Rockbrook Audio Visual deployed Scalable Display Technologies to calibrate 18 projectors across a pentagon-shaped room at Ireland's Céide Fields Visitor Centre — creating the country's first 360-degree fixed-installation immersive visitor experience and bringing a 6,000-year-old Neolithic site to life.
The Céide Fields in County Mayo, Ireland, is home to the oldest known stone-walled fields in the world. Dating back almost 6,000 years and concealed beneath a natural blanket bog, the site encompasses an extraordinary system of fields, dwelling areas, and megalithic tombs — the most extensive Stone Age monument on earth.
In June 2022, the Irish Government opened a state-of-the-art visitor experience center at the site. The award-winning Céide Fields Visitor Centre features a breathtaking viewing platform on the edge of a 110-metre-high cliff, and is expected to attract 7,500 visitors over the next five years. Immersive technology is central to the experience, using CGI animation to tell the archaeological story of the Céide Fields and their discovery.
Rockbrook Audio Visual, an Irish-owned company operating across Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Europe, was selected to design and implement the audiovisual technology. With decades of experience across heritage, museum, and visitor center markets, Rockbrook set out to create the first 360-degree fixed-installation immersive experience in an Irish visitor center.
"Our goal was to create an immersive experience that enables us to travel back in time through computer-generated image (CGI) animations to what we believe life was like for the settlers 6,000 years ago," explained Jon Hughes, Managing Director for Rockbrook Engineering. "While creating 360-degree immersive experiences is not groundbreaking by today's standards, constructing one in such a small space with an incredibly complex room shape required a lot of detailed engineering and a compelling software solution to create the blending."
Hughes added, "Based on our team's extensive experience on creating blended displays, we knew there was only one viable option – Scalable Displays Technologies. We initially spoke with James Pietsch [Director, Global Accounts for Scalable]. He went out of his way to assist us and make Scalable's solution available to support our requirements, for which we are very grateful."
The room presented significant technical challenges. Shaped like a pentagon with each wall at a different angle and length — some concave, some horseshoe-shaped — the space required precise projector placement to avoid interrupting visitors' sightlines while covering every surface.
"It was a tricky space and could have prohibited us from doing what we physically wanted to do," said Hughes. "To complicate this further, the positioning of the projectors was incredibly challenging. We had to ensure visitors in the space did not interrupt the projection beams as they moved around the space, which required some of them to be placed at acute angles."
Hughes added, "The space utilizes 18 projectors to cover all of the surfaces. Scalable's software automates the calibration process and simplifies blending multiple projectors. With Scalable, we can ensure seamless recalibration on a regular basis to provide perfect blends. It simplifies the maintenance perspective for this particular application. Additionally, Scalable can work across multiple rendering clients which allows us to incorporate various types of content."
The content runs at 11,520 × 2,100 pixels and is entirely CGI animation. It opens with a high-speed flyover from the sea to the cliffs, then peels back 6,000 years to depict life in Neolithic Ireland — progressing through a series of evocative scenes before returning to the present day, where a man and children probe the boglands with long rods in search of submerged walls.
"While the software that Scalable has developed is exceptional at what it does, their team is the real selling point for Scalable Display, which you don't know about from researching a product," noted Hughes. "At the end of the day, projects are done by people rather than by software or technology. It has been a long time since I have worked with a team like Scalable. They were engaged in the project and accommodating to support project needs. We worked across different time zones with complex remote access infrastructure. Yet, we made it work, and Scalable's team was always responsive to requests for support and design discussions throughout the project."
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