Archive notice: This article was originally published on September 4, 2006. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The Fraunhofer Institutes FIRST and IDMT are showing their vision of the digital cinema of the future at the International Radio Exhibition (IFA): Their “Multimedia Dome” combines Fraunhofer FIRST’s digital dome projection with Fraunhofer IDMT’s Iosono wave-field synthesis for the first time. This places viewers visually and acoustically right in the middle of the action, because the screen is replaced by a dome. Visitors are virtually enveloped by the image, while at the same time the 3D sound ensures that the sound follows the images.
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Anyone who wants to show digital films on curved surfaces has until now had to contend with a high level of preparation effort: Special dome videos have to be laboriously produced before the show and recalculated for every installation. The films are therefore usually short and the selection of such productions is small. With the Show Player, which Fraunhofer FIRST developed in close cooperation with Carl Zeiss, multimedia shows for domes are, by contrast, intended to be as easy to assemble as with a video-editing program. An intuitive user interface is available to the user for this purpose. They can combine both high-resolution dome films and images and conventional videos and images as well as text and sound files. In addition, it is possible to use the Show Player to determine the position of the projectors depending on the dome size and hardware configuration.
In the Multimedia Dome, six projectors produce five partial images on the inner sides and one image at the zenith of the hemisphere. The Show Player ensures that the partial images lie seamlessly next to one another. The correction of the images is calculated on six computers simultaneously in real time. This eliminates the laborious and time-consuming calculation of the video before the show, and content changes are also possible during the presentation. The Show Player has standard interfaces to several multimedia systems so that additional devices can be integrated easily – including the Iosono technology from Fraunhofer IDMT.
Conventional audio systems use fixed audio channels, some of which are reproduced in front of and some behind the viewer. In a dome, however, there is no “front” and “back”. The Iosono system no longer has separate audio channels. Level, position and distance of the sound sources are recorded and processed separately from the acoustic properties of the room, so that each sound object can be freely placed and moved within or outside the playback room. Thus the sound can follow the image – according to Fraunhofer, the optimum sound is no longer limited to one part of the audience area, the so-called “sweet spot”. In the Multimedia Dome, the dome space is surrounded by a band with around 100 loudspeakers, which provide – in the truest sense of the word – direction-setting spatial sound. The Fraunhofer Institutes see entertainment parks, cinemas, simulators, multimedia installations or planetariums, among others, as areas of application for the combined audio and video technology.
During the demonstrations at the radio exhibition, the Multimedia Dome shows the entire range of possible content for dome cinemas. The spectrum extends from the award-winning and first animated film for 360-degree projection “Ka-luoka’hina, the Enchanted Reef” and the animated film “Alien Action” through the cinema film “Romeo and Juliet” to dome panoramas set to jazz and club music.
