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It's been my understanding that IMAX is really fussy about licencing their equipment and technology, and find it highly unlikely that they would allow its use for porn.

Of course we live in an age when you can buy an "IMAX" dvd - surely one of the more oxymoronic claims since "HD" radio came on the scene.

This is not the same technology that was used in Superman Returns for IMAX 3D. For the IMAX version, they used "proprietary 2D to 3D conversion technology." It wasn't actually filmed with stereoscopic cameras. IMAX 3D also only does 48 frames per second instead of 144, and as far as I can tell does not use the radial polarization that Real D uses.

What IMAX seems to use is just the standard current 3D technology, which uses polarized lenses rotated 90 from one another. I've not seen Real D in action, and I have my doubts as to whether it actually lives up to their claims, but it sounds like it should at least be better than the current technology.

What all those DRM lobbyists don't realize is that they effectively CREATES a market for pirate copies by imposing the DRM. If it is overly complicated to circumvents then it is also worth some money investment to circumvent. Compare this to the alcohol legislation in the US during the 20s. It created a market for bootleggers and smugglers which fueled the organized crime.

And as I see it, DVD:s are sufficient for the majority of films that are produced. Only a very few films will actually benefit from a better format, but then we still need a better display than the ordinary flat panel we use. I'm not thinking about HDTV 1080p, but IMAX instead.

What I really want a better format than DVD for is actually file backups. With storage capacities in the terabyte range it's not good to make backups on DVD:s, and tapes aren't really god either since they are cumbersome to operate when restoring a specific file. So essentially - the HD-DVD and Blue-ray formats seems to be a blind alley like the laserdisc, Betamax and 8-track tapes.

BTW if anybody is interested in exactly what it was like to be walking on the moon in the 60's and 70's I recommend they have a look at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

and/or go see Magnificent Desolation in your nearest IMAX theater. I've seen it and it's very impressive.

I submitted the story and it got rejected (I'm crushed). But for those of you who are interested (this being a space thread), the Tom Hanks IMAX movie was released. It's playing in several theaters across the country.

http://www.imax.com/magnificentdesolation/site/dow nloads/desktops/imax_desktop_lg_1.jpg

Increment last digit

It's going to screw up the facts in people's minds.

This is just like the experiments on observer accuracy, where you first demonstrate an incident on film, and then show still images not actually from the film, with some details changed, and then ask the observers questions about the original film version of events.

So far I am not at all impressed with their production values or fact checking anyway... if you go to the web site, click on "Education", click the button in the top right corner, and go to the first "factoid", you will find this beauty:

"The Astronaut's Spacesuits: The astronaut's spacesuits were designed to withstand the moon's average daylight temperature of 300 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Centigrade)."

(direct link here: http://www.imax.com/magnificentdesolation/pops/ima ges/image_pop_r2c2-2.jpg )

If they can't even do a temperature conversion, they are unlikely to produce anything more than inaccurate eye candy for "the masses".

-- Terry

Theatre: Big ass screen. Some screens are more big ass than others. see: IMAX Dome.
Home Theatre: Not quite. And the initial investment for proper equipment is high. DvD's aren't up to the quality of theatres. High Def dvd's will close the gap some.

Theatre: Accomidates large groups.
Home Theatre: Again, unless somebody has invested big cash into their home setup there is limited quality seating. Forget about company outings, class trips or large birthday parties.

Theatre: Great sound quality (usually).
Home Theatre: Can be good with sizeable initial investment. Don't keep the neighbours up.

Theatre: A few films are 3D! IMAX 3D is great. Movies should ALL be 3D.
Home Theatre: flat, 2d screen. Blue-red 3D glasses don't count.

Also you can't simply look at the benefits to comsumers, you have to look at the benefits to movie producers.

Theater: Remains a great way to suck gazillions of dollars out of the pockets of viewers while the movie is hot.
Home Theatre: DVD's are also profitable, but they are are easily copied and shared (legally or not).

RoTS isn't playing in iMax.. at least not according to their site.

