Design Electronics and 7thSense integrated Scalable Display Manager to automatically calibrate a 23-foot wide, 7-foot tall curved 180-degree projection screen at King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh — allowing the traveling exhibition to be recalibrated rapidly and precisely at each new worldwide venue.
Celebrating 100 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, IMG overhauled the production of King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh for its worldwide tour — creating one of the most technically ambitious traveling exhibitions in recent memory. The tour launched at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco before continuing to venues across Europe and ultimately concluding in Cairo in 2024.
Design Electronics, an audiovisual integration firm with 13 years of experience supporting the King Tut tour, was selected to handle the AV integration for the most recent production. The firm partnered with 7thSense — creators of the Delta Media Server, a platform trusted across theme parks, attractions, domes, and projection mapping — to deliver the immersive display system.
As the first stop in the exhibition experience, the projection display is designed to set the tone for what follows — drawing visitors into the world of ancient Egypt before they encounter the artifacts themselves. The display is 23 feet wide and 7 feet tall, configured as a 180-degree curved screen that wraps around viewers to create an immersive, enveloping visual experience.
Scalable Display Technologies worked closely with Design Electronics and 7thSense to calibrate the curved display using Scalable Display Manager. Scalable's automatic camera-based calibration ensured precise geometric alignment and seamless image quality across the full curved surface — delivering the immersive impact the exhibition required without the time burden of manual alignment.
A traveling exhibition presents a calibration challenge that a permanent installation does not: the display must be dismantled, transported, and reassembled at each new venue, then recalibrated to the same precise standard — quickly, reliably, and without the luxury of extended setup time that a permanent venue enjoys.
Scalable's automatic calibration was ideally suited to this requirement. Rather than spending hours manually aligning the projectors at each new location, the team could trigger a camera-based recalibration and have the display back to full precision in a fraction of the time.
"A traveling exhibit poses unique challenges to ensure that the displays can be set up with very high accuracy, and in a limited amount of time," noted the project team. "Scalable's automatic calibration software was a perfect fit to solve this challenge, allowing for the display to be quickly re-aligned anywhere in the globe."
After launching at the California Academy of Sciences, the exhibition traveled to Paris, France — where it was displayed at La Grande Halle de la Villette from March 23 through September 15, 2019 — before continuing its worldwide tour.
Full coverage of this installation is available at the link below.
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