A Massive Display Driven By Powerful Control Solutions

By now, almost everyone has heard about the massive new LED video display at Gillette Stadium. Yes, it is the largest main end zone video board in the country. It’s hard to miss when you enter the stadium seating bowl and it delivers larger than life imagery throughout games.

But how does everything show up on this big screen?

That’s where the Daktronics control system, applications engineering and creative services teams come in. Actually, this team and product line controls everything in the building, not just the end zone. Run by Daktronics Show Control System with Camino, a real-time render engine for the Live Events, and Venus Control Suite (VCS) for scheduled operation. What does that mean? Let’s take a closer look.

The end zone display, along with all of the displays in the stadium, is full of pixels. The main display is 11,088 pixels wide by 1,800 pixels high. To control that many pixels with pixel-accurate playback, our team collaborated closely with Gillette Stadium’s team, including the New England Patriots and Revolution, to ensure everything worked as expected.

Elevated Presentation with Camino

This huge display at Gillette Stadium enhances the game experience by showcasing dynamic content while sharing all the game statistics and data that fans crave. To achieve this, our team used innovative technologies such as Show Control, Daktronics Media Players (DMP) and Camino. These tools help drive the content to the display and create a dynamic presentation that takes the game experience to the next level. With this unified control system, we can provide a turnkey package that elevates both the game experience and the content itself.

Jhonneal Exposito, Digital Artist with Daktronics says,” Our Camino Real-time render platform allows you to visualize and tell stories with the data, going beyond just presenting numbers. The captivating animations and transitions elevate the experience beyond traditional static data frames.” 

Including new data visualizations to compare team and player statistics and represent data outside of the typical numeric fashion, content with multiple states or timelines add a new level of excitement to Gillette Stadium’s productions. They are also built in logic to automate content for an effortless workflow. And what’s the best part for Gillette Stadium? This all integrates directly into the same Display Studio workflow that they have used for years.

How does Camino create these impressive visuals in real-time? The secret lies in its real-time rendering engine which allows it to generate charts, graphics, animations, 3D spaces, display transitions, dynamic content movements and visualizations based on the logic programmed into the timeline-based content it receives.

Unlike other platforms, Camino doesn’t need to pre-render is content. It simply renders it in real-time with the special effects that viewers love to see.

Behind the scenes, there is a complex system of logic-based content created using various timelines that include keyframes, data fields and conditional or data-triggered logic. Camino effortlessly processes this content and generates stunning visuals that capture your attention. These visualizations and charts are able to respond to real-time events in the game without the need for extensive pre-rendering, ultimately improving the storytelling aspect of a game-day production.

Built for Gillette Stadium

Over roughly three months, the Daktronics creative team and applications engineers worked through a vision for the New England Patriots. Taking the team’s branding and assets, and then combining them with new functionality introduced by Camino, we were able to come up with this new vision for their game-day experience. From initial conceptualization all the way through delivery, the teams worked hand in hand to ensure the final product would impress fans at every game.

For the north end zone display, Camino templates were created to allow for more statistics, dynamic content and visualizations. This means each side or end of the display was able to show data while a lower ribbon look along the entire bottom of the display shared game-in-progress (GIP) information.

The main look shows the clock, score, down and distance information, and on the side, stats are refreshed regularly. It starts with stats for both teams and then cycles through stats more regularly as the game moves along, including passing, rushing and receiving leaders – all completely automated.

Triggers for certain content to be played are included with this integration which shows animations and different zones on each end of the display to show specific information. In the case of a touchdown, the animation will show on the lower ribbon look and right side while the left side shows a player headshot.

The real-time render capabilities of Show Control with Camino also allows for fantasy stats and data to transition on each side of the display with animations that load each player and their corresponding data. Then it shows out of town scores followed by team comparisons, looping through the information automatically on the display.

Finally, score alerts from around the league can be noted prior to the game and automatically triggered to show or can be given a designated play stoppage to trigger this content.

Altogether, Show Control with Camino and the LED display worked to bring a far more dynamic level of production to help tell the story of the game inside the stadium as well as other games around the league. With dynamic new content for out-of-town scores, fantasy stats and score alerts, fans are kept up to speed with everything happening around the league right from their seats.

Bringing Other Content to Life

The Creative Services group at Daktronics took the look/feel of the standard creative assets provided by the New England Patriots and gave the content a shot of steroids, so to speak, that elevated them in a new, exciting way.

The coordination with the teams, their graphics and our team ultimately delivered a more impactful presentation and experience for fans. Let’s be honest, that’s the primary focus of implementing a new display of this size – 60 feet high by 370 feet wide. It’s massive and deserves the content and presentation to match.

That’s why our team of experts and applications engineers took the initial ideas and concepts provided by a third party and pushed them to the max capabilities of the technology and control room for Gillette Stadium and their patrons.

“The goal with this project was to add engaging and informative visuals for every fan in the stadium,” said Eric Edens, Daktronics applications engineer. “Using the tools that Camino has to offer we were able to not only automate much of the game related information, but dynamically display more in-depth information to tell the story of the events unfolding.

“The clock and score are great, but when we automate the ability to display player statistics as plays happen the story begins to unfold. Let’s really highlight what is happening both here and across the league. Sure, these are the top five fantasy running backs this week, but why? Let’s dive into that data and let fans know. Sure, this team is winning against that team, but let’s reveal why, let’s show what is happening in that game and display it visually so it is very easy for viewers to digest. Not to mention, let’s automate it, so when the score of that other game changes, fans are updated immediately without anyone lifting a finger.”

The results were more captivating content that brought dimension and depth to the display. More movement and aesthetically pleasing visuals. The display was brought to life. And Daktronics control system and team made it happen.

There are many other Daktronics full solutions such as this at top-tier venues throughout the United States running similar productions to captivate their audiences as well, with many more to come!