60 projectors at 26,000 watts each were synchronized to create a single seamless image with a resolution of 4592 x 2048 pixels on a 420,000 square foot surface. Wow.
"Presently, Hoover Dam can produce over 2,000 megawatts of capacity and a yearly average generation of 4.5 billion kilowatt hours"
2,000,000,000W capacity, but if the annual production is 4,500,000,000,000W then it's far short of the 17,520,000,000,000W max if it produced at peak for 365 days.
So really, the Hoover Dam averages 513,698,630W (arbitrary precision).
1,560,000W / 513,698,630W = 0.3% of the Hoover Dam typical production to power the projectors.
I think the effects in the intro were pretty cool. E.g. seemlessly projecting the texture of the dam and then having blocks of concrete move out of the way to reveal the inner "gears" of the dam.
Those effects have been perfected for a while. With high lumen HD projectors coming into their own at the same time it has created some amazing effects. I guess I'm just trying to say that if this interests you, there are a lot of videos out there that I think are a lot cooler.
This [1] is the first company I saw doing it. This [2] is their 10 year anniversary showcase. Now just about every NBA and NHL team incorporates them into their pre-game shows. [3] [4]
[1] is definitely cool, and similar, though done at a much smaller scale. The Hoover Dam looks to be about 10 times as wide and ~5 times as high as that building. So you're talking about 50 times the surface area to project on. Projecting onto a perfectly flat and perfectly rectangular basketball court is hardly the same challenge though.
Whether the technology is revolutionary or not, my point was that it's rather dismissive to call this "a very large billboard". There's definitely some cool artistic features to the presentation that are not in any way representative of a billboard.
Oh yeah, I agree. I was mentioning them since your comment only mentioned the effects and not the practical aspects of the display. I just figured you might be interested in some other examples like the one you mentioned.
I agree it's more commerce than art, but having seen more than my share of this kind of hype presentation and after seeing the video, I think they did a decent job of acknowledging and integrating the surface/environment they were using.
For the Grand Coulee Dam's laser light show, they use 4 large frame Coherent Sabre Lasers - 2 red 12-watt Krypton lasers, and blue and green 30-watt argon lasers. That would probably be too complex to set up for this one publicity stunt.
Companies like Image Engineering out of Baltimore have 50 watt solid state laser projectors that can run on fairly nimble power sources without water cooling like the Sabres and other large frame ion lasers.
Laser projectors are good for beam effects and vector art but won't be able to touch Christie and Barco projectors if one managed to scan a raster image with them. (Yes, some Christie and other projectors use lasers an an illumination source but it's much different.)
I think it's important when considering lists like the ones you've linked to examine the dates these structures were built. For its time, the Hoover Dam was the largest in the world, but isn't simply the dam itself that represents an impressive feat of engineering. The work that went into diverting the Colorado River was (and still is) probably one of the most remarkable efforts undertaken, with the likely exception of the Three Gorges Dam. Either way, it's important to remember that this was a structure started in the 1930s. The age, materials available, the material science known at that time, and so forth are the reasons structures remain important samples of architectural engineering long after they've been eclipsed by more modern developments. Hence why it's difficult to tell if you're genuinely curious or simply levying unwarranted criticism against categorizing the Hoover Dam as a "marvel."
In other words, it's in our nature, for whatever reason, to continue building structures that grow ever larger, require greater understanding of materials--better materials, too--and shadow efforts of the past with new, more impressive, modern designs. However, that doesn't supplant those past efforts simply because they've been outdone. Otherwise, we wouldn't still consider the Great Wall of China one of the world's wonders (which in spite of our present technology still remains an incredible structure mostly unsurpassed by modern efforts).
You could also examine other answers to this same question if you don't find my response convincing [1].
I think "of its time" is probably left out of that top engineering marvels quote. Look at what else was achieved by 1939 when they finished all the major construction.