• "Robots"
• "Batman Begins"
• "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
• "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"

• "Robots"
• "Batman Begins"
• "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
• "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"

• "Robots"
• "Batman Begins"
• "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
• "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"

• "Robots"
• "Batman Begins"
• "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
• "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"

I was about to call shenanagans on this one until I found out that there are two systems for IMAX3D. The system you are talking about sounds like the one used at Disneyland with the pink glasses on rides like Captain EO, or the Muppets one or the Honey I Shrunk the Kids one, which I have absolutely no problem viewing and find very entertaining and convincing. They used to have an informative video before Captain EO that explained how they polarized the light and whatnot.

The only IMAX3D movie I saw was at the Luxor in Vegas, and I had to wear these big, bulky grey shutterglasses. You had to push a button at the beginning of the movie to calibrate them if I recall correctly. I know the difference between shutterglasses and the polarized glasses from Disney. Just to reiterate, this shutterglass movie was horrible and I would never see any IMAX3D movie again for fear that it uses the shutterglasses. For linkage verifying that there are two types of IMAX3D, check out this page at IMAX.

The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, which supposedly didn't want to show "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea", is showing Aliens of the Deep.

The Charleston Science Museum is also showing Aliens of the Deep.

"Cosmic Voyage" is from 1996. It's perhaps the biggest zoom shot of all time, starting from the quark level and zooming out to the entire universe over 35 minutes. It wasn't controversial at the time, and it doesn't seem to be that controversial now. Just dated. It's basically a remake of Powers of Ten, by Charles and Ray Eames.

Galapagos is playing at the IMAX in Fort Lauderdale, FL, along with two other IMAX theaters in the US. It's from 1999. Nobody seems to be that wound up about it.

It looks like some casual comment by the marketing guy for the museum in Fort Worth has been blown up out of proportion.

The big problem with "Volcanoes of the Deep Ocean" may be that it's "too educational". There's a teacher's guide, with quizzes and homework assignments. And really, there's a glut of undersea IMAX movies.

What are theaters and the MPAA waiting for? If they're afraid of people outside of the theater/MPAA circle downloading the movies, they can just build their own download network and assign a few trusted people to do that specific job? Or do they all already use digital that I haven't heard of?* If they can spend $200 million on movies, why can't they do this and save their own budgets and the theaters'?

*I do know that IMAX uses digital sound, but it still uses film. The theaters I've been in, last I checked, definitely still use analog and it shows. Is it a matter of spreading the word?

What are theaters and the MPAA waiting for? If they're afraid of people outside of the theater/MPAA circle downloading the movies, they can just build their own download network and assign a few trusted people to do that specific job? Or do they all already use digital that I haven't heard of?* If they can spend $200 million on movies, why can't they do this and save their own budgets and the theaters'?

*I do know that IMAX uses digital sound, but it still uses film. The theaters I've been in, last I checked, definitely still use analog and it shows. Is it a matter of spreading the word?

That movie's the next best thing to experiencing the joys of 250mph+ car racing, and an absolute must if you're into car racing games (TD, NFS, etc). I also learnt a couple of neat facts like driving in quick succession (about 5ft apart) helps the successive cars to avoid drag, and the air flow from the following car helps push the leading car along.

Anyway, enough ranting...here's hoping for a 3-D car racing game for the PC.

35mm movie film has an effective resolution better than 7200x4800, and IMAX is 10 times better than that. Because film grain sizes and locations have a random distribution, there's no moire or pixelation effects so film is better than digital at the same "resolution". (playing fast and loose with various definitions)

I can't speak to the audio channels, and I think the frame rate is only 30 fps, but I think *Max wins hands down on resolution.

Tech notes: IMAX uses "15 hole by 70mm film", but the frames are on the film lengthwise, 105 mm x 70 mm IIRC. Following data is from the IMAX website. Each frame is 10 times the size of a 35 mm frame, and 3 times the size of a 70 mm frame. The intro says the IMAX screen is "4317 times bigger than your computer monitor" - of course that's size, not resolution. Too bad - that'd be about 65000x49000 pixels! Using 9 instead of 10 as the scale factor, IMAX frames must be equivalent to at least 21,600 by 14,400 pixels. Still not bad.

