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Gaming on the IMAX
JavaTenor writes "The Tech Museum in San Jose, CA, is holding the 1st Annual MaxGames tournament on August 15, 2002. The final matches for each game will be held on the IMAX Dome screen, so if you've ever wanted to play Halo eight stories high, this is the event for you."
i knew i didn't pay $2000/month rent living a block away from this thing for nothing!
personally, i would rather play a god type game with that perspective... GTA, Warcraft 3, etc.
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If you want to play Halo 8 stories high, all you have to do is stack up 8 Xboxes. ;)
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
they ripped this off The Wizard!!
I prefer PS/2 on my Sony 61" projection TV coupled with a serious surround sound system and a couple of blunts and bumps.... Nothing beat that ;-)
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WOW! What an amazing way to illustrate what low fidelity images are provided on your television than to blow them up onto the IMAX screen :)
I think IMAX is really cool, but things not designed to play on an IMAX screen don't necessarily translate well. The IMAX screen over at Navy Pier in Chicago does showings of various non-imax movies during weekends at midnight. So, some friends of mine and I went to see the Matrix there.
The problem is that it was filmed for being shown in a normal theater. So all of the quick cuts are just totally overwhelming on that screen. Furthermore, the images end up being rather grainy because the scale is so much bigger than is natual. And if you happen to see it on a dome IMAX, then you've got that as another impact on it. The sound was awesome, but man it's hard to watch.
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Halo 8 stories high...a 30 foot soldier running around trying to figure out how to aim.
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God, playing Gran Tourismo 3 on something that large would be larger then life!
Too bad I live in Florida and don't have the money to fly over there to participate.
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This sounds a little better then it will be in reality. The San Jose 'IMAX' theatre is in fact an OmniMax or Dome theatre format. The 180 degree (ish) * 360 degree (ish) view giving you pretty much full periferal vision if you look straight at the center. Not the super resolution rectangular 5 story high IMAX format that would make for some awsome gaming! They will either display the games on a small awkwardly stretched rectangle or stretch it beyond recognition over the whole screen.
The sound system on the other hand features 6 channel 13000 watts of quad-damage (to your ears as much as your avatar) coming from 44 speakers.
Haha, I hope that the IMAX has some backup projectors, just in case...
Just wait until the Tech Museum tries to charge you after you burn in your game images on their projector!
We all know that true 3l33t gamers will say something like "Screw Imax, monoscreen gaming sucks, I use a parhelia and I *need* 3 displays, does IMAX offers 3 screens gameplay? no! so it's already obsolete HA!".
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Sure, the novelty aspect is fun, but having an 8-story screen means having a screen you have to move your eyes and head to see all of. Movement at what would be the edges of the monitor might not be noticed until well after that movement has shot you...
set fov reallyreallyreallyhigh
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
"Won't this look kinda bad?"
:)
Quite possibly. IMAX movies use 70mm film because 35mm doesn't quite have enough resolution. IMAX movies also run up to 60 fps because at 24 strobing is far too distracting.
However, there is a far bigger problem to playing games on the IMAX screen: They video card (or the software) has to warp the video so that it'll look correct on the screen. It doesn't look right if the regular image is projected on the screen.
Why would anyone play this? I can think of a really good reason right now: peripheral vision. I depend on peripheral vision while I'm driving, I'd LOVE to have that capability in a video game. It'd definitely be an interesting experience.
Having grown up near the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater in Balboa Park in San Diego, I saw many movies filmed in IMAX ...
... a midnight Led Zeppelin laser show, what do you expect?
Because of this I am absolutely positive that you could collect a full day's worth of complete "documentaries" that were not much more than a collection of helicopter/plane flights for no real reason other than to induce vertigo.
One documentary I know my whole family jumped at the chance to see was entitled "Speed". If I remember correctly, the first five minutes or so were computer generated tunnels which, of course, got faster and faster until people were practically passing out in their seats. They had cockpit footage in formula racers, jets, land-speed-record type vehicles, etc.
The most thrilling scene I ever saw in an IMAX documentary was the escape procedure taken by astronauts in case of a critical emergency on the launch pad. It involved strapping onto a line that's connected somewhere around the top of the shuttle and then zipping along into a net at ground level. It was completely unexpected in a fascinating documentary primarily dominated by shots of Earth from space.
