15th Arab Games Opening Ceremony, Algeria

Modulo Pi’s media servers and auto-calibration solution deployed for the 2023 Arab Games

To kick off the 15th Arab Games, a grandiose opening ceremony took place in the heart of Algiers’ Stade du 5 Juillet. On the occasion, a video mapping illuminated the field of the Algerian stadium, accompanied by singers, dancers and musicians. To ensure the technical production of this monumental projection, VLS relied on Modulo Pi’s Modulo Kinetic media server, and for the first time, the multi-projector auto-calibration solution developed by the French manufacturer.

On July 5, 2023, the Arab Games kicked off in Algeria, host country of the multi-sport event organized every 4 years. Under the leadership of the Algerian National Office of Culture and Information, the opening ceremony came to celebrate this new edition of the Games bringing together over 1,900 athletes from 22 countries.

The highlight of the ceremony was a video mapping show – produced by the VLS company – that illuminated the Stade du 5 Juillet pitch. The projection required more than 30 Christie Boxer 30K video-projectors. To offer the best light output, the projectors were installed in a trial configuration to illuminate the different projection surfaces.

To power the projectors, VLS turned to Modulo Pi‘s Modulo Kinetic media server. A Modulo Kinetic Designer workstation was connected to 6 x V-Node servers.

For the first time, the VLS teams used Modulo Pi’s multi-projector auto-calibration solution. Available as an option, the system allows to automatically handle warping and edge blending for flat, curved or dome projections.

“For this project, we would have had a lot of warps to do manually, plus soft edges to manage, which would have required 3 nights of setup,” explains Cyril Toussaint, Technical Director at VLS.

“With the auto-calibration module, it was done in 1h30. This saved us 3 nights of setup with 5 operators.”

To achieve this, each Modulo Kinetic server was equipped with an auto-calibration dongle. The media server supports auto-calibration in multi-server configurations, as was the case for the opening ceremony.

To ensure darkness and the best possible contrast, a PoE camera was installed at night. In order to view the entire projection surface, the camera was placed at the top of the stands.

Patterns were then projected, captured by the camera, and analyzed by the auto-calibration system. In a few minutes, the warping and edge blending of all projectors was automatically managed by Modulo Kinetic and Modulo Pi’s auto-calibration solution.