The company behind the new stadium is First & Goal Inc, headed by Paul G. Allen, owner of the Seattle Seahawks and co-founder of Microsoft. The facility was built a few blocks south of downtown Seattle in the historic Pioneer Square district, on the site of the Seattle Kingdome, a 23.9 acres concrete and steel arena which opened in 1976, and saw over 73 million visitors pass through its doors during its life. Last year, 24 years to the day after it opened, the Kingdome was demolished to make way for the new stadium.
The stadium is the new home of the Seattle Seahawks football team and is designed with a 67,000 seat capacity, with 5,000 additional seats available for high profile events and 1,400 seats for fans with special needs. The stadium will also be a major facility for a number of other sports, concerts and live events.
Two giant, high definition Lighthouse LED video screens, one at each end of the stadium, display all scoring, statistical and video information to the fans. The screens use brand new Lighthouse LVP1650 (15.8mm pixel pitch) technology, together with M4 Uniformity Control, which were developed specially for this project. Lighthouse and the Seahawks chose the Electrosonic Vector Image Processor to directly drive the Lighthouse screens. One Vector processor drives each wall, giving six super high-resolution SDI video inputs, 3 HDTV and Hi Resolution graphics inputs and two channels of DVI XGA outputs, all of which are used in the game day production.
On the stadium’s south side, the LED display is built into the structure in an ultra-landscape format (32 x 9 ratio), measuring a vast 83.25ft wide by 23.75ft high, with a resolution of 1600 x 456 pixels. Situated at the opposite end of the stadium, the north screen is in portrait format and located on a massive steel tower standing over 200ft high. The north LED display measures 43.33ft by 48ft high and has a resolution of 832 x 923 pixels.
The north screen’s elevated position created a tough challenge: presenting a clear image for spectators watching the screen from almost eye-level in the uppermost seats, to far below at field level. Lighthouse’s R&D and manufacturing teams solved this with a customized panel design, in which the LEDs are angled downwards by 15 degrees. The result is a screen that is as clear to view from field level as it is from the highest seat in the stadium.
The pin-sharp, bright LED technology is essential for a venue that will hold events both in daylight and darkness. Lighthouse chose the Vector image processor for its compatibility with their new screen control, its multiple input/output capability and its flexibility of screen effects and image manipulation. Electrosonic developed special firmware for Lighthouse and Seattle Seahawks, to accommodate custom input and custom output modes. Electrosonic C-Through software is used for overall show control.
(Lee Baldock)
