At the Royal Navy’s largest training establishment, located in Fareham, Hampshire the simulators for the Maritime Warfare School (MWS) and Surface Stream have been upgraded with second generation Christie projectors.
The school provides training over a range of disciplines, using two identical Consort ship bridge simulators to deliver mission realism and a seamless transition from daytime to night-time operational scenarios.
Saville Audio Visual were contracted to upgrade the visual systems and specified the move to 20 Christie DS+6K-M projectors, nine on each bridge with two spares, from the previous Christie Matrix 3000 DLP platform. Saville AV partner Softbox (SBL) undertook project management, at the same time upgrading the cabling infrastructure to DVI fibre and the connectivity from Serial to USB for the 64 PC workstations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR5oqzFclOQ
The Christie M Series features embedded warping, blending and colour matching capabilities with SXGA+ resolution and 6,300 lumens output. The blended images are displayed on a cylindrical wall offering a 270° (9 x 30°) horizontal field of view.
Bridge simulator manager, David Goddard commented: “We saw this as a low-risk option. The support aspect was important but we knew from experience that the Christie projectors were extremely reliable, and it was reassuring to know that we were dealing with an installation team that knew the system.”
As HMS Collingwood operates to 90%-plus of its capacity from 8am to 11pm five days a week, racking up 2,500 projection hours per year, they also needed to be convinced that their chosen projector could perform over these duty cycles. “We could see immediately that the projectors were brighter and much sharper. With the screens painted pale grey rather than white, it gives us improved depth of field and a better 3D effect, since it can be very difficult to judge distances accurately in a simulator.”
With Christie’s senior customer support engineer, Pal Roppa supporting the Saville AV team, overseeing the calibration as well as the blending and warping accuracy, the installation has been a complete success.
