How the Jan Snel Experience Center combines panoramic projection, interactive content and shared storytelling

A physical meeting space should offer more than a larger screen.

The Jan Snel Experience Center shows how panoramic projection and interactive content can transform a presentation room into a shared visual environment. Surrounding wall projections establish the wider context, while an interactive table allows visitors to explore specific topics and influence the direction of the presentation.

The result is not simply an immersive display. It is a space designed around group communication.

Turning a corporate story into a spatial experience

Jan Snel specialises in modular and sustainable construction. The Experience Center was created to present its projects and working methods in a more engaging and understandable way.

WT Interactive, working with Ruben van Esterik, developed a presentation environment combining room-scale projection with a custom interactive table. Physical objects could also be used to control the presentation, connecting digital content with the people and objects inside the room.

Instead of watching a conventional sequence of slides, visitors were placed inside the company’s visual story.

One room, two visual roles

The installation used six projectors.

Four projectors created a continuous image across three surrounding walls. Two additional projectors served the interactive table in the centre of the room. GeoBox Edge blending and Warping series, managed the geometry correction and edge blending required to align the projector images.  

Check the reference architecture:  U-shape room using 4 projectors

Although the walls and table belonged to the same experience, they served different purposes.

The surrounding walls created shared context. They could introduce projects, locations, processes or brand stories at a scale visible to everyone in the room.

The interactive table supported more focused exploration. Visitors could gather around it, select subjects and examine specific information without losing the wider visual context.

This created a clear information structure:

• the walls established the overall environment;
• the table presented the subject being explored;
• interaction determined how the presentation developed.

From immersive projection to multi-source experience

Many immersive rooms are designed mainly to stretch one video across multiple walls. This can create impact, but it does not necessarily improve communication.

The Jan Snel installation demonstrates a more practical approach. Different surfaces can perform different visual functions within the same room.

One surface may provide orientation or atmosphere, while another presents detailed information, interactive controls or supporting material. Content does not have to be duplicated everywhere, and every source does not need to occupy the entire room.

This is the basis of a multi-source immersive visual experience: deciding which information belongs on which surface, and how those surfaces should work together. 

Read further:  Engineering Shared Immersive Visual Environments

The role of GeoBox

The interactive system controls the presentation and user experience. The projectors create the physical images. GeoBox manages how those images are fitted to the display surfaces.

In this installation, the surrounding walls required several projector images to be aligned and blended into one continuous visual field. The table projection required a separate geometry setup for a horizontal surface.

Separating display processing from the content application provides a clearer system structure:

• the content system generates and controls the presentation;
• GeoBox manages image geometry and projector overlap;
• the projectors deliver the processed images.

Once the geometry is configured, presentation content can be changed without rebuilding the projector alignment.

This is particularly valuable in permanent experience centres, where the system must remain stable while content continues to evolve.

From storytelling space to decision space

The original application focused on brand storytelling, but the same concept can be applied to corporate briefing rooms, design reviews, control environments and collaborative workspaces.

The surrounding walls may display a shared project environment, live data, remote participants or an immersive visual sequence. At the same time, a table or secondary display can show documents, comparison views, control interfaces or detailed information.

The room can therefore move between different modes:

• full-room presentation;
• guided interactive storytelling;
• multi-source discussion;
• collaborative review;
• group decision-making.

Immersion is not the final objective. It is one method of helping people understand information, maintain shared context and work together more effectively.

The Jan Snel Experience Center illustrates this transition clearly. What was once described simply as a “Holodeck” can be understood more precisely as a multi-surface visual environment in which architecture, content, interaction and display processing work together.