IMAX now offers "DMR" - digital remastering of 35 mm movies so they don't look grainy on IMAX screens.

Those of you interested in the reality TV from space might want to check out Spacestation, an IMAX 3D film about the ISS. It was made two years ago, but is premiered in Russia today, on April 12.

BTW, April 12 is the Cosmonautics Day. 43 years ago Yury Gagarin became a first human ever to fly to space. BTW, during the 43 years that followed, 431 humans have been up there. Think of it, only 10 people per year on average...

Nobody in the US (or in the world for that matter) expected the Soviet space triumth of the 1961. Nobody expects these Russians to pull off their Mars trip. But one thing is for certain - the only way to find the limits of possible is to venture beyond them, into the impossible. Good luck to those trying!

I, for one, was amazed at the clarity and crispness of the scenes filmed inside the ISS. I have seen other 3D IMAX movies too: Ghosts of the Abyss,etc...but this one beats them all by a huge factor.

I know for sure it is (or was) running in Atlanta (Mall of GA), DC (Smithsonian Air and Space Museum) and Boston (Aquarium IMAX) last year. Google for it...definetly worth the effort. A few reviews and clips here.

Take the train back home. Get home about 4 in the morning. My kid is a night owl.

Any other suggestions?

The image is the same - it's just a 35mm projector projecting onto the IMAX screen, so there's no difference there.

Absolutely wrong! The film is digially remastered using IMAX DMR, and projected with regular IMAX projectors using regular IMAX 15/70 film. There is no freaking way a 35mm projector could fill up an IMAX screen with the clarity and brightness of an IMAX projector. Please, stop talking out of your ass.

The conversion to IMAX from the normal film is now using IMAX's patented DMR digital remastering process.

The process takes the original studio print and scans it as VERY high resolution and then formats it and re-prints it at the native IMAX resolution, while cleaning up the image noise.

Go see Matrix Revolutions when it comes out, you will be suprised at the quality!

• First off, there's the dynamic range issue. Digital cameras have only a finite number of bits of precision with which they store store information about the intensity of each color.
• Second, the images you get off your digital camera are compressed. Even if digital cameras had the same resolution and dynamic range as film, they don't have the capactiy to store any reasonable number of 8MP images.
• Third, it's trivial to get more reolution with film, just make the film bigger. Not so with digital cameras. In order to match the resolution of the best large format 8x10 film, you're going to need a 960 megapixel camera. Combine that with the fact that to really match it you need the images to be uncompressed, and you're talking 2.88 gigabytes per frame! Yeah we can store a still image that big, but just imagine 30fps video. Digital cameras are nowhere near the capability of a medium like IMAX.

We have both...

OmnniMax at Science World and IMAX at Canada Place.

The film is digitally remastered using IMAX technology see imax.com for details.

but will it do imax? that's what i'm waiting for.

Imax Experience Explained

I have the IMAX film Hail Columbia. There is a scene at Edwards where they're doing a landing, and they've marked a very small (50ft or so) section of runway as the target zone for touchdown. The approach is very long (with an F-16 flying alongside, just for kicks) and the pilot lands the shuttle rear right smack in the middle of the target zone - an entirely perfect landing. I'm not saying it's easy, but the pilot was good enough to make it look easy, and there certainly wasn't any damage or death involved.

They should make it in IMAX !!!

Check out the space station for yourself in this IMAX film.

.. the first rule of aerial surveillance is to make yourself look like a huge flying lizard. That's also why you saw all those CIA guys in Afghanistan dressed up in the Tyranasaur suits.

Incidentally, I assume you're talking about the 18-foot pterodactyl captured in the IMAX film On the Wing in 1986. It was built by Paul McReady, who also built the Gossamer Condor, the world's first human-powered aircraft.

