While we’ve created several digitally-enhanced observation deck experiences, the buildings that house these attractions weren’t necessarily originally built with publicly-accessible viewing platforms in mind. The US Bank Tower in Los Angeles, formerly the tallest building west of the Mississippi, requires visitors to transfer between elevator banks in order to get to the top. In developing downtown LA’s first observation deck attraction, Skyspace, the owners and space designers asked Stimulant to envision a way to make this transition exciting, suspenseful, and purposeful. This suite of unique experiences is designed to fit within a “journey towards visibility” that begins with low-resolution installations from others at the base and ends with the grand reveal of the view and the one-of-a-kind Skyslide on the 70th floor.
The 360 Landscape lets visitors interact with an immersive virtual landscape filled with hidden secrets, simply by walking around the space.
The first experience is the 360 Landscape, a 50’ x 30’ interactive projection-mapped space which surrounds visitors with a representation of the topography of Los Angeles, as rendered from the viewpoint of the tower. An array of glistening gems hover above the landscape, beckoning users to discover their secrets. A custom-fabricated railing hides a collection of LEDs which animate in front of visitors as they approach, drawing them toward the projection. Visitors move around the immersive experience space at their own pace to crack open each gem and uncover playfully-animated graphics for points of interest that are visible from the top floor.
The ellipse also includes a highly-specialized video mode, facilitating playback of custom-produced content at up to 11,520 x 1,200 resolution, synchronized across two separate walls.
To Infinity and Below – a digitally-enhanced infinity mirror provides the illusion of a 54-story drop.
Our next attraction celebrates the height of the tower: a one-of-a-kind Infinity Mirror mimics the unique shape and lights at the crown of the building. LEDs in the fixture respond to visitor presence and animate in a spirited fashion. Color schemes can be easily changed by operations staff to celebrate holidays and local athletic team victories, among other themes. High quality mirrors in the fixture make the effect appear to drop off into infinity, leaving the true depth a mystery to guests standing on top of the structural glass as they snap their epic selfies.
Shadow play takes on a new life with playful, effervescent bubbles that mimic movements and capture playful poses.
Our final interactive visitor attraction prepares visitors mentally to elevate up the remaining 16 floors to level 70. The Reflection Wall experience playfully tracks visitors’ body shapes with thousands of effervescent digital bubbles. A timed “flash” freezes their poses for posterity (and picture-taking) before casting their bubbly avatars upward on magical winds.
The sensing and interaction for all of these pieces is driven by our StimuSense platform, which allows for unique but anonymous visitor tracking throughout a space, using a nearly unlimited number of sensors of many types. In these observation deck experiences we track each visitors’ position, direction, and velocity of movement in real-time to power environmental responses while simultaneously delivering insightful spatial and usage analytics to operations staff.
