Arizona is well-known as the home of the Grand Canyon, but there’s another natural phenomenon that has been bringing visitors from around the world to the northern Arizona desert for years: Meteor Crater, touted as the “best-preserved meteorite impact site on Earth.”
Meteor Crater was created after collision between an asteroid and Earth about 50,000 years ago. It’s nearly 1 mile across, 2.4 miles in circumference and more than 550 feet deep.
The Meteor Crater Interactive Discovery Center prepares visitors for their look at the adjacent impact site with 24 interactive displays and exhibits detailing the origins of meteors and their encounters with the Earth.
Behind the Meteor Crater Center AV Upgrade
Formations of Portland, Ore., recently updated the discovery center’s underlying hardware that delivers the AV content and enhanced some exhibits with new videos and upgraded presentations.[related]
The company also devised the original Meteor Crater exhibits about 15 years ago.
A new video from Formations ranks the density of the Center’s meteorite compared to a car, motorcycle and horse.
Visitors can try their hands at guessing the order of weight by manipulating a row of rotating pictorial cubes then the video reveals the correct—and surprising—results.
Formations also created Crater Perspectives, an exhibit featuring artifacts housed in wall-mounted cases and portrait busts of famous scientists, which is displayed on a 55-inch LCD.
Being There for the Boom
One new experience at the Meteor Crater discovery center allows visitors to Put Yourself at Ground Zero when the meteorite impacted the site.
Formations outfitted a hexagonal chamber with a 55-inch LCD, flashing RGB light effects, a sound track complete with sonic boom and a hot air burst that help them imagine what happened 50,000 years ago.
A video-enabled microscope in The Lab allows visitors to examine three rock specimens formed by the impact and view them up close on monitors.
New touchscreens and monitors frame a large world map in the last exhibit, Impact Earth, which shows 20 other impact sites around the world.
“The Center took a big jump in refreshing its underlying technology,” says Christopher Williams, AV producer/engineer at Formations.
Alcorn McBride at Heart of AV Overhaul
The modernization included: an Alcorn McBride DMX machine, digital audio machine (AM4), A/V Binloop HD with three reproducer cards, V4Pro show controller and ShowTouch 7-inch touch panel interface.
The Alcorn McBride V4Pro replaces an older show control system from another manufacturer that was “much more complicated” to operate, says Williams. The V4Pro powers exhibits and their monitors, touchscreens, as well as other interactive exhibit components.
The V4Pro controls the changing light effects, starts the heater for the hot air burst and triggers the sudden warming of the chamber in Put Yourself at Ground Zero while the A/V Binloop HD plays back video content.
Williams used the Alcorn McBride DMX Machine and DMX Ramps to make the lighting effects in WinScript.
“The RGB lights just make the chamber feel more dynamic, and the color and intensity of the effects track the events in the video fairly well,” he says.
The V4Pro also provides DMX control of 20 points of pulsing lights on the world map in Impact Earth while the A/V Binloop HD plays back news and animations of the Chelyabinsk meteor impact.
Alcorn McBride’s A/V Binloop HD also plays back the attract loop and main video program for Crater Perspective.
The Alcorn McBride DMX replaces the exhibit’s old lighting controller; DMX control of lighting levels brings up display case lights to highlight artifacts and illuminates the scientists’ busts.
The Digital Audio Machine (AM4), controlled by the V4Pro, now plays a streaking comet sound on demand giving staff better control over the sound effect that had formerly been looped on a CD player.
