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Firm Designs, Installs Virtual Reality Display Systems For Military And Commercial Training
By Anne Straub

Some jobs are harder to work up to than others. You don’t fly a fighter on your first day in the military. And you won’t be tapped to steer a cruise ship without some practice.
Thanks to today’s technology, some of that practice likely will take place in a simulator. That means opportunity for Electric Picture Display Systems in Melbourne.
The company designs, installs and maintains display systems. Applications include military and commercial training, virtual reality for engineering and other purposes, 24/7 monitoring in control rooms and projection systems for churches and conference centers.
President R.P. Higgins lightheartedly calls the company the product of his mid-life crisis. “Most guys go out and buy a Jaguar. I came home and said, ‘Pam, I quit. We’re going to start a company,’” he said.
He and his wife started the company in 2003 – a nice time to have this kind of crisis. Costs of the technology for simulation are coming down, making systems more accessible to more customers. “They’re coming in at a great time,” said Russ Hauck, executive director of the National Center for Simulation in Orlando.
Military customers like simulation training because of its cost effectiveness and graphic nature. “It’s what the young people coming into the service are used to seeing and doing,” Hauck said. And that’s not the half of it. The commercial market, he said, is much larger than the military market. As costs continue to fall, museums, libraries and more could adopt the technology to create a more interactive experience.
Higgins had been working for another display system company in Brevard County when he decided to branch out on his own. The career might seem a long way from his musical roots, but actually grew out of his love of music.
Higgins grew up near Syracuse, N.Y., then earned a music degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He spent the next eight years playing keyboards and guitar in bands that traveled around the Northeast. “In an age of disco, we were playing classic rock,” he said.
Rock stardom proved, not surprisingly, elusive, so he returned to school and earned a master’s in business administration from Syracuse University, finishing in 1986. He took an internship with General Electric, working in the marketing department for the company’s projection display products. He remembers walking into a room and seeing Whitney Houston projected on a 20-by-15-foot screen, and the music of his early years converged with the technology of his present. “I thought, ‘Wow, people get paid for doing this,’” he said.
He stayed in video projection sales, managing a transfer to Florida to be near his mother and sister.
At Electric Picture Display Systems, he plans to focus on simulation integration, a field not yet crowded with competitors. In 2004, the company upgraded the displays for a marine simulator in Dania Beach, using 12 cameras and matching each geometrically to eliminate distortion and seams. The sophistication results in more realistic computer graphics to improve the quality of training.
The Discovery Channel recently filmed at the marine simulator for a segment now set to air in June. The segment looks at the blending and warping of images on curved surfaces, a technique that helps immerse the viewer in the display, Higgins said.
The company also produced a simulator for helicopter training, a 14-projector simulator for ground troop training for the Air Force, and is in the running for a display upgrade contract with the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island.
There are markets other than simulation for the company’s expertise. Electric Picture also designs multimedia display systems for large rooms, and has served clients such as Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce and First Baptist Church in Orlando, as well as local churches.
It has put together computers, route high resolution signals and display screens to create mobile command centers for military use. “This stuff used to be big, bulky and cost millions of dollars. Now it’s all laptop-based and can be set up quickly,” Higgins said.
On a smaller – but perhaps no less important – scale, Higgins designed portable audio visual systems for the instructors Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy in Melbourne, where his son attends school. The project wasn’t in his business plan, but could evolve into a regular product.
Electric Picture brought in $1.8 million in revenues last year, a figure Higgins expects to increase to $2.6 million this year. For now, the company consists of just R.P. and Pam Higgins, who has a master’s degree in human resources. He plans to begin hiring office help, followed by sales and tech support, and to eventually employ 25 people.
In the meantime, the couple, married for 18 years, is busy with their children, Luke, 15, and Dana, 12. Pam Higgins volunteers with the youth at Rockledge Presbyterian Church, and R.P. is active in coaching baseball and soccer. And he continues to pursue the rock and roll muse, playing with a band of mostly Northrop Grumman employees called The X-Band.