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Vegas Airport Gets Interactive

If endless rows of slot machines aren’t your thing, you’re in luck: Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport is installing interactive digital signage that allows you to spend a few minutes actually, like, learning something useful without having to throw five $20 bills down the drain.

 

The digital displays in the airport’s new Terminal 3, created by Four Winds Interactive, will offer interactive guides and airport directories covering shopping, dining, high-flyer clubs, and other airport attractions. Double-sided video walls will offer customized, animated 3D maps to make it easy to find your way around the airport, which can also be downloaded to smartphones. This being Vegas, you can’t quite escape gambling altogether: the displays will also show brief animations or videos of tumbling dice and slot machines whirring. Hopefully they will tone down the incessant carnival-esque blinking and ringing somewhat.

 

In June the airport authority announced that the $2.4 billion Terminal 3 would include 900 large-screen displays from NEC Display Solutions America, which will be used for airline branding and to provide travelers with flight, baggage and gate information and directions. The large-screen displays include 182 46-inch screens and 723 40-inch screens positioned around the new terminal. The displays will receive information from 800 single-board computers. Over 1,000 NEC displays are already in use in McCarran’s Terminals 1 and 2.

 

Terminal 3 houses 14 gates for two dozen international and domestic airlines, and is expected to handle a significant proportion of the 41 million travelers who pass through Las Vegas-McCarran annually.

 

With its spectacular vibe and free-spending ways, Sin City is an obvious magnet for out-of-home advertising. In May Elite Media, a Las Vegas-based out-of-home company focused on the local market, announced that it had signed an exclusive deal with the Las Vegas Monorail Company, giving it the right to sell interior and exterior ad space on the monorail system. The deal gives it access to various advertising surfaces, including floors, ceilings, stairs, LED monitors, light boxes, column wraps and door panels, among other options.

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