Of course, none of this tops when I got a little older and started going to watch the midnight Led Zeppelin laser shows baked out of my mind, though. So I wouldn't worry about at least that theater allowing more adolescent activities. I mean
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
I don't know did they mention if they would have the swimsuit costume patch installed?
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I saw a cheesy ass Dino movie on an IMAX down in Australia. The writing was dumb and the computer animation was mediochre. However, what blew my mind was that they did it with stereoscopic vision.
... cool! It was nearly as clear as my own memories of visiting places like that in Utah. For a moment I thought I was having a flashback. Heh. Too bad it wasn't a 20 minute movie about roaming around Canada instead of a poorly written Jurassic Park wannabee.
Let me tell you something: Stereo vision + high res 70 mm film + round screen that provides peripheral vision = wow!
As I said, the movie visuals sucked. However, in the beginning (before they tried to get to the crappy plot) they had a camera dollying over an area of Canada where they were excavating fossils. The effect was startling because the stereo + high res film depicting a real place was
Hey, someone snuck in your house last night and wrote "gullible" behind your monitor. You'd better check on that.
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How Big is the IMAX Screen?
A: The IMAX theater screen is a huge wrap around dome. We'll be able to project the games onto an image about 40' by 60'.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Maybe it's just me, but aside from the resolution problems of blowing an NTSC display up to OmniMAX sizes, seeing Virtua Fighter $(N) on an OmniMAX screen just doesn't make me want to get up and check out the competition. NFL Fever? Please. The X-style games (Tony Hawk, SSX Tricky) and racing games (Gran Turismo) might possibly be interesting.
OTOH, if you want to get me to claw my way to the head of the line, all you have to do is set up nearly any of the Star Wars spaceflight games (Star Wars Starfighter, XWing Alliance, etc.). Crank the resolution to 1280 * 1024 * 32bpp and even on an IMAX screen it would look stunning. Go the extra mile and compensate for the spherical projection surface, and you could have a major spectator attraction on your hands ("Come ride shotgun in an XWing fighter as some of the best gamers on the planet go after the Death Star").
I've always wanted to experience a truly immersive space flight simulator. XWing Alliance on an OmniMAX screen would do it.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Cheezus, and I thought it gave you motion sickness
on a regular TV.
I hope the theater has barf bags...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
Each pixel should be a about an inch tall, assuming 800x600 resolution.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
so if you've ever wanted to play Halo eight stories high
No, not really
However imagine nethack at that size!
Fuck gaming, I'd rather see an orthoscope go somewhere fun on an Imax!
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I want to play Tempest on the side of Stone Mountain.
The funny thing about the movie [The Wizard] was when the girl was telling the kid what to do when he played [a beta version of Super Mario Bros. 3]
She says: "Find a warp!" There were warp zones in the first three Super Mario Bros. games (SMB 1, SMB 2: The Lost Levels, and SMB 2: Mario Madness).
like she would really know where the damn warp whistle was ....
She says: "Use the flute!" Jimmy played a metric buttload of NES games to prepare for the competition. The puzzles in those games typically fell into cliché patterns. It's not likely that he never touched Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda, which included warp whistles that even played the same tune.
What ticked me off with respect to the final round of that movie was how Jimmy got points just for warping to world 4 Giant Land. None of the Super Mario Bros. games give you points for warping. And the game didn't seem to have the concentration game yet. SMB 3 gives the player a concentration game (called "N-spade" by some players) after every 80,000 points; Jimmy finished with 81,520. Yes, I'm sick enough to remember that.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sounds like a good place to play LazerMAME.
check it out here.
anyway -- playing games on that would be rediculously hard. the point of IMAX is so that your entire peripheral vision is occupied. except that in games etc, the part of the screen which is now at the far end of your p.vision actually conveys important information... so i would imagine this won't come out too well.
but it's all about the bragging rights afterall, i guess.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
That's not enough. That'll give it the FoV, but the geometry still has to be transformed. I mean think about it, the human eye has an FOV of nearly 180. Quake runs at 90. Even if you stretched Quake to 180, it's a linear stretch and not a curved one like the surface of the screen is.
