Highly Immersive "Barco Virtual World" Opens Its Doors at AED Studios

	Barco's HDX-W20 Flex

February 27, visualization specialist Barco and AED Studios, part of audiovisual specialist AED group, officially inaugurated "Barco Virtual World," a virtual experience events hall at the site of AED Studios in Lint, Belgium. The 1,000m2 hall is equipped with ten of Barco's high-brightness HDX-W20 projectors and a 90m long screen -- the largest in the Benelux -- to provide an immersive virtual experience in full HD. As a technical partner of Barco Virtual World, Barco is happy to help AED Studios to push the limits of projection and corporate event infrastructure to create a unique experience for AED's customers.

A longstanding customer of Barco, the AED group purchased the Eurocam Mediacenter in 2013, renaming it AED Studios. The 55,000m2 site is home to an extensive range of film studios (45m² < 3000m²), each offering an enormous array of multifunctional possibilities. "The studios perfectly complement our rental, sales, repair, logistics, and leasing businesses," says Glen Roggeman, CEO of AED Studios. "When buying the studios, we immediately dreamt of converting one of the halls into a unique 'virtual experience' space, in order to underscore our commitment to state-of-the-art AV technology. It was only logical to team up with Barco, the world leader in projection technology."

As a technical partner to the project, Barco will provide AED Studios with visualization equipment, including HDX-W20 projectors, LCD displays, and digital signage media servers. The projectors, which each offer 20,000 lumens of light output, project images onto a 90m-long screen with a total of 17,000 pixels. Thierry Heldenbergh, managing director of AED Display: "The set-up allows us to offer highly immersive projection at the highest possible resolution. Consequently, Barco Virtual World is the ideal location for organizers of corporate events, congresses, meetings, live television programs, etc. who are looking for ways to provide an out-of-the-ordinary experience. They can use either our standard HD content or shoot their own images and display these -- either way, they're sure to leave the audience in awe."

The AED group has been a Barco partner for many years. "AED's impressive product offering includes our high-brightness projectors and top-range image processing capability as well as LED displays and our corporate AV product range," says Wim Buyens, senior vice-president entertainment and corporate at Barco, "and we are constantly strengthening our ties to bring more compelling value to our mutual customers. We are proud to have a Barco hall in this exceptional setting that the AED Studios are. This 'virtual world' project is a fantastic way to highlight Barco's expertise in projection and showcase its endless possibilities to the event market."