Panasonic and Holovis Bring Shared Immersion to Gunwharf Quays

(MENAFN- beesbuzzpr) At Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, Holovis and Panasonic combined projection, sound, live performance and storytelling to create an immersive family attraction designed around a simple principle: some experiences are more powerful when they are shared.

Immersive technology is often associated with individual experiences; think headsets, personal screens and digital environments designed for one user at a time. At Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, Holovis took a different approach.

Visitors to the ApolloDomes installation were invited to step together into a fully immersive environment, surrounded by light, sound and storytelling. Inside the large-scale projection dome, visuals extended across the field of view, unfolding across the curved interior to create a sense of movement, presence and scale.

Crucially, it was a shared experience. Families and groups encountered the same stories together, reacting in real time not through individual screens or devices, but as part of a collective moment.

Delivered by Holovis in partnership with Landsec, the installation featured six Panasonic PT-RZ24K 20,000-lumen, WUXGA 3-Chip DLP™ laser projectors.

The result demonstrated how immersive audiovisual technology can add a new dimension to a physical destination by creating compelling reasons for families to visit, spend time together, and engage with the wider environment around them.

Creating a destination experience

The objective behind the installation extended far beyond the dome itself.

Located at Gunwharf Quays, the experience was designed primarily to attract families to the destination by offering something memorable they could enjoy together. While visitors might also shop during their time at Gunwharf Quays, the dome was not conceived as a retail environment in itself. Instead, it formed part of the wider experience of visiting the area.

“We’re seeing a real appetite for experiences,” explains Matt Dobbs, Business Development Manager at Holovis. “It’s about repositioning retail and creating reasons for people to come back out and spend time in these spaces with their friends and loved ones.”

The project reflects a broader opportunity for physical destinations: giving people reasons to visit that go beyond any single activity.

At Gunwharf Quays, that meant using immersive technology to create an attraction centred on entertainment, storytelling and shared family experiences, with the surrounding destination benefiting from the additional activity that those experiences can help generate.

Bringing immersive theatre to an everyday environment

At the heart of the project was a deceptively simple idea: to bring the high-quality immersive storytelling commonly associated with theme parks or cultural venues into an accessible public destination.

To achieve this, Holovis developed a large-scale geodesic dome structure capable of housing fully enveloping projection while remaining flexible enough for temporary or semi-permanent deployment. At Gunwharf Quays, the dome hosted a series of seasonal experiences, ranging from festive productions to Halloween-themed shows.

These were not simply passive visual displays. The experiences brought projection together with live performers, narrative storytelling and sound design to create an environment that felt closer to immersive theatre than traditional digital signage.

“It’s about bringing technology and theatre together,” Alex Kunawicz, Head of Marketing at Holovis, explains. “Ultimately, it’s not about the technology, it’s about the experience.”

Why shared immersion matters

While immersive technologies have advanced rapidly in recent years, Holovis’ approach reflects a clear philosophy: some of the most powerful experiences are those that people can share.

Unlike wearable solutions such as VR headsets, which can separate individuals into their own virtual environments, the dome creates a collective space. Families, groups and audiences experience the same moment together, reacting, engaging and connecting in real time.

“If you want a connected, family experience, the last thing you want to do is put your head into a headset,” Dobbs notes.

The dome format reinforces this principle. With visuals spanning the field of view, it creates a sense of presence that is both deeply immersive and inherently communal, combining individual engagement with shared storytelling.

Overcoming the technical challenge

Delivering that level of immersion in a real-world environment is far from straightforward.

Inside the dome, multiple projectors must work together seamlessly to create a single, continuous image across a curved surface. This requires precise alignment, geometry correction and edge blending so that transitions between projected images remain invisible to the audience.

At the same time, the system must operate reliably in a public-facing environment, often running continuously throughout the day.

To meet these demands, Holovis deployed a multi-projector solution based on Panasonic’s high-brightness 3-Chip DLP™ laser projection technology. Designed for demanding, continuous-use environments, the platform combines durable imaging performance with the precision required to produce a seamless image across the dome’s curved interior.

Equally important was the way content itself was designed for the space. Rather than relying on large, flat areas of colour that can reveal seams between projections, the creative team incorporated texture and movement into the visuals, helping to disguise transitions and maintain a cohesive image.

“It’s about understanding the medium,” Kunawicz explains. “If you design the content in the right way, the technology disappears.”

Invisible technology, immersive results

That principle extends beyond the visuals. The compact footprint of the PT-RZ24K helped Holovis integrate high-brightness 3-Chip DLP™ projection within the physical constraints of the dome while keeping the technology unobtrusive.

While projection formed the visual backbone of the experience, sound played an equally important role in reinforcing immersion, guiding attention, enhancing storytelling and helping to ground audiences within the environment.

For the project, audio systems from KV2 Audio were selected to deliver high-quality sound within the constraints of the dome structure. With limited space and a need to keep equipment unobtrusive, the system provided coverage using compact, carefully positioned loudspeakers, including CS6 tops, ESD 1.15 subwoofers and ESD 6 surrounds.

“You’d be forgiven for wondering where the speakers are,” notes Tom Weldon, Director at KV2 Audio, who helped select the technology deployed at the installation. “The goal is always the same: if you’ve done it right, people don’t notice the technology at all.”

By combining precisely positioned audio with immersive visuals and live performance, the installation created a cohesive multi-sensory experience in which the individual technologies supported the story without drawing attention to themselves.

Designed for a demanding environment

Although the dome installation was created for a particular experience at Gunwharf Quays, its technical design also required considerable flexibility.

Projection offered important practical advantages within the temporary or semi-permanent structure. Compared with large-scale fixed display installations, the projection system could be integrated within the physical geometry of the dome while keeping the technology largely out of sight.

Reliability was equally important.

“These systems are running all day, every day,” Dobbs explains. “You need technology that can perform consistently in that kind of environment.”

The PT-RZ24K is engineered to reduce the risk of interruption through its Multi-Laser Drive Engine with failover circuitry, helping to minimise brightness loss if an individual laser diode fails. A Backup Input function can also switch automatically to a secondary signal if the primary input is interrupted.

Meanwhile, the hermetically sealed optical block and high-efficiency liquid-cooling system support up to 20,000 hours of maintenance-free projection, providing the operational reliability required for demanding, continuous-use environments.

Delivering an experience people remember

For visitors, the impact was immediate. Feedback from the installation was overwhelmingly positive, with audiences responding not simply to the projected visuals, but to the overall experience: the immersion, storytelling, live elements and opportunity to enjoy something together.

For Gunwharf Quays, the experience offered another reason for families to visit the destination and spend time there. That distinction is important.

Rather than turning shopping itself into an immersive experience, the dome demonstrated how a compelling attraction can sit within a wider destination, drawing people to the area and adding another dimension to their visit, during which they may also explore the shops and other amenities around them.

Bringing people together

As immersive technologies continue to evolve, the ways in which audiences interact with digital content will continue to change. Yet the principle behind the Gunwharf Quays experience is considerably simpler.

“It’s about bringing people together,” Kunawicz reflects. “Doing something collectively, rather than individually.”

In that sense, the projection dome was more than a technical achievement. It showed how audiovisual technology can support storytelling and shared experiences while becoming almost invisible to the people enjoying them.

Perhaps the most important lesson is a timeless one: the most powerful human experiences are not always the ones we consume alone, but the ones we share.

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