Raptors Not Reindeer Wandered Dallas Zoo Grounds Over Holidays In Projection Mapping Show

January 2, 2025 by Dave Haynes

If you have kids, or there’s still quite a bit of kid in you – and you happen to live in the Dallas area – that city’s zoo is winding down a projection-driven show that ran ran through the holiday season but featured raptors instead of reindeer.

Semi-transparent scrim screens positioned around the oldest zoo in Texas, starting around Thanksgiving, for an event called Dino Lumina: A Jurassic Adventure.

Using rear projection from a pile of Christie 3DLP 30,000 lumen 4K projectors, visitors saw life-like dinosaurs, from herbivores to pterodactyls, raptors, and more, all wandering around in the zoo’s forested areas. Projection mapping also lit up trees. The show was developed by the firm Paintscaping and the 3D soundscape was created by the Academy Award-winning team the sci-fi film Arrival.

More than 65,000 people have come through the exhibit since it opened. The last night is Saturday.