Specifications

March/April 2001 ExtroNews 12.2 13
contracted technology consultant firm Shen
Milsom & Wilke.
World-Class A/V at the GNOC
The hub of the GNOC is the Operations
Theater—a top-notch command and control
center. Located 60 feet below ground on the
floor of a three and a half story atrium, the
Operations Theater is built on a gentle, 180
degree arc. (See
Image 1.) Thirty-five control
consoles face a wall of 141 rear projection
screens stacked three high and 47 across.
Behind the scenes, LCD projectors
illuminate the screens, which are fed by a
200 x 200 matrix switcher. Inputs to this
switcher come from a number of different
sources, including off-air television, direct
satellite, broadcast news, weather stations,
and AT&T’s network monitoring system,
which relies on 150-plus high resolution
computer workstations. (See
Image 2.)
The Operations Theater also plays a
central role in the visitors’ program. Visitors
enter the building on the third floor and are
led into a theater room. They are invited to
sit in one of thirty comfortable seats facing a
curved projection screen (8 ft. x 28 ft.)
mounted on a 13 ft. x 50 ft. wall and watch
a seven-minute presentation. The
presentation runs off an SGI Onyx II
computer and is choreographed to music.
Three, high-brightness DLP projectors are
blended together to provide a solid image on
the large screen (See
Image 3.). At the end
of the presentation, the screen and the wall
on which it’s mounted are lifted quickly and
silently into the ceiling, and visitors are
suddenly looking through a bank of windows
down at the Operations Theater 60 feet
below.
Directly across from this Visitors’
Observation Theater is another wallboard
with 39 LCD projectors arranged in a 3 x 13
array. This display wall is fed from a video
server and can also access sources from other
areas of the GNOC. The wallboard is used for
presentations and videoconferencing
environments.
The Corporate Briefing Center was also
designed to be on the cutting edge of A/V
technology. It includes five briefing rooms
and a product demonstration room. A
master control room houses a variety of A/V
equipment that is accessible to every room
through a control system. Each room is
equipped with a rear-screen projector, audio,
videoconferencing equipment, and electronic
whiteboards.
Making It Work—With Room to Grow
One big issue Shen Milsom & Wilke ran
into when designing AT&T’s GNOC was
simply the mammoth size of the project. The
magnitude of the A/V program meant a
huge amount of cabling was necessary to
UNIQUE TECHNIQUES
Image 2. LCD projectors display information on 141 rear-
projection screens in the GNOC’s Operations Theater.
Image 3. In the Visitors’ Observation Theater at the
AT&T GNOC, three high-brightness DLP projectors
are blended together to provide a solid image on
the large screen.
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