Single Channel Is Upon Us

MOORES LAW
Cobra realised that it would have success in this simulation market because it had the foresight to recognise the principle of “Moore’s Law” and its application for the development of projector resolution. Resolution is doubling on projectors every 2-4 years, and at the same time the price to the user is falling – as a parallel witness what has happened in the consumer television market. The drive is to increase the resolution to enable the viewer to be unable to distinguish pixels on a screen, thereby enhancing the visual authenticity of the images. The current target market resolution for domes is around 1.5 arcmins/pixel (“Retina Display” as dubbed by Apple). Our smallest Cobra 150 display already delivers 2.5 arcmins/pixel as we have adopted three cycles of the Moore’s Law principle since 2012, being 720p > 1080p (HD) > 4K (UHD) resolutions. 2021 will see the introduction of 8K. Consequently, we can fulfil market expectations on our smallest dome without the need for multiple projectors, a key USP.

COST BENEFIT
Our single channel projection solutions have a substantially reduced cost throughout project cycles because we strip out the complexity and remove many of the technical problems associated with multi-projector installs. For example, these include edge blending, warp and blending multi-channel licencing, and the need for matched projector factory calibration. As each cycle of resolution is adopted, this enables the ability to project the same number of pixels with less projectors, leading to a significant market pivot to single channel solutions.

THREAT OR OPPORTUNITY?
Depends who you ask. Our industry is changing, and it is for the better. Dare I mentioned net zero targets? We find ourselves in a position today where circumstance has been driven by a training need, manufacturers and integrators have quit rightly fulfilled that need. Doing what we do best throwing more horsepower at the problem. In order to improve the fidelity, we must increase the resolution and our only choice up until now was to increase the volume of projectors. Good for business, great for the user, bad for the pocket and the environment.

Our message is this, it can be good for business, great for the user, good for the pocket and kinder to the environment. But how? What has been humbling of recent is an increasing realisation in the industry that less can be more. Spread your budget over multiple single channel projection systems, train more users within the same timeline for a similar cost to one user in a large multi-channel system. Less complex platforms are undeniably more efficient, single projector + single image generator = more time training.

GET IN TOUCH
We seek partners, integrators and manufacturers alike to join with us, support our innovation today and plan for tomorrow.

Visit our Virtual IITSEC mini website or network with us via the Virtual IITSEC show.