Modulo Pi, a provider of media server solutions with a user-friendly design, has worked with Futuroscope in France to power several interactive experiences in the new attraction, Pulse! The Electric Odyssey, which opened in the park's iconic Futuroscope Pavilion in April.
The energy-themed self-guided attraction spans more than 1,200 square metres. It includes a series of educational and fun interactive experiences, some of which are driven by Modulo Pi's media servers, including the new Version 7 of Modulo Kinetic.
See also: Futuroscope: the past, present, and future of a pioneering park
Exploring tomorrow's energy landscape
Originally built in 1984, the Futuroscope Pavilion has been extensively refurbished for its 39th season. With this project, Futuroscope reasserts its mission to inspire visitors through innovation and emerging technologies.
The project centres on two complementary experiences: Campus Numeria and Pulse! The Electric Odyssey.
Campus Numeria is a 2,500-square-metre innovation hub where workshops on digital technologies such as robotics and AI can be delivered to groups of schoolchildren, students, and teachers.
The landmark Futuroscope Pavilion has been reimagined for its 39th seasonImage courtesy of Modulo Pi
This is accompanied by Pulse! The Electric Odyssey, which has been created in collaboration with EDF (Electricité de France) and Dalkia. It features a range of fun, educational installations that aim to raise awareness of the energy transition and encourage guests of all ages to become active participants in the energy landscape of the future.
The experience features scenic design by La Prod est dans le Pré with system integration by FMD, Futuroscope's in-house technical team, and is structured around several core experiences powered by Modulo Pi media servers.
Guests enter a spacious lobby featuring a wind turbine model and a five-metre-long drone. These are shown alongside a set of 30 LED panels that create a large, deconstructed video display driven by a Modulo Player media server, with visuals that explore the future of energy.
The immersive experience then starts as visitors enter a room centred around a 15-metre model of Futuroscope Park. The model highlights the initiatives shaping the park's future using projection mapping, with four BenQ short-throw projectors powered by a four-output Modulo Player Pro media server.
The projections include both 2D and 3D animations. These allow visitors to discover the park's current sustainability initiatives, highlighting biodiversity, water management, waste reduction and low-carbon mobility, as it works to become energy self-sufficient and fully decarbonised by 2026.
The attraction's interactive workshops also include the Kids Factory, created especially for younger visitors.
Children can colour in an animal from a selection of illustrated templates. They then scan in their drawing to see it appear inside a large immersive projection depicting a nuclear power plant and its surrounding ecosystem.
Each colouring sheet includes several QR codes which enable the system to automatically identify the selected animal during scanning. These allow visitors' unique drawings of fish, rabbits, and birds to come to life inside an animated world created by creative studio Spectre Lab.
The installation's 4 x 2.5-metre projection uses a Barco projector driven by Modulo Pi’s Modulo Kinetic media server. A Modulo Bridge device ensures communication between the scanner and the media server, so that the scanned drawing is immediately transmitted and processed.
In real time, Modulo Kinetic recognises the animal, applies the child's colouring as a texture to a pre-animated 3D model, and integrates it into the projection. Shortly after scanning, the personalised animal appears in the interactive environment with its unique colours and appearance.
The experience provides a playful introduction to low-carbon electricity production and the significant challenges of the energy transition, including climate and biodiversity preservation.
Low latency solution
Another key highlight is a fully immersive interactive room offering a playful, sensory exploration of electricity.
Yannis Marchet, development and projects manager at FMD, says: "This topic was particularly important to our partner EDF. The idea is to demonstrate how EDF harnesses the physical properties of electrons to convey energy."
Accommodating up to 40 visitors at once, the 135 square metre immersive room employs an Absen LED floor with a 4.8 mm pixel pitch, together with eight Barco G60 projectors across the surrounding walls, all driven by Modulo Kinetic.
"The biggest challenge with this room was the ceiling height," says Marchet. "With barely 2.5 meters of clearance, creating an immersive interactive room with extremely low latency was a real technical challenge."
To address these requirements, FMD’s teams worked closely with Modulo Pi and gained early access to Version 7 of Modulo Kinetic several months ahead of its official release.
The installation uses a single Kinetic Designer workstation connected to two four-output V-Node servers driving the wall projections, and one six-output V-Node server powering the LED floor.
A highlight of Pulse! The Electric Odyssey is an immersive room that offers a fun, sensory exploration of electricityImage courtesy of Modulo Pi
To add an interactive dimension, four Ouster OSDome hemispherical LiDAR sensors were installed that continuously emit infrared laser beams, enabling the detection of every visitor's position and movement.
Using Version 7, Modulo Kinetic combines data from all four LiDAR sensors into a single point cloud, which the media server processes in real time. Based on this live spatial map, Modulo Kinetic generates interactive visuals using its integrated 3D engine and node-based programming environment.
"Modulo Kinetic enables us to achieve technical performances and offerexperiences that simply wouldn't have been possible otherwise, or only with an extremely complex and cumbersome setup," says Marchet.
An LED floor in the space displays streams of particles that are repelled by visitors' footsteps. These particles slowly gather to form 40 energy spheres, and each guest is invited to stand on one sphere. The sphere then follows that visitor as they move around the space, colliding, merging, and evolving as visitors interact.
On the walls, projected energy gauges respond to visitors' movements. These demonstrate how electricity is generated through the movement of electrons. Further interactive sequences, all centred around electricity and energy, react dynamically to visitor activity throughout the experience.
"Modulo Pi demonstrated the full power of its development platform on this installation," says Marchet. "The audience truly creates the experience. Thanks to a 20 Hz refresh rate, latency between visitor movement and video response is extremely low."
Comprehensive solution
In addition to powering the interactive content, Modulo Kinetic also manages the attraction's complete show control system.
FMD has used a dedicated show control platform for more than two decades. It first adopted Modulo Pi's media server for all show control functions for La Serre des Mondes, followed by The Electric Odyssey two months later.
"Now our entire architecture runs on Modulo Kinetic," says Marchet. "We're extremely satisfied with it, and it eliminates the need for an additional control interface."
Modulo Kinetic manages the entire show control system for the attractionImage courtesy of Modulo Pi
The pavilion's day-to-day operation is managed using a custom control panel created within Modulo Kinetic. This interface lets operators power video projectors and LED displays on and off, launch daily diagnostic procedures, start scheduled shows, and automatically control the doors to the scale-model room and the immersive interactive room.
Pulse! The Electric Odyssey opened in early April, with its official inauguration on 19 June.
"Project timelines continue to shrink," says Marchet. "From design and procurement to delivery and on-site integration, everything now happens in less than a year. That's also one of Modulo Pi's strengths: the ability to respond quickly to highly innovative projects."
Recently, Modulo Pi once again provided media servers to Ephemera Group to power video projection at the new Under the Sea restaurant, which opened in Montpellier on 13 February.