:)
Basically you'd need a 'fisheye' distortion filter for Quake.
I used to run the network for a big architecture firm. We had a nice conference room with a 12-foot rear-projection glass screen, and an LCD projector in the room behind. On weekends we'd often have LAN parties, so one day I decided to drag my box into the room.
Man, I lasted about 3 minutes, and I thought I was going to puke. Staying as far from the screen as possible, I still had to move my head side-to-side to see all the action, and I had bad-ass motion sickness.
The resolution was actually pretty good, even for the 800x600 projector - no real pixelization. I wouldn't do it again, though. On an IMAX I bet it would be even worse.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
I'm not sure of the whens or whys... but for the past few years, most OmniMax installations are now called "IMAX Dome". The IMAX.com website has information on both formats.
Perhaps the IMAX folks have their fingers in the OmniMax market now, too.
While I'd imagine The Tech will be open late for the mature gamers (mature games start at around 5 PM) I find it odd that The Tech normally closes at 6 PM.
I don't know how many times I've been in San Jose for a convention, usually less than a few blocks from The Tech, but have been unable to go because they close at 6.
San Jose, the city that's alive way into the wee hours of the morning...
*sigh*
Only because the people making the iMAX films are so stuck on showing you the wonderful beauty of thier film technology they completly forget to make it interesting.
The only good iMAX films I ever saw were ones made by NASA for the iMAX at KSC.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
Since the site is /.ed I can't look for details but there are several ways they can try to make this work:
First use a high resolution digital film projector, like the ones Lucas thought were going to be so widespread that Episode II could be shown on them exclusively.
Secondly, if Bungie is involved they could easily modify the game to change both the width of the field of view and the virtual lens size (if necessary). These two changes if possible would truly take advantage of the size and shape of the IMAX screen.
Third, big hardware. I'm not talking about a GeForce4 4600, I'm talking a high end workstation card. Sure you might lose some of the more advanced effects but if the card supported the higher resolutions and good AA it would probably look better than trying to push a consumer grade card.
Of course keep in mind that this is mostly - pull the ideas out of my ass conjecture.
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
I saw that IMAX film at the space center in Huntsville. The screen there was even bigger than a regular IMAX. It was great, it made you feel like you were actually going down that rope.
The last IMAX film was kinda slow and boring. It was something about caves. Why can't they put interesting MOVIES in IMAX format? It would be cool if they had filmed like the Matrix 2 in 35mm AND the IMAX format.
Screw Halo! Imagine playing PONG on this thing
You may laugh, but that sure brought back a memory. Back in 1981 I was in college and working at the student union setting up for a concert later that evening when one of the building's directors wheels in this big, bulky thing and starts to roll down the 20-foot diagonal movie screen. Come to find out it was a new projection TV system. (Films were popular on campus, so the thinking was why not project videos, too?)
A lightbulb went off and I asked "What does it use for inputs?"
"Basically any NTSC source; there's antenna connections and RCA jacks."
Within 15 minutes' time, I'd hooked up my Atari 800 (*) to the projector and to the concert sound system (1000 Watts!) and started Star Raiders(**). The explosions were deafening, and when I launched into hyperspace, it sounded like a jet was taking off in the student union! Got to play for almost an hour until some students complained they couldn't study.
(*) That was a 6502 (8-bit) system. IIRC it ran at 2 MHz; had 8 KB of memory; display was in color and capable of 12 rows of 40 characters. It was pretty advanced at the time!
(**) Star Raiders was a killer app of the time. Many people bought an Atari 800 (or 400) just so they could play it! It was certainly a big factor in my decision.
Heck, I proved that in a meeting just this morning.
The only thing I remember was the guy actually using the glove and not sucking at the game (I think it was a racing game). That really impressed me because whenever I used the glove (my friend had it, so it wasn't very often) I completely sucked at the game. It just wasn't a very accurate controller for me.
I read the internet for the articles.
