Barco creates Virtual Reality Theater in Forbidden City
Part of a joint project by Toppan and The Palace Museum in China applying digital technology for the preservation and exhibition of cultural properties
Looking to showcase the centuries-old architecture and cultural relics of the Palace Museum in a large-scale setup, Toppan called upon Barco for the Virtual Reality visualization. The VR productions, “Hall of Supreme Harmony” and “Forbidden City: The Emperor’s Palace”, reproduce the palace estate during the reigns of Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong and are shown on a huge 4.2 meters high and 13.5 meters wide custom-made curved Barco screen powered by three Barco Galaxy WARP DLP™ projectors.
“The application of digitalization technology in the theater allows visitors to see more relics and admire them in far greater detail as possible with the naked eye,” said Zhu Chengru, deputy curator of Palace Museum. “The use of the high-tech will also greatly help to protect the ancient architecture and relics, while enabling the museum to show far more parts of its collection to a larger audience”.The VR theater is constructed inside the Forbidden City on a lot that is approximately 2000m2. Reproducing the site's historical appearance, the meticulously designed VR theater projects shows using three channels each driven by a Barco Galaxy WARP DLP™ projector. This triples the 1280 x 1024 pixel projector resolution and provides a total light output of 15,000 ANSI Lumens over the total screen surface. Through the use of optical blending, the system delivers a single 13.5 meter-wide picture with optimal contrast ratio. By predistorting the image inside the projector using Barco’s proprietary integrated WARP, a correct geometry is achieved on the curved screen without requiring any additional computational power of the image generators. Through the use of proprietary bicubic interpolation algorithms, the system provides unprecedented picture quality combined with crisp detail and smoothness. Thanks to motorized blending plates on the central Galaxy WARP projector, the central channel can also be used separately allowing for projections in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio.
Barco’s hightech VR visualization, through the joint project by Toppan and The Palace Museum, gorgeously reproduces the Forbidden City shimmering in gold. One can indulge the palace estate of the Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong (1660s to 1790s) in its full architectural glory and color. Virtual reality reproduces the Hall of Supreme Harmony in minute detail, including 3-D processed paintings and artifacts. Its contents are of unprecedented scale with highest possible detail.
The Palace Museum is the largest national museum in China, owning the site called the Forbidden City, the palace estate during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and a trove of over 1 million cultural relics belonging to the court collection. The museum was designated by the State Council as one of China's foremost monuments for protection in 1961 and was named a U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization heritage site in 1987. To widely utilize these important historical and cultural assets for international cultural exchange and preserve them in digital form for future generations, Toppan and The Palace Museum jointly established a research project. The Palace Museum is now one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world, totaling over seven million domestic and overseas tourists annually.
About Barco
Barco, an international company headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium, is active in three key areas of imaging technology. Barco designs and develops solutions for large screen visualization, display solutions for life-critical applications, and systems for visual inspection. Barco has a network of subsidiaries, distributors, and agents in almost 100 countries. Barco is quoted on Brussels/Euronext and is a BEL 20 and a Next 150 company.
