a pair of GM20s as scan mirrors. The beam was considerably narrower then 12degrees. Very popular in clubs at time, and not inexpensive. 12 of them in a club running in sync was impressive.

GM20s actually did a good job in this application.

Steve

[neutrino]

oh the emulator - now that brings back some memories

[telmnstr]

Ah those were general scanning? I don't think I ever saw them running. A local club called "The Abyss" had a few of them. Friends said they were there once and they were projecting the lyrics along with a Rage Against the Machine song with them.

As a fan boy of stuff made by High End Systems, I remember reading up on them quite a bit. I think they were 300 watt xenon lamps. They were very short arc, and pretty expensive (about $300+ each?) Not sure life, I think 500-750 hours.

The Abyss closed down and the equipment was auctioned off. Someone local bought it, but it has never resurfaced. Randomly a guy stopped into our hackerspace and we got to talking. He was the assistant manager for the club and had tons of details. He started there by doing light programming, but then escalated up to manager. I asked about the Emulators and other hardware, where did it go. He knew who bought it, but likely it's all in a warehouse.

One of the few videos of emulators in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYYBIxu03HA

I think the controller supported doing text with them and other such stuff. I've owned some Intellabeam 400s, and probably tore down and rebuilt at least 3 of the Intellabeam controllers (2 LED ones, 1 LCD one.)

That same club had Technobeams in it's later days (I remember seeing Type O Negative there, Sister Machine Gun, Chemlab.) Trackspots in the earlier days.

Emulators still show up on eBay, and people still bid on them! Someone somewhere must be still using them.

I'd still like to get my hands on a few and a controller someday to play with them. The bulb prices are scary though. I own four Roboscan 1220's and those things use $170/ea lamps. Grr. Took two to MAGFest this year. Only had time to get one up and running, it did a nice backdrop. So heavy though, no easy way to mount the thing because of the weight. Had dreams of replacing ballasts in Roboscans with solid state ones, till I got the quote on the ballasts from china.

Still want to land some trackspots some day, and replacing the Roboscans with Technobeams wouldn't be bad. The Roboscans eat a bunch of juice.

[Shawnb]

Ingot a bunch of Emulators i love themwhen i do shows being i the us it gives me some "audiance" scan Effects along with the lasers over head