I left the chilly Northeast U.S. to come to sunny Florida to attend the I/ITSEC trade show. I don’t know what this stands for, but I do know the event is full of some of the most immersive and impressive display systems on the planet. It is all aimed at the simulation market - from soldier-based training to night-vision assisted landing simulations. If you like games and simulation toys, this is the show for you.

Chris Chinnock
Senior Analyst and Editor
for Insight Media

I/ITSEC is a pretty big show that includes modeling databases, training software and hardware, graphics boards and PCs, display system and full visualization platforms. I am here to focus on the visual elements and on my first day, had a series of hour-long discussions with a number of vendors on the show floor. This was a nice way to do this event as it affords a chance to really discuss the company’s technology and industry trends.

In my talks today, which should not be viewed as comprehensive or complete, several trends are clear:

• o Projection systems are moving to LED sources
• o Higher resolution projection systems are gaining favor
• o Graphics cards to support multiple IG (Image Generation) pipelines can be
  real cost savers
• o Everyone has a blending and warping solution
• o NVG (Night Vision Goggle) support gaining in digital projection

Projection systems used in simulation systems typically operate for long hours. They eat lamps and the cost to shut down, replace them, and recalibrate can be high. Lifetimes for lamps are thousands of hours - for LEDs it is tens of thousands of hours. According to Art Banman of VDC Display Systems, their new DLP based projector with LEDs (from Luminus) has a full-ruggedized mil-spec MTBF of 40K hours. And in a benign environment, it is 70K hours. That saves money and increases up time.

Projectiondesign used the event to debut its newest projector, the F35. It is billed as the world’s first WQXGA (2560 x 1600) resolution projector, based upon a new 0.9" single-chip DLP engine. It was the world’s first for only a few days as Christie also announced the similar Christie Matrix StIM projector using the same chip set. These projectors represent the next step in the evolving DLP resolution roadmap, increasing the pixel count by 78% over the previous champ - the 1920 x 1200 WUXGA chip. Next year, look for 4K x 2K DLP projectors.

Graphics cards that support multiple IGs are going to have a big impact on this market. In many simulation applications with multiple IGs, one PC and one GPU are dedicated to each IG. And, to synchronize and frame lock all these PCs, outboard boxes like AMD’s new FirePro S400 are needed. But I was particularly impressed to see AMD’s new eyefinity graphics board, which can support up to 6 IG outputs to power 6 flat panels or projectors. While aimed at the consumer market now, this will move into simulation. The ability to not buy 5 PC, 5 graphics cards and additional synchronization boxes, saves money. Throw in the maintenance cost for this hardware and you are talking some significant savings.

One trend we have noted before, adding blending, warping and automatic calibration to projection systems or in outboard boxes, continues. Now, nearly every projector has it and nearly every system integrator has a projector or box to blend and calibrate on curved, torroidal or domed surfaces. And, what used to take days can now be done in minutes. And, as more pixels are added to these projectors, you have to use camera-based solutions. Now that is real progress.

I also saw two demonstrations of NVG capability integrated into projection systems (VDC and Barco). VDC uses a DLP platform can turn off the visible image and just display one based on illuminating the DLP chip with IR light. In the next iteration, a separate IG input will allow for the creation of an IR database of a scene that can be input independently of the visual image. Barco showed this same concept using two of its SIM7 LCOS projectors.

This is a cool show, but for long time participants, like Terry Burns of Equipe Electronics, the dynamics of the market have changed. "Twenty five years ago the market was driven by technology. We developed everything and price was secondary. Today, the customers can’t pay for as much development, so we all leverage consumer or commercial technology, and we all get similar capabilities at a about the same time. This means a greater emphasis now on price, support, maintenance and the like."

He may be right, but the industry still produces jaw-dropping images.