The second ever FlyOver America installation is at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. ProVideoPlayer 2 (PVP2) is powering playback for FlyOver America’s informative and engaging pre-boarding video experience.
FlyOver America is a fully immersive virtual flight ride that brings guests on an aerial tour of some of the greatest landmarks and regions throughout the United States. Using the latest virtual ride technology and special effects including wind, mist, scents and moving seats, FlyOver America is designed to make visitors feel like they are actually flying. The pre-boarding session combines multiple video and audio clips to build excitement for the flight experience and present safety information to visitors in a fun and entertaining way.
Building on experience from past projects and evaluations of more expensive video playback systems, Soaring Attractions selected PVP2 as the best fit for its needs. “For all of our projects, we try to design a system that runs almost entirely automatically,” said Eric Sambell, director of construction and technology at Soaring Attractions. “We carefully select each component of the system, looking for the simplest and best-value solution that will reliably achieve what we need to accomplish. Renewed Vision’s PVP2 struck the right balance of capabilities, simplicity and price point.”
PVP2 delivers the seamless, precisely-timed playback that FlyOver America needs, while avoiding the complexity and expense of more elaborate solutions that Sambell considered. “In addition to reliable, high-quality playback, we wanted to be able to arbitrarily crossfade between clips and loop them,” he explained. “We previously tried using digital signage players for a similar application, but they weren’t up to the task. There were more expensive solutions that could do the job, but beyond the added cost, they were way more complicated than PVP2 for configuring our shows. Renewed Vision has really simplified the process. I can easily set up my crossfades and dissolves, tell it where to start and when to loop, and it all just works.”
Running on an off-the-shelf Mac Mini system, the initial installation of PVP2 was equally easy. “There was very little set up effort required,” Sambell recounted. “I plugged in a monitor and my projector, and it worked right out of the box. Bringing in our content was just as straightforward – we just copied the files onto the Mac Mini and dragged them into our PVP2 sequence, with no ingest process required. The simplicity of the software lets us focus on getting exactly what we want on the screen for a really nice, crisp presentation.”
Combining the affordable price point of the software with running on a standard Mac Mini, I’d estimate PVP has saved us at least 50 percent compared to alternative systems while giving us the exact right features we needed,” concluded Sambell. “I would definitely choose PVP2 again for similar uses in the future.
