Christie® Pandoras Box is synchronizing more than 100 million pixels of Float4
content at Meraas City Walk in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. City Walk was
conceived as a destination par-excellence for both locals and tourists complete with
upscale shopping, dining and living with a park-like ambience by Meraas, a Dubai-
based holding company with extensive assets in real estate, retail, hospitality and
entertainment.

Meraas approached Float4, an award-winning studio that designs and produces site-
specific interactive multimedia installations, to create a digital feature for City
Walk. The scope grew to encompass an outdoor digital experience that includes
more than 30 LED installations, nearly 30 projectors, and a water fountain show that
uses water screens. All totalled, there are over 100 million pixels that cover a
space the size of 12 football fields.

“Meraas wanted to differentiate themselves,” says Alexandre Simionescu, co-
founder of Float4. “One of the things they wanted to do was create a location that
was pedestrian-friendly. It’s not something that you find in Dubai, so they’re very
innovative. They like to question things beyond ‘can we do it bigger’ and ask ‘can we
do it better?'”

Float4 worked with XYZ Cultural Technology, a long-time Christie partner, to design
a system powerful enough to synchronize and control all 100 million pixels. XYZ
used Christie Pandoras Box Players, Managers and Widget Designer to manage the
entire digital experience.

Eric Cyr, partner and co-founder, XYZ, says, “Christie Pandoras Box includes the
strong technologies that let us achieve a synchronized and immersive space of this
size. It is a server with strong acquisition capabilities that can keep all these
playbacks in sync, and has a strong logic to create the schedules we need.”

Christie Pandoras Box allowed XYZ to seamlessly manage varied, scheduled content
– including ambiance, advertising, and show content – on different surfaces while
providing proof of playback to sync it all together. “There’s a daytime and night
show, ambience, publicity – we were able to give them a system that synced. The
nice thing with Christie Pandoras Box is that one system always has the same
content as the others. Just by changing the matrix and IP address, we were able to
have a spare player in two minutes,” adds Cyr.

Producing and managing content throughout the 1.8-kilometer space was not
without its challenges.

Mahesh Singh, Regional Sales Manager for the Middle East, commented, “City Walk
has certainly succeeded in making themselves a stand out destination. The
combination of the water fountain, projection and LED screens – and the sheer scale
of the installation – is truly a spectacle. It was a hugely ambitious project yet the
complexity and synchronization is perfectly executed with Christie Pandoras Box.”

The goal for Float4 and XYZ was to create a destination for locals and tourists alike,
which is no small feat in a city like Dubai with its many attractions. By focusing on
how Meraas could set themselves apart, City Walk has become an outdoor digital
spectacle like no other.