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Delivering a Working Demo: Thales' Immersive In-Flight Entertainment Pod for AIX 2025

Thales and Motivo Delivers a Show-Ready Experience for AIX 2025
The Problem: Making a Real-World Demo That Actually Works

At trade shows, most tech is staged. Buttons light up, screens flash, but it’s often smoke and mirrors. Thales wanted to do something different for AIX 2025—a live, first-class in-flight entertainment experience that actually worked.

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This meant going beyond static displays to build a fully immersive, two-seat demo pod that would show off their new 32” IFE screens in a way that felt real—lighting, seating, sound, projection, and user controls all had to function flawlessly in front of a crowd.

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The Goal: Delivering a Fully Functional Passenger Experience at AIX 2025

Thales needed a complete, interactive in-flight demo system to prove their IFE technology in a trade show setting—reliable, immersive, and built to operate on-site.

The Challenge: Tight Deadlines and Zero Room for Failure

Creating an interactive demo environment isn’t simple, especially when every detail matters.

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The pod had to:

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  • Showcase Thales’ new 32” screens in a realistic, in-cabin setup

  • Include real-time seat controls, ambient lighting, and built-in audio

  • Pack up for air freight and assemble easily on-site at the show

  • Be designed, built, and delivered under a fixed, accelerated timeline
     

No fakes. No shortcuts. Just a polished, fully working system in a compact, modular footprint.

The Build: From Concept to Show Floor

Motivo started with Thales’ idea for a two-seat first-class experience and turned it into a functioning demo pod in just a few months.
 

  • Ergonomic Layout – Custom mockups to test seating, viewing angles, and control placement.

  • Laser Projection Mode – Immersive, full-width display setup using hidden projectors

  • Lighting System – Mode-based LED and neon lighting controlled from the console

  • Tablet Interface – User selects mode (movie, game, music, upright) from an integrated tablet.

  • Leather-Wrapped Console – 3D printed for speed, hidden mounts for clean aesthetics

  • Reverse-Engineered Seating Controls – first class airline-style recline and in-headrest audio.

  • Shipping-Ready Platform – Integrated pallet base designed for air freight logistics.
     

Design, engineering, prototyping, and fabrication ran in parallel. Internal teams pushed through rapidly evolving requirements to deliver on time.

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The Outcome: A Working Demo That Stood Out

Motivo delivered the pod on time. At AIX 2025 in Hamburg, the pod was fully functional. Visitors could recline, select media modes, and watch content with synced lighting and sound.
 

No dummy screens. No unplugged systems. Everything worked—live.
 

  • Visitors were impressed that nothing was faked.

  • The build helped Thales engage with more potential leads and buyers.

  • The pod proved their IFE system in a realistic environment.

Why It Matters

Trade show tech usually doesn’t deliver. This one did.
 

With the IFE pod, Thales proved the power of immersive, real-time product experiences. Motivo delivered an engineered solution that was compact, shippable, reliable, and visually impressive, without cutting corners.
 

This project wasn’t just about building a showpiece. It was about delivering a real, working system under pressure—with no shortcuts and no margin for error.

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