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Fraunhofer Gesellschaft

Fraunhofer IuK-Verbund

Fraunhofer in Berlin

Here you can access the press releases of the current calendar year.

Nr. 74, 23.08.06

IFA 2006: Multimedia Dome – 3600 vision and 3D sound in the first digital dome cinema with natural spatial sound

You’re lying back comfortably in your seat, and you can hear it before you see it. It starts as a quiet humming sound over to your far right, gradually swelling to the deafening noise of engines coming closer and closer. And then you see it: a gigantic spaceship directly above your head. That could well be the cinema experience of the future. While current developments in the area of Digital Cinema are mostly concerned with issues like camera technology, storage and compression media or maximizing projection resolution, the Fraunhofer Institutes FIRST and IDMT demonstrate that the cinema of the future has much more to offer. In the Multimedia Dome, the traditional projection screen is replaced by a cupola-shaped screen, putting viewers visually and acoustically in the middle of the action. And that means not only surround vision but also natural spatial sound to make the experience as realistic as possible. To achieve this, Fraunhofer FIRST‘s digital dome projection system has been combined for the first time with Fraunhofer IDMT’s wave field synthesis technology IOSONO®. The 3D audio technology enables the sound to follow the picture.

You are cordially invited to a presentation:

Time:	1-6 September 2006, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., 20-minute shows, daily at 11:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.
Place:	IFA Berlin, Hall 5.3, Stand 13

Projecting digital films on curved surfaces currently involves a great deal of preliminary work: prior to the show, special dome videos have to be produced and recomputed for each new installation – time-consuming tasks. That’s why so few films are available, and most of those are short. The show player developed by Fraunhofer FIRST in close cooperation with Carl Zeiss makes it easy to produce multimedia shows for dome projection, similar to using a video-editing program. The system features an intuitive interface enabling users to produce high-resolution dome films and images as well as conventional videos and images integrating text and sound files. In addition, the show player can be used to position the projectors to suit the respective dome size and hardware resources. The Multimedia Dome uses six projectors that generate five partial images on the periphery and one image at the dome’s zenith. The show player ensures seamless image blending. Image distortion correction is computed in real time by six PCs working in parallel. The big advantage here is that the time-consuming task of computing the video before the show is dispensed with and changes in content can be made even during the show. The show player has standard interfaces to a number of multimedia systems, enabling other devices to be easily integrated – including Fraunhofer IDMT’s IOSONO® technology.

Conventional audio systems use fixed audio channels, some of which are reproduced before and some behind viewers. But in a projection dome there is no “front” and “rear“. The IOSONO® system dispenses with separate audio channels. The level, position and spacing of the sound sources are recorded and processed independently of the room’s sound characteristics so that each sound object can be positioned and moved freely inside and outside the reproduction room. This enables the sound to follow the picture, and it means that optimal sound is no longer experienced in only a small portion of the auditorium, the so-called “sweet spot”. The Multimedia Dome is surrounded by a ring of approx. 100 loudspeakers ensuring directional sound reproduction – truly the sound of the future.

The Multimedia Dome can be used not only in planetaria and cinemas but also at entertainment parks, in simulators or multimedia installations.

The shows will demonstrate the whole range of content that dome cinemas can present – from the first prize-winning animated film for 3600 projection, Kaluoka’hina, the Magic Reef, and the animated Alien Action to the feature film Romeo and Juliet to dome panoramas combined with jazz and club music. Fraunhofer FIRST and Fraunhofer IDMT wish to thank Softmachine GmbH, Tilt Design Studio, LivinGlobe, Allsky.de and Mirage3D for providing the dome shows and dome images.

As the number of seats is limited, you are strongly advised to make an early reservation for one of the shows or arrange an individual presentation.

Further information is available from:

Fraunhofer FIRST, Mitra Motakef-Tratar
Phone: 030/6392-1814/-1823
Mobile: 0175/1850619
e-mail: mitra.motakef-tratar@first.fraunhofer.de

Fraunhofer IDMT, Henning Köhler,
Phone: 03677/69-4859
Mobile: 0151/11601121
e-mail: koehler@idmt.fraunhofer.de

We will be happy to provide graphics and TV footage material on request.

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