Behind the Immersion

A Partnership with MeyerPro Brings TITANIC to Life at OMSI

Visitors nearing the end of TITANIC: The Artifact Exhibition have already journeyed through galleries exploring the ship’s construction, the lives of passengers and crew, the tragic sinking, and the recovery and preservation of artifacts from the ocean floor.

Then, they turn a corner.

Inside a four-wall immersive gallery, towering projections surround visitors with the sights, sounds, and stories of Titanic’s voyage. Guests experience the ship at the dock, elegant first-class spaces, bustling boiler rooms, lifeboats, and the final moments of the voyage. At the end of the 10-minute experience, the room falls completely dark before photographs of those who lost their lives slowly appear.

Bringing that ambitious experience to life required specialized technical expertise and MeyerPro, a locally-owned event technology and audio-visual production studio. Their team generously partnered with OMSI staff to make it possible. For more than a decade, MeyerPro and OMSI have worked together to create memorable experiences for our community. What began with MeyerPro providing production expertise for the annual Gala has grown into a longstanding partnership—one that recently took an exciting new form inside TITANIC: The Artifact Exhibition.

“When we first looked at this project, we quickly realized we didn’t have the in-house expertise to take on a video project of this complexity and scale,” said Eric Adams, OMSI Exhibit Operations Lead. “MeyerPro was incredible from the start.”

MeyerPro helped design and install the system behind the immersive gallery experience, including six Panasonic laser projectors, multiple lens configurations, a Disguise media server for 4K playback, and the infrastructure needed to make four walls of imagery appear seamless. When the portions of the supplied media arrived out of sync, MeyerPro re-edited frame rates and continued fine-tuning the gallery after opening.

For visitors, however, that technical complexity largely disappears. What remains is the story.

“The thing I appreciate most about this exhibit is that it really focuses on the human experience rather than simply the facts of what happened,” said Zoë Lovell-Parnell, OMSI’s Featured Exhibit Hall Coordinator.

Children have affectionately nicknamed the immersive gallery “the ride” often asking their families to experience it again. Adults stay for multiple showings, too. Volunteers also use the gallery to reinforce hands-on lessons about Titanic’s steam-powered machinery, helping visitors connect engineering concepts with the enormous pistons and boiler rooms they later see in motion.

“The immersive gallery helps people make connections that may have started elsewhere in the exhibit,” Lovell-Parnell said.

MeyerPro’s investment extends beyond the exhibition. The company donated projectors and lenses to the project, providing OMSI with technology that can continue creating value through future immersive experiences. That generosity reflects a broader culture of community investment: MeyerPro, which began in a two-car garage and has grown to a team of over 45 with offices in both Portland and Seattle, has given $300,000 in community donations and supports career pathways into the live event and production industry through internships, training, and opportunities for employees to grow from entry-level roles into technical and leadership careers.

For OMSI, partnerships like what we’ve built with MeyerPro strengthen what we can offer our community today while building our capacity for tomorrow. MeyerPro’s relationship with OMSI has evolved from supporting individual events to investing expertise, equipment, and resources that will have an impact for years to come.