Spectacular Boat Montage in Times Square

Barco and Barnycz integrate a spectacular LED installation of almost two thousand square meters for the new American Eagle Outfitters flagship in the heart of Times Square. In this 24/7 installation, with sinuous shapes, 1,469 Barco TF-20 panels and 1,665 Olite 612 modules have been used.

American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) has selected Barco and the integrator and designer of large spaces for digital signage Barnycz to provide its new flagship located in the heart of Time Square in New York with an impressive canvas of light and images.

"In Times Square, what we wanted to create for American Eagle Outfitters is a canvas that conveys brand and lifestyle. We have created different high-definition multi-level interactive canvases that allow the retailer to dynamically communicate their brands and promote their product offering," said Danny Barnycz, founder of the Baltimore company.

An ambitious project

For the exterior display, a dozen multifaceted planes of LED panels have been integrated, forming a set of almost 1,400 m2, including a 25-story LED tower. To create the display, Barco engineers manufactured 1,469 Barco TF-20 LED panels that together offer 3.5 million pixels. These weather-resistant panels are designed for harsh outdoor conditions and have a luminous capacity of 281 billion colors with astonishing clarity.

As for the roof of the building's exterior lobby, it is made up of 1,665 Barco Olite 612 modules, specially designed for optimal viewing at very close distances. To complete the display package, Barco also supplied two dozen NSL-46 LCD monitors, arranged in a 7x3 matrix. Built specifically for near-seamless presentation, these monitors allow content to be displayed at its native resolution, without any loss of image quality.

Content for the multiple LED and LCD displays originates across two Apple Macintosh computers, and includes a mix of photos, video, graphics, animation and text. To process the multi-format video matrix Barco DX-700 dual LED digitizers are used for optimal visual quality.

It is noteworthy that the sinuous faces of the building have forced juggling in the assembly, and we can even find that this LED digital canvas on the exterior of the façade includes angles of up to 78º. Thanks to the small size of the modules (just over 28 cm2) it is possible to create unusual shapes and angles.

From the point of view of energy efficiency, the TF-20s represent a significant cost savings for American Eagle Outfitters in a facility of this type that operates 24 hours a day.