Doha, Qatar’s capital and largest city, lies on the Persian Gulf. Like its Gulf neighbor, Dubai, the city has experienced rapid growth built on oil and natural-gas industries, but has recently diversified. In 2006, Doha hosted the 15th Annual Asian Games, which pitted 45 nations against one another and, like the Olympics, staged elaborate opening and closing ceremonies. These massive celebrations were viewed by hundreds of thousands of attendees and at least three billion television viewers.
To showcase those ceremonies, Khalifa Stadium, a 50,000-seat soccer stadium, added a media facade that allowed the stadium audience to easily view the ceremonies as they occurred. To acquire such a massive viewing arrangement, the Doha Asian Games Organizing Committee commissioned |2011| (Santa Clara, CA), an LED videoscreen manufacturer for audiovisual and architectural applications.
Shaped like a half-moon, the LED screen measures 541 ft. (165m) long x 129 ft. (39m) high, and covers 48,400 sq. ft. (4,500 sq. meters). Element Labs fit 20,000 units of one of its core products, the Versa® RAY, against the screen’s support structure. The Versa RAY RGB linear tubes were set at a 77mm pixel pitch. Each weatherproofed Versa RAY unit, which measures approximately 10 ft. (3m) and forms a ¾-in.-diameter tube, was set vertically on a pre-existing, modular, truss infrastructure.
Chris Varrin, Element Labs’ co-founder and VP, discussed the logistics and challenges of building one of the world’s largest, freestanding LED videoscreens in a desert environment: “To establish the videoscreen’s sheer size, we began by building a proof-of-concept prototype, which was a 100-sq.-meter LED video mockup of the media facade. Once built, it was tweaked and tested until the customer was happy with the pixel brightness and pitch separation.”
Element Labs further developed the mockup to meet the criteria of wind loading, ambient daytime temperatures and other weatherproofing concerns.
To resolve the wind-load issue, the LED videoscreen was designed as a series of vertical ribs, onto which the Versa RAY LED modules were mounted. The gaps between each rib component allow the wind to pass through the screen. Although the gaps are visible when examined closely, the LED screen operates at night, when it appears opaque.
To deal with daytime temperatures of at least 115°, most assembly was completed at night, when the area was significantly cooler.
How do you distribute a video signal in real time to provide a complete image that simultaneously fills a 48,000-sq.-ft. display? Because screen size defines video-signal distribution, Element Labs divided the videoscreen into many smaller viewing segments (think tile sections) and reduced the bandwidth to allow the fastest possible pathway to establish simultaneous image distribution. After the Versa RAY modules were set in place, the Element Labs team immediately installed power and data hookups to the screen.
Sharif Hashisho, the Asian Games’ director of ceremonies and cultural events, said, “At every Olympic ceremony, many new technologies are introduced. In our opening/closing ceremonies, we introduced our new LED stadium display. The presentation of the screen has made both the Beijing and London Olympic organizing committees worried about if and how they can top our screen.”