At last year’s I/ITSEC we were very impressed with the super black levels achieved in the Zeiss DLP projector that features two DMD chips in series to offer contrast of 2.5M:1. This is needed for nighttime training and simulation applications and for NVG use as well.
At this year’s event, we again saw the demo of this 120 Hz projector in a completely dark room and were blown away by the black level. We were also able to use Gen II NVG goggles to look at images that were invisible – even with dark-adapted eyes!
New for 2017 are three items. The first is the addition of IR content for use with the Night Vision Goggles. Since the projector is lamp-based, the small IR light is filtered from the lamp to light up the screen. The projector can support a separate IR channel or derive the IR signal in the “clone mode” from the visible info.
The second upgrade is a 10-bit input for IGs that support this. It is unclear whether the full processing pipeline is 10-bit, however.
The third improvement is adding internal blending and warping to the projector. This was evident in the demo which featured two side-by-side projectors blended on a flat screen. Even in the NVG demo there was no evidence of a blend zone.
While dual modulation is great for contrast, it is very light inefficient. Zeiss Velvet Sim1600 only outputs 1600 lumens so can’t do daytime simulation, which is a big limitation. In development is an RGB + IR LED version. Perhaps we will see this at next year’s I/ITSEC. – CC
