Interactive zone of the Bashneft stand at “Gas. Oil. Technologies — 2026”

About the project

The task

The range of products from the Ufa oil refineries and petrochemical plants had to be presented so that visitors choose a product themselves and get a story about it. The brief called for two concepts to choose from, standby and active modes, several ways of control, and video of at least Full HD at 60 frames per second. The contract was signed on 7 May; the exhibition opened on 26 May.

What we did

Flasks

Eleven glass flasks with samples stand on an illuminated shelf under the screen: ATUM-95 Euro-6 petrol, Euro-5 diesel fuel, RN-2151 catalysts, technical sulphur, Rosneft Kinetic gear oil, PG 64-28 road bitumen, phenol, acetone, polypropylene, polyethylene and synthetic rubber. Each flask carries a tag. A visitor places a flask in the socket under the arrow, the reader recognises it, the socket lights up, and the screen starts the scene for that product.

Eleven scenes

In standby mode the screen shows a panorama of the plant: a column with the Bashneft logo and green and orange pipelines between the units. When a flask is recognised, the camera flies to the unit where that product is made — for petrol it is a reactor, a petrol tanker and a filling station; for catalysts, a line of reactors with a forklift and a lorry. A card with the name and a short story appears alongside.

The scenes: “Motor petrol”, “New-generation catalysts by RN-Kat LLC”, “Euro-5 diesel fuel”, “Granulated technical gas sulphur”, “Rosneft oils”, “Innovative PG 64-28 road bitumen”, “Phenol”, “Acetone”, “Balen polypropylene”, “Polyethylene”, “Synthetic rubber (EPDM)”.

Card carousel

Pressing the spinner button opens a carousel of eleven cards with detailed product descriptions. Turning the button left and right flips through the cards; pressing it again closes the carousel. A hint sits at the bottom of the screen.

How it is built

A 75″ screen, 3840×2160, 60 frames per second. Two servers — main and backup — in the stand’s technical area.

An RFID reader sits under the tabletop, with NFC tags in the flasks. The spinner button runs on its own microcontroller; signals from the reader and the button reach the software over the network.

The socket and shelf lighting is RGBW strips controlled by the software via Art-Net and DMX.

Each scene is three 4K videos at 60 frames per second: the fly-in to the unit, a loop and the return to the panorama. The images of the units and their animation were made with neural networks, with motion graphics on top: the cards and the transitions between scenes.

Result