While not quite up to IMAX standard, most college students can use lecture halls after hours for their own purposes. It's actually quite easy to do. I started by calling the Union and getting the central reservation office number for the university. I admit, it's not eight stories tall, but Quake is quite cool on 30ft screen too. Most major lecture halls have projectors with VGA and RCA in for both computers and game systems. Just a thought if you can't compete in the contest yourself.
And you brought back my memory...
Very similar, in High School, we had a projector that was in the Auditorium where we'd have study halls etc. Well, seeing as a few friends were going in over the weekend for play practice, we decided to show up early, and throw around some Street Fighter 2 on the big screen.
I was definitely in awe. Even though it was pixellated, and a little dim (not the best equipment, even for it's day), having Ryu and Ken as tall as 2 humans was sweet!
Karnal
For my last year of high school I went to a charter school that was housed in St. Paul's (as in Minnesota) old science museum. And lo and behold, they use to have an imax screen. The old imax theatre was transformed into the audiotorium and once a week we held gaming contests. We played all the N64 classics (goldeneye, mario kart, etc. etc.) and all the new X-box games on the huge screen. It was seriously a lot of fun.
The best though, was bringning in our own computers (the school's computers blew hard) and setting up Quake III tourney's, Counter-Strike tournmanets, TFC, and etc, on the school's network. The cool part was, if you weren't playing at any given time you could walk into the auditorium and watch the game spectator style on the huge screen.
I used to work at the Ontario Place tourist trap and would spend lunch watching the movies in the first IMAX theatre in the world.
Without a doubt the older movies are far better then the current efforts. The first IMAX filmmakers had a whole new canvas to draw on and used their abilities to the fullest.
The very first IMAX film was basically a travalogue for Northern Ontario which isn't a place you'd normally go. (Too many mosquitos and not much else) But the makers of "North of Superior" made it visually spectacular with a great soundtrack and an eye for the small details of northern life that translated so well to the large screen.
It was a big kick watching it in a retrospective years later and seeing the same gasping reaction from the audience to the opening sequence...
The little opening titles transitioning to a small square in the middle of the screen with what looks like rushing water behind and a soft folksy acoustic guitar soundtrack that fades out.
Then...
BOOOM! The picture blasts out to fill your entire field of view and you find yourself in a plane skimming fast over a northern lake. Soaring up and banking to the left you fly towards sheer cliffs just missing the edge then violently bank to the right and dive down the other side of the ridge.
Absolute fscking magic.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I grew up in Toronto, home of IMAX.
I saw the very first and subsequent 30+ IMAX films long before it became a common fixture at the local cineplex. (We're talking the 70's here)
There may be a bit of nostalgia but I recall the earlier films being FAR more entertaining than the current product.
"Siegfried and Roy"? Please.
"North of Superior" the first, remains my favourite. A mix of dynamic plane and helicopter shots with slow, almost lyric scenes from the North. The kids playing hockey on a snow-coverted street at twilight. The view from a tugboat pulling away from an ice-covered laker.
Last year we were able to watch "Silent Sky" which, while a bit repetitive, remains one of the most outstanding examples of aerial cinema ever produced.
And, although I've seen most of the Shuttle-filmed features, it was the docking scene in "Mission to Mir" that had me sitting there with my mouth hanging open. I haven't seen "Space Station" yet, though...
"If you live in the past, you are already repeating it." - Me.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I would imagine that putting a 180 degree image up on a screen in front of the viewer would never look right to a human. If the screen is flat, it would need to be infinitely wide in order to make a 180 degree angle of vision image look "right".
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
That was why fov = 180 didn't work. After some mild hacking it looked ok. Custom GL code however worked fine, using skew algorithms.
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Well, I don't know the graphic model they use, but if it's the one I've seen in textbooks, a 180 degree angle of vision fails because you can't really do it mathematicly. Mathematically, you draw a line segment from the camera eye to some point in the 3-d world. Calculate where that line intersects the plane of the viewscreen and you have the coordinates of where to put that point on the 2-D screen. The problem is that to use that matehmatical model with a 180 degree field of vision, you need the camera to be on the plane of the viewscreen, which then means there isn't a single point where the line segment passes through the viewscreen. I imagine that this ends up being a divide-by-zero in the mathematical model.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.