You can buy (somewhat) similar models here

And I happen to live near the biggest one in Europe... :)
(in case you wonder where I was on 01/01/00 in the evening, I was watching the premiere of Fantasia 2000 right there).

And I happen to live near the biggest one in Europe... :)
(in case you wonder where I was on 01/01/00 in the evening, I was watching the premiere of Fantasia 2000 right there).

there already is an IMAX movie of the ISS, in 3-D no less :)

The right tool for the job

Online Cost Models

The International Space Station represents a global partnership of 16 nations. The goal of the Operations phase of the ISS program is to perform world-class research that benefits the citizens and develops the economies of the member countries. The research includes living in space.

ISS Experiments
Less than 1 percent of the federal budget goes to NASA

IMAX ISS Site

Apollo 13 - The IMAX Experience is the first due out. In a fluff piece released this past spring Ron Howard enthused:

" I've wanted to make an IMAX movie for the last 10 or 12 years, I'm thrilled with what I'm seeing in the transposition."

"Howard says he will be involved in all creative aspects of the conversion, including reframing images to fit screens as large as eight stories high and 120 feet wide."

• Walt Disney's The Lion King [DMR]
• The Young Black Stallion
• Santa VS The Snowman [3D]
• Walt Disney's Treasure Planet
• ESPN's Ultimate X [apparently sports, not porn]

For those concerned about image quality a few thoughts:

1. Many of the digital images in Apollo 13 are being re-rendered for this new release. Likely the true is same for the CGI in Lion King.

2. Where the source material isn't digital and isn't photographic but animation cels it may be reasonable to go back and re-scan them. Or it is likely that companies like Disney had some foresight and did super-high resolution scans early in their production process and those can now be transferred to the IMAX stock.

3. Finally, and this was explained to me at a party several months ago in Toronto, IMAX was apparently looking into creating composite images from multiple film frames to enhance the detail on each. Thus even though each 35mm frame only has 1/10th the resolution of an IMAX frame the series of these in a scene can be digitally massaged up to comparable quality.

" Howard says he will be involved in all creative aspects of the conversion, including reframing images to fit screens as large as eight stories high and 120 feet wide."

"If heads are eight stories big, an actor could have a pimple and it will be the size of a Volkswagen," says Tom Hanks, who plays astronaut Jim Lovell in the movie."

Apollo 13 - The IMAX Experience is the first due out. In a fluff piece released this past spring Ron Howard enthused:

" I've wanted to make an IMAX movie for the last 10 or 12 years, I'm thrilled with what I'm seeing in the transposition."

"Howard says he will be involved in all creative aspects of the conversion, including reframing images to fit screens as large as eight stories high and 120 feet wide."

• Walt Disney's The Lion King [DMR]
• The Young Black Stallion
• Santa VS The Snowman [3D]
• Walt Disney's Treasure Planet
• ESPN's Ultimate X [apparently sports, not porn]

For those concerned about image quality a few thoughts:

1. Many of the digital images in Apollo 13 are being re-rendered for this new release. Likely the true is same for the CGI in Lion King.

2. Where the source material isn't digital and isn't photographic but animation cels it may be reasonable to go back and re-scan them. Or it is likely that companies like Disney had some foresight and did super-high resolution scans early in their production process and those can now be transferred to the IMAX stock.

3. Finally, and this was explained to me at a party several months ago in Toronto, IMAX was apparently looking into creating composite images from multiple film frames to enhance the detail on each. Thus even though each 35mm frame only has 1/10th the resolution of an IMAX frame the series of these in a scene can be digitally massaged up to comparable quality.

" Howard says he will be involved in all creative aspects of the conversion, including reframing images to fit screens as large as eight stories high and 120 feet wide."

"If heads are eight stories big, an actor could have a pimple and it will be the size of a Volkswagen," says Tom Hanks, who plays astronaut Jim Lovell in the movie."

