A 360-degree digital projection panorama in China

Immersing the audience in a dynamic panoramic picture by reproducing the history with digital technique.
(By Miao Wei, Shenyang Timesoft Interactive displays art Engineering Ltd, Shenyang, China)

Timesoft Interactive Displays announces their creation of a 360-degree digital panorama – the first of its kind in China.  Completed in 2014, this project is located in the Memorial Hall of theShandong-Southwest-Battle in Jinxiang,Jining city, Shandong Province. (山东省济宁市金乡县-鲁西南战役纪念馆.)  Specifically, the immersive projection screen has a 120-meter perimeter and 12-meter height was set up in a panoramic viewing hall of the museum with a diameter of 42 meters. The projections give a 12-minute dynamic imaging cycle, concentrating on true stories from the war that happened in 1946, during the revolutionary period of China.  The Southwest Shandong Campaign (鲁西南战役）took place in 1947 between the People's Liberation Army (led by the communists) and National Revolutionary Army (led by the nationalists).  Our project depicts an important battle of the campaign that took place on the hills of Yang Shan (Yang Mountain).  General Bocheng Liu and Xiaoping Deng led the communist side and their troops were dubbed the Liu-Deng Army.  On the nationalist side, General Ruike Song led the 66th infantry.  This battle set the strategic platform for the PLA for the campaign.

In the exhibit, the zone between the screen and the audience has a faux terrain with models, such as those used in traditional panoramas, and the 12-minute cycle has special effects relating to war such as lighting and smog. In this project, the attempt was made to use modern digital techniques to make characters and scenes, combining actors with digital models, not an easy task, and involved determining the perspective relation between the actors’ location and the scenery in moving footage and the creation of historic figures through virtual 3D.   This 360-degree projected panorama is part of the exhibits at the memorial hall.  The rest of the exhibits depict the campaign with historical pictures, documents, and other relics.  Shenyang Timesoft Interactive displays art Engineering Ltd specializes in the integration of modern digital technology in museum showcases.  Besides 360-videos, they have also done showcases with 180-video, landscape art and models, 3D printing of historical figures among other things.  Based in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, they have also worked on a few projects with the Luxun Academy of Fine Art, which is well known for its contribution to a very large number of panorama paintings in China.