Equinox, founded in 1991, is a global fitness brand offering expert personal training, top-tier programs, and innovative designs, including indoor cycling and gaming classes like The Pursuit.
Equinox, a luxury fitness club, has introduced an interactive cycling game for its members, allowing them to track their performance on an ultra-wide screen.
Equinox’s The Pursuit concept combines cycling classes with gaming, offering 45-minute sweat sessions and data visualizations. The cycling rooms are designed with aesthetics, soundproofing, projection, and dimmed lighting, encouraging high-intensity competition and ultra-wide screen tracking.
Established in 1991, Equinox invented the premium health and fitness space. Today, the luxury fitness club has continued to define it as the brand expands globally and diversifies into new areas, offerings and categories. With over 100 clubs worldwide, Equinox offers expert personal training and top-tier fitness programs in studios that inspire performance. Equinox’s innovative designs touch every inch of the brand and the clubs epitomize it – particularly their approach to indoor cycling. Equinox’s one-of-a-kind concept has fused cycling classes with gaming in a class, dubbed The Pursuit.
Their 45-minute spirited sweat sessions feature in-studio gaming with data visualizations designed to push riders past their personal bests. The cycling rooms are adorned with sharp aesthetics, soundproofing for superior acoustics, seamless projection for ultrawide imagery, dimmed mood lighting and bikes flanking theater-style tiers to create an optimal vantage point from anywhere in the room. The Pursuit’s unique gamification encourages members to compete against each other in a high-intensity race against time.
“In 2015, Equinox introduced a one-of-a-kind format to create an interactive game for cycling classes,” said Fred Allman, chief operating officer for Fuzzbuzz Technologies, Inc. “The concept provides a visual representation of each rider’s performance. Once they start pedaling, they can track their performance, represented as a spinning wheel with their assigned number, on an ultra-wide screen at the front of the room. The technology tracks the relationship between the speed of the rider’s pedaling and the intensity of their resistance. The total output translates on the spinning wheel. Riders can compete individually or in groups through a series of games displayed on the screen. The competitive style and unique design set the Pursuit apart from other indoor cycling experiences.”
Fuzzbuzz Technologies, a full-service audiovisual firm, was selected to engineer and integrate the audiovisual technology at Equinox’s premium health and fitness studios. Fuzzbuzz Technologies brings decades of experience in designing, installing and servicing audio, video and specialty control systems in a commercial environment. The Vermont-based audiovisual firm has become an industry-leading, trusted solutions provider for many well-known and dynamic brands, including Apple, Ben and Jerry’s, Hilton Garden Inn, Department of Defense and Prada, and has built a long-term relationship with Equinox and their lifestyle brands, including SoulCycle and Blink.
“Since 2015, I’ve worked alongside Equinox to integrate the latest technology into their high-end health and fitness studios,” noted Allman. “The indoor cycling studios are unique because we’ve combined high-quality audio and crisp video displays to create an immersive, technology-driven competition. At first glance, the dimmed cycling studios might look like a typical indoor cycling class with rows of tiered bikes in an arc facing the instructor. Still, the combination of audio and video creates one of the most unique fitness experiences.”
Allman added, “Equinox required a high-quality solution with a seamless user experience. The display is one of the main components of the workout, so we needed to design a solution with crisp image quality. We selected projectors versus LED displays because it was the only feasible method of producing a high-resolution video display across a 32×10 aspect ratio image. We simply couldn’t achieve our desired output with LED displays. Although, with multiple projectors, we were faced with the challenge of creating a single, seamless image.”
Fuzzbuzz Technologies integrated Scalable Display Technologies into The Pursuit to create an easy-to-use, sustainable solution for blending high-resolution projectors on ultrawide screens. Scalable’s software is integral to the interactive nature of the classes and their digital components by captivating riders with graphics and leaderboards projected onto the wall in front of the riders. Additionally, the software provides Fuzzbuzz Technologies with a reliable, user-friendly interface to easily recalibrate the ultrawide displays to ensure a pristine audiovisual experience for each rider.
“It was easy for the projectors to get bumped and lose alignment,” explained Allman. “There’s a lot of movement in the room and the slightest adjustment can ruin the entire display and, as a result, hinder the rider’s experience. Originally, we were manually calibrating each projector. It created an influx of service calls and caused downtime for the system because we’d have to send a technician to the studio to calibrate the projector physically. We were impressed by a working example of Scalable Display Technologies and decided to try it to determine if it would simplify calibration.”
Scalable provides users with a unique technical advantage by pairing high-performance displays with quick, seamless calibration. Scalable’s groundbreaking software automatically calibrates the color, intensity and geometry of images from multiple projectors, resulting in a single, seamless digital display. Ideal for virtually any application, Scalable’s software works on flat, curved domes and completely custom screen shapes.
“Scalable’s automatic calibration has eliminated 80% of the service calls,” noted Allman. “The automatic recalibration enables the client’s IT department to recalibrate the system remotely. They can log into the system and utilize the webcam to analyze the current display. After their initial analysis, they can recalibrate and adjust, as needed. It’s incredibly simple for them. The client loves it because it reduces service calls and downtime.”
Allman added, “We initially integrated Scalable in 2015. Since then, we’ve completed over 50 installations for Equinox with Scalable’s technology. We’ve created a standardized solution with two projectors and Scalable’s technology across all Equinox facilities.”
Since 2004, Scalable has provided industry-leading applications incorporating patented algorithms to create an easy-to-use, cost-effective solution for warping and blending high-resolution displays on screens of unlimited geometry and size. Scalable produces groundbreaking software that automatically calibrates images’ geometry, color and intensity across multiple projectors, resulting in a single, seamless digital display. With Scalable, there are no limits to the size or the resolution of displays created with their software tools.
