February 2018 – HistoryLand’s interactive centre in Kraków, Poland is a unique, first of its kind, panoramic multimedia experience. Created from 38 Sony Professional laser projectors and more than one million LEGO® bricks, it combines a passion for building, history and state-of-the-art technology.

More than one million LEGO® bricks and 38 Sony laser projectors have been gathered under a single roof!

The idea for HistoryLand was born from the combination of two passions; for history and for building with LEGO® bricks. This interactive centre is a dream come true for its creators Marcin Pietrucha, Marcin Tobolski and Krzysztof Tobolski who as children loved to build things with bricks. They have built ten such models so far including their first model which was of the Cloth Hall Kraków.

The models in HistoryLand include the fortified settlement of Biskupin, an enormous mock-up of the Battle of Grunwald with 12,000 LEGO® horses and as many LEGO® men, the naval Battle of Oliwa, reconstructions of the Battle of Westerplatte, the Battle of Monte Cassino and the Gdańsk Shipyard. Then there are monuments from Kraków: the Cloth Hall, the Town Hall Tower, St. Mary’s Basilica, the Wawel Cathedral with a dragon flying around it and the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa.

Building mock-ups with LEGO® bricks is a multi-stage process. First, a design is developed using photos and consultations with historians, and on that basis, a building is constructed or an event is recreated using bricks. When it is ready, the mock-up must be properly illuminated. Finally, multimedia and interactive elements are added which endow the model with a unique and modern character.

It took three years to construct the mock-ups

With time, the storage of mock-ups became a huge challenge for the creators of HistoryLand. All models are built to a 1:50 scale, and as a result they are quite large. For example, the mock-up of the Battle of Grunwald is about 200 square meters.

Another difficulty was getting all the bricks needed. The availability of LEGO® horses, for instance, is very limited, and the mock-ups planned required more than 40,000 of them. The horses were sourced from all over the world including from Brazil, the USA, Japan and Canada.

Finally, the multimedia setting had to be constructed

“We chose to use Sony projectors in HistoryLand as they met our high expectations with respect to technical parameters and optics, and the broad range of solutions on offer enabled them to be adapted to the requirements of our project. We also decided to go with the Sony brand because of the availability of the requisite number of projectors, the manufacturer’s warranty and easy access to maintenance and repair services as well as positive reviews from other users,” says Marcin Pietrucha, one of the creators of HistoryLand.

Ultimately, 38 Sony laser projectors were used in HistoryLand: 13 VPL-FHZ57 units, 13 VPL-FHZ60L units, 6 VPL-FHZ65L units, 5 VPL-FHZ60 units and 1 VPL-FHZ65 unit. In addition, 21 lenses with different focal lengths were selected.

The Battle of Grunwald will impress everyone

The technical aspect of the multimedia installation for the Battle of Grunwald mock-up was the responsibility of Visualsupport. 13 VPL-FHZ57 projectors and 5 VPL-FHZ60 units with ultra-wide angle lenses were used.

The system includes 18 projectors which are automatically turned on and off and are controlled by five tablets, enabling animations to be displayed on selected sections of the model. The installation uses the edge blending technique, allowing an ultra-wide panoramic image to be displayed by 13 projectors.

“I conducted a comprehensive analysis of all projectors available on the market,” says Michał Płócienniak, CEO of Visualsupport. “The installation proved very demanding and we had to propose a solution which would work properly. We needed projectors with variable optics which feature automatic lens shift, i.e. have lens that can be moved to precisely fit the image to the screen, and also with the ability to transmit HDBaseT video. Sony projectors offered the best value for money.”

Projectors had to be assigned individual numbers so that selected devices could be controlled remotely without changing the others’ settings. In the HistoryLand installation, this aspect was particularly important due to the limited access to mock-ups. HDBaseT technology helped to minimise installation costs and the number of external devices required. Due to the laser light source used, projectors can operate virtually without any maintenance for up to 20,000 hours. In contrast to systems using conventional bulbs, any risk of unexpected failure is minimised.

The installation developed for the mock-up of the Battle of Grunwald also makes use of the possibility of mounting projectors at any angle and combining (blending) images from several projectors on a large screen, which makes a huge impression on visitors.

“No other manufacturer could offer us what Sony did at an equally affordable price,” says Michał Płócienniak.

Learn more in this video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGlE0Ao4mU

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies. HistoryLand is not sponsored, authorized or supported by the LEGO® Group