Vienna (10 October 2013), 65th INTERNATIONAL MOTOR SHOW. 12 – 22 September 2013 in Frankfurt am Main. BMW used the guiding idea of “unlimited driving pleasure” to present the technical novelties and current trends as the trendsetter in the automotive industry. The focus this year was the “BMW i” line of electric vehicles. zactrack was once again invited by BMW to put all the show cars into their true light with the help of the automated follow-system.
zactrack is an automated follow-system. Cars or people are captured with precision thanks to wireless transponders and then carefully followed by various effect-generating devices, for instance for illumination, audio or video effects. Non-stop driving in the new BMW-i3 electric cars from 9:00 AM to 11:00 PM. Under the technical supervision of NIYU Berlin and thanks to a perfect light design by Martin Kuhn, the show organisers once again created a first-rate presentation stand: Over an area of 11,000 square metres, a track was built on stilts in the form of a horizontal “figure 8”– in symbolic representation of eternity. The intention was to epitomise the motto of the vehicle presentation. From the opening of the show at 9:00 AM until its closing at 11:00 PM, 35 vehicles in various groupings drove non-stop on the 300-metre track – sometimes in groups of three, other times in a caravan of 10 vehicles. Non-stop on 14 event days! – A challenge for staff, material and technology alike. 1,000 spotlights controlled by motion thanks to zactrack Suspended above the track, a group of 900 spotlights guaranteed that the vehicles were illuminated with precision. Whether driving at 45 km/h or parked on the large presentation stage – a zactrack transponder was attached to each of the vehicles, which enabled them to be fully automatically illuminated in true show business style. There were two presentation stages with additional spotlights in the middle of the two loops of the horizontal “figure 8”. Speakers who had been given a zactrack transponder were able to move freely across the stage and were followed dynamically by the moving heads. Video and audio inserts triggered by the position of the vehicles A specific sound was heard for each car model. In addition, the right video insert was displayed on the LED wall. Recognition of the vehicles and their precise positions made it possible to launch video clips and sound samples with precision timing.
Pre-programming of the entire presentation stand using the 3D visualisation offered by “zacview” zacview’s 3D visualisation was used for the first time to pre-program the entire show. To do so, the 3D model of the presentation stand was simulated in a real-time computer graphic,including all the 1,000 spotlights and planned vehicle movements. All ArtNet commands from the lighting console were conveyed in real time and controlled the virtual spotlights in the visualisation. In this way, the cue lists could be created and tested prior to the show, long before anything had even been set up. Upon completion on site, the visualisation for testing purposes ran whilst four HOG 4 lighting consoles sent the ArtNet commands to the corresponding lights spread over 92 DMX universes.