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Simulated airport ticketing hall: airline identity columns mounted above the check-in rows, seen down the length of the concourse
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Case study

A dozen display options, evaluated before one was built

A transportation client needed to choose between custom LED configurations that didn't exist yet. We built the space in Unreal so every option could be walked, measured and compared at true scale.

Client
Nanolumens
Sector
Airports & transportation
Capability
LED display simulation
Year
2023
The problem

You can't spec a display from a datasheet

Pixel pitch, brightness and dimensions describe a product. They don't tell you what it feels like to stand thirty feet away in a busy concourse, or whether the content still reads from where people actually walk.

Nanolumens' customer was weighing roughly a dozen custom configurations for an airport ticketing hall: a run of double-sided LED columns carrying airline identity above the check-in rows, seen from every angle a departing passenger takes. Each option meant a different pitch, a different size and a different mounting position, and committing to the wrong one is expensive in a way that isn't easily undone.

What we simulated

Every option, in the real room

We built a photo-real model of the space and dropped each display configuration into it, so the choice could be made by looking rather than by inference.

Pixel pitch at true distance

How each pitch resolves from where people actually stand, not from a spec sheet's optimal viewing distance.

Sightlines & obstruction

What's visible from the concourse, the approach, the escalator, and what gets blocked.

Real passenger viewpoints

Eye-level views along the paths people actually travel, rather than idealised hero angles.

Content at scale

Live artwork on the surface, at the right resolution, so the client judged the real thing.

What changed

The decision got faster

Instead of reviewing options sequentially over weeks, the client's stakeholders reviewed them together in one session, flying through the space and switching configurations live.

It removed a round of meetings. Stakeholders reached consensus quickly, and they could weigh the options against each other without paying to fabricate any of them.

The simulation

Judged by looking, not by spec

Every configuration was dropped into the same photo-real model of the hall, so the differences that mattered showed up at the scale and viewing distance people actually experience them.

A close view of an LED identity column showing the pixel structure of the panel behind the airline artwork
Pixel pitch at close range. Standing near a column, the structure of the panel itself becomes the question, and that is a judgement no datasheet makes for you.

An LED identity column seen from above, carrying artwork on both faces with a dark cap across the top
The columns are double-sided, so every option had to resolve from both approaches down the concourse.

Daylight falling through a clerestory roof structure into the ticketing hall, casting angled shadows down the wall
Sun-accurate daylight through the clerestory. Ambient light decides whether content reads, so the model carried it rather than assuming a dark room.

Nanolumens
“You can fly around the space, see things at scale, and really get a feel for how customers will interact.”
Todd Alan Green
Global Manager, Airports & Transportation, Nanolumens
Capabilities used

How this was built

01

The studio

An Atlanta crew building photo-real, real-time work in Unreal Engine.
02

LED display simulation

Pixel pitch, viewing distance and content legibility, tested before fabrication.
03

Sightlines & daylight

Sun-accurate lighting and sightline studies from real viewer positions.
04

All simulations

One model, every question: lighting, acoustics, flow and sightlines.
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