Just watched the new star trek in an imax dome, had previously seen it in a regular theater. There have been several academics say that wide FOV is more important than stereoscopy for immersion.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=ima ... a=N&tab=wl

Surprised there are so few of these imax dome theaters. This is definitely the future I hope.

First it was much better and more immersive seeing this in the dome than on a flat screen. Seating position is important though, get off to the side of the projector too much and the distortion hurts the effect, but in the sweet spot, WOW! I would say the 20-30 seats within the radius closest to the projector lens is the sweet spot. Also a minor quibble, before the star trek movie, they had "under the sea" - it used the full area of the dome - so the sweet spot was larger - but the star trek upconvert only seemed to use about 75% as much screen - so less sweet spot.

This was so much better than watching it on the flat screen, felt like I was floating in space during the ship battles. I can't stress enough how much this added to the experience. I have decided in the future all action movies like this I must watch in a dome theater.

Several of the small kids had to leave the theater though as the immersion was too overwhelming and it scared them.

Not immersive in the same way that the s3d movies I have seen have been. So which is better? If I had to pick between the 2, I think I would choose the Imax dome over a smaller flat screen with stereo3d. I could see however where many may choose the s3d over the wide FOV, they immerse you in different ways and each has it's advantages. Ideally in the future there will be dome and s3d together to give the best of both worlds. Would like to hear others comments that have seen dome movies versus stereo3d experiences.

I know they are showing 3D movies in the dome planetarium in Copenhagen, Denmark:

Don't think the use the full dome though, looks like they just blast it up big.
From what I've heard the 3D dino's jump out of the screen allmost eating Your head off.
Think they got 16 projectors there.

If You place some reflective balls in front of a 3D camera You could probably record a FOV 180degree 3D video, then play it with a projector onto a ball onto a half dome. Nobody has done that have they?

I've never seen this IMAX dome, but I have been to regular IMAX 3D movies so I have an idea. I think the wide FOV plays a very big part in the immersion factor and would agree that it can do more than stereo3d alone can. Immersion by its very nature lends itself to engulfing your entire field of view. No matter how 3d an image might be its not going to immerse you if you are looking at a screen the size of a postage stamp! But I wouldn't be so quick to discount the benefits of stereo 3d either. Ideally you would have both in combination.

"Don't think the use the full dome though, looks like they just blast it up big."

You have to be careful of this, they have done that here sometimes too, take a 35mm film and just "blow it up" It is a terrible result. However some movies are made for imax, they actually go in and upconvert the film to the higher resolution of imax - 70mm I believe.


Freke this guy has done what you suggest:

http://www.icinema.unsw.edu.au/projects/infra_dome.html

360 degree global recording

Video for the iDome was shot with a Ladybug camera system from Point Grey Research. It allows digital spherical recordings at 360 degree horizontal and 240 degree vertical field of view. The camera has a tightly packed cluster of six CCD sensors with wide angle lenses and slight overlap between the images. In post processing these individual frames are colour and geometrically corrected, and then stitched to a high resolution equirectangular image (3600x1800 pixel).
Alternatively, the iCinema Spherecam can be used. The Spherecam has sufficient resolution to be able to "zoom" into the video and obtain a "close-up" of details.


Cyber - they have several imax flat screens here and the one dome, imax and imax3d are good, but imax dome has to be the best so far, simply because it fills your full FOV and that tricks your brain in ways the other technologies can't. I have never seen little kids get scared by anything but the DOME technology. A couple fell over as they tried to leave the theater, vertigo must have set in.

Hmm... Theres an IMAX dome theater not too far from where I live and they are showing two 3D films (space station 3d, and under the sea 3d). Maybe I will go check one of those out for the ULTIMATE 3D EXPERIENCE!!!

I rememberr an old attraction. Cinema 180° or something. All people were standing in the center looking at a dome. The fov was indeed 180°. No 3d though. It was very immersive! They mostly had flights and carchases but how often people almost lost their balance!
Would love to see a 3d-dome in real world too.

That would be great Cyber. They only had under the sea in 2D at my dome theater, what losers They said they have had 3d movies there before, so I don't understand why they aren't showing under the sea in 3d. They have a small planetarium there showing a film called 3Dsun in S3D. I may try to watch that next week. I saw space station in 3d at a flat imax3d, it was pretty good. I remember having a slight headache after the movie, I think they were using shutter glasses at the time.

Well..I they amplify each other. One of the biggest problem with 3D is the Border Collision. In other words: when an object sticks out of the screen but comes close to the side (at the edges, or top or bottom) of the screen. Your mind just won't fuse the views anymore. This is something that is virtually impossible with IMAX because of the FOV.
And, well, the only thing missing in IMAX is the true depth impression of course. That's why IMAX in 3D rocks: they were made for each other!
You can never have a screen big enough for 3D I guess..