NASCAR Hall of Fame fan board lit up with 250-plus of Christie's MicroTiles

August 5, 2010 by Dave Haynes

(Disclosure: I do some writing for Christie, and prepared a case study on this project)

One of the first BIG projects to come along for Christie Digital’s much-covered, much-praised MicroTiles technology is a signature installation at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, NC.

The facility opened this spring and a focal point is a grand hall that includes a race track feature called Glory Road, showing cars on a track that starts in the dirt road stock car days and runs through to the deep-ramped speedway tracks of today. Above it is a big scoreboard that is made up of 252 MicroTiles.

That’s a lot of Tiles, and what attracted the AV designers and integrators, as well as the people paying the bills, was the vivid saturated colors, seams that disappear at a distance, enertgy savings and the front access that makes servicing far easier than things like LEDs and flat panels.

“Glory Road is a centerpiece of the Great Hall and the Fan Billboard which crowns Glory Road is ideally suited to MicroTiles,” added Zoran Veselic, vice-president of Christie’s Visual Environments Division. “Whether they are displaying historic NASCAR footage or bringing the excitement of a live race to visitors, the Christie MicroTiles are the largest installation of the technology, to date, and deliver a larger-than-life experience fans have never seen before.”

One of the biggest reasons that NASCAR is as popular as it is right now is its absolute focus on the fan experience. NASCAR has jumped the gap from an interest to a lifestyle for millions of people, and you can see how that gets worked in at this new shrine to racing.

The big MicroTile’d Fan Billboard runs archival footage from the early days of stock-car racing and video montages through the day, but also schedules in an interactive application called the NASCAR Hall of Fame Showdown. When guests pay to get in, they get personalized “hard cards” – like building access cards with embedded RFID chips. Visitors can use those cards at 50 interactive kiosks throughout the attraction, including four in the great hall that sync up with the big MicroTiles screen looming nearby. So people can put their cards on a reader and compete on a trivia screen running on the giant screen.

As noted, I do some work for Christie but I’d like this technology anyway. It’s great to see examples of digital displays that are at the scale and position they need to be, and then go beyond playing loops and actually engage with vistors.

Very cool. Also a great city. LOVE Charlotte.

Interesting side note: The Hall is owned and run by the city and its visitor bureau. NASCAR just rents it. There was an Olympics-like bidding war to get it, and the winning city was obligated to build the space.

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