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Motion Simulator for Home Theater
Dalvenjah FoxFire writes "D-Box, a Canadian speaker company, has designed a system called the Odyssee consisting of four motor-driven actuators that go under your couch and a controller box with a CD-ROM drive for the control files. The controller reads the Dolby Digital bitstream from your DVD player, and plays back synchronized motion effects designed by the company. For about $20,000, you too can add motion simulation to your home theater. They have a list on their site of the movies they've encoded, including The Matrix, Drunken Master, Star Wars Episode I, and more, though it also has an 'audio driven' mode which will work with any source."
I can't wait until they encode Debbie Does Dallas, and other high quality pr0n flicks. As usual, pr0n will take this technology to the next level!!
Does Odyssee only work with action movies?
:)
Absolutely not! While there is no question that Odyssee can add dramatic effects to action scenes containing explosions, car chases and aerial dogfights, you'll find the more subtle effects it can create will add even more to your overall viewing experience. Odyssee adds fun, drama and excitement to everything you watch.
Odyssee will also likely make me spill my beer all over my girlfriend and her $1,000 leather. Yup, that'll add drama and excitement to the night...
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
I see someone else besides me watches Tech TV, they just had a segment on this in Fresh Gear this morning. You can probably catch it some other time this weekend if you want to see some video of this in action.
I have to wonder though if a motion device like this wouldn't make a movie less, rather than more, immersive. Even the motion simulator rides at Disney I find too distractng to really enjoy (and in its own category, the Back to the Future ride at Universal that smashes the heads of tall people into the walls over and over again). I get more of a sense of motion from IMAX than from motion simulators.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can hire the neighbor's kid to stand behind the couch and jump up and down on cue, and still have $19,980 left over.
This technology has the same old problem TONS of extremely cool failed entertainment techs have had.
Force feedback, HDTV, 3d displays, head mounted displays, smell devices, and many others. I suspect the first true V.R. rigs (with wires jacking right in to your nervous system) will suffer it too.
The old chicken and the egg. This tech is not quite good enough for the early adopters with the big budgets to buy it, and because of that prices will never come down enough so the rest of us can afford it.
Only when a new technology is SO much better than the current available do the earlier adopters buy it and the tech takes off. But there also has to be convincing content for it.
For $20,000 I will come to your home theater, put the Drunken Master DVD in your player, and punch you in the face in perfect synch with the on-screen fighting. Now that's reality!
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I saw a demo of this system at a local A/V megaplex. Basically, the system consists of a control box hooked up to four lifts. The lifts sit under a simple platform that you put your couch on. Each lift has two or three inches of travel and can accelerate at up to 2 Gs. Needless to say, it packs quite a punch.
The dealer played a scene from Jurassic Park 3 where an airplane tries to take off and then subsequently crashes in a jungle. As the plane took off, it felt like the couch had some bass shakers on the bottom. Not a big deal.
Well, when the plane hit a tree and spun around, my friend and I were nearly thrown from the couch. It felt like a Universal theme park ride. The only downside is that you are really involved in the movie, almost too involved -- it's tough to lay on the couch and relax to an action-packed blood-fest while you're being violently tossed around.
The motion system is totally standalone. The video and motion sync up through the A/V connection from your DVD player. To start a movie, hit play on the DVD player and select the movie in the Odysee. It does the rest by iteself. I think the sales guy said they had a couple hundred movies already preprogrammed.
The system costs $20,000 (list) and comes with a year of free updates. After that, if you want more movies, it's $500/year. Not exactly cheap.
If you're near a Soundtrack/Ultimate Electronics store, they probably have a demo room. It's worth the trip.
I was cruising through this months Widescreen Review Magazine few weeks ago and read a detailed review of this system. My first impression was that it was gimmicky bull$hit, further reading changed my mind and I am now looking to demo one of these units in person. I will not be buying it though, just want a test drive.
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You can read part of the article by going to
http://www.widescreenreview.com/attractions/eqr
Pick up this months Widescreen Review for the full article and a whole lot more.
It's better to improve recording technology rather than producting expensive speaker systems to improve 'natural sound'. As long as people have two ears, two signals are enough to recreate 3D sound in our brains. As long as I'm sitting on a couch while listening to the soundtrack of a movie while watching the screen, I don't want to move my head to listen to the superfluous speakers.
:wq!
Letsee for $20,000 you can do what? Make the couch vibrate gently. Methinks that the system you are after is gonna cost a whole lot more.
In comparison for roughly $200 you can go get the real thing in a legalized establishment in Nevada. So for the price of your automated bonk-o-matic you can have a bonk a week for over two years.
In Europe of course your capital investment will go a lot further. Invested in an interest bearing account you could engage the Euro 50 services of a window girl 32 times a year - about once every 10 days from the interest alone.
At least that is what a cursory search of the Internet implies.
Of course you may say that it is a real sad type who goes to visit prostitutes, but what does that make the folk using the bonk-o-matic???
Of course life being unfair it turns out that the female anatomy is considerably more compatible with artificial coitus. Examples may be found on the Web. Unfortunately it appears that these guys are rather more interested in the subject from the male point of view. For example one would think that from the pure engineering point of view, solenoids would provide a more effective basic technology for their purposes than rotory motors with sun and planet drives.
Also rather than have the device synchronized to a video track one would think that biometric feedback to determine what types of stimulation are being best received.
Sorry but I don't think I want to put any part of my anatomy into a device of that kind (or for that matter have it inserted into me).
But they are a little bit more interesting than yet another case mod hack.
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My MSBonk crashed. Now I have the blue balls of death.
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