Apollo 13 - The IMAX Experience is the first due out. In a fluff piece released this past spring Ron Howard enthused:

" I've wanted to make an IMAX movie for the last 10 or 12 years, I'm thrilled with what I'm seeing in the transposition."

"Howard says he will be involved in all creative aspects of the conversion, including reframing images to fit screens as large as eight stories high and 120 feet wide."

• Walt Disney's The Lion King [DMR]
• The Young Black Stallion
• Santa VS The Snowman [3D]
• Walt Disney's Treasure Planet
• ESPN's Ultimate X [apparently sports, not porn]

For those concerned about image quality a few thoughts:

1. Many of the digital images in Apollo 13 are being re-rendered for this new release. Likely the true is same for the CGI in Lion King.

2. Where the source material isn't digital and isn't photographic but animation cels it may be reasonable to go back and re-scan them. Or it is likely that companies like Disney had some foresight and did super-high resolution scans early in their production process and those can now be transferred to the IMAX stock.

3. Finally, and this was explained to me at a party several months ago in Toronto, IMAX was apparently looking into creating composite images from multiple film frames to enhance the detail on each. Thus even though each 35mm frame only has 1/10th the resolution of an IMAX frame the series of these in a scene can be digitally massaged up to comparable quality.

" Howard says he will be involved in all creative aspects of the conversion, including reframing images to fit screens as large as eight stories high and 120 feet wide."

"If heads are eight stories big, an actor could have a pimple and it will be the size of a Volkswagen," says Tom Hanks, who plays astronaut Jim Lovell in the movie."

In the UK at least (guessin it is definately global) there is an Imax native flick called 'Cyberworld 3D' (flashy link)which actually features bits from the Simpsons and specially rendered stuff using A Bugs Life and Antz characters (and in Antz case scenes) and it does look very watchable, but I guess it wouldn't be worth the investment for Pixar and Co. to (re)generate a whole movie for the money they could make from the project...

But it is possible and it is cool.

They showed the original opening of the film in 2.35:1 complete with the black bars* and then followed it up with the IMAX version. Needless to say, it was much better. The whole screen was filled and the quality was great. Also, I think the sound was remixed for their sound systems (which are quite good).

Sign me up for SW and LotR...

*It's been awhile, but I'm almost positive they showed the original before the IMAX version...

IMAX negatives use a rotated orientation compared to normal movie film. The images are horizontal along the length of the film rather than running across the width of the film. This results in the image size being 10 times larger than the image on a standard 35mm film according to the IMAX website

Here's a link to Cosmic Voyage. It is an excellent film. See it if you can.

If I recall correctly, sonic booms occur behind a vehicle (or in this case, a betty with the biggest balls on the planet), and radiate away from the object in a cone. She probably won't even feel it.

I sincerely hope she survives, and wears a cam. I'd pay 30 bucks for a dvd that has the complete footage of the jump, plus some documentary stuff around it. Hell, it would make a great Imax movie!

To answer the original poster's question:

The reason people care about fps is that when playing a fast-action game, you want as clear a view of the motion as possible. If you turn around really fast and there is another player standing there getting ready to kill you, it's much easier to notice him if there are 7 or 8 intervening frames instead of just 1 or 2. Having lots of frames can give a player an advantage in fast action games. I seem to recall a discussion about this on Tom's Hardware Guide a few months back, but I can't find it. Anybody remember the article I am talking about?

I saw it Saturday in Baltimore, and the place was packed with yuppie parents and very small children. I didn't really think it was little kid material, but all the shows were sold out Saturday.

I thought it was awesome, but I'd performed most of that music at one time or another in high school. I think they did a fine job of picking out classical music that common people have heard before and can appreciate.

Now, if they'd just do Holst's The Planets or DelBorgo's Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, everything would be right with the world. :)

--mandi

http://www.imax.com/theatres/

Screw 35 mm -- lets get some astronauts up there with an IMAX camera - or better yet, the 3D space camera! Why use 35 mm stills when you can have the wide screen? It's like VHS vs. DVD ....