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Filmmaker Douglas Trumbull is creating a movie-theatre experience fit for the 21st century, MIT Technology Review reports.
Trumbull’s product is called Magi, which integrates virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to create an unparalleled immersive movie experience. This service would breathe new life into moviegoing in an era of stagnating cinema attendance, and simultaneously propel consumer appetite for AR technology.
Trumbull knows a lot about quality filmmaking and designing visual effects. He directed the sci-fi cult classics "Brainstorm" and and "Silent Running," his first Hollywood job was designing visual effects for "2001: A Space Odyssey," before going on to do the visual effects for "Blade Runner," and "Closer Encounters of the Third Kind," "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," and "Tree of Life." This work has earned him a seat on the board of Magic Leap, the hyped and mysterious AR company.
Now, he's extending his talents to transform the viewing experience beyond the film screen and into the theatre. Here's is a summary of his exciting invention – called Magi:
- An integrated process. Magi is just as much a product as a process across film recording, picture projection, and theatre design that combines to create new levels of film immersion for movie audiences.
- Recording and projection. To begin, Magi captures images 3D and 4K HD resolution. These images are in turn displayed at up to 120 frames per second – five times the usual projection rate.
- Optimized Magi theaters. Trumbull has developed a "Magi Pod" theater because only half of theaters worldwide are capable of playing films at Magi specifications.
- Small and prefabricated. This Pod is a prefabricated structure that can be shipped andassembled in a week. It fits 60 people within 1,300 square feet, and each seat faces the center of a 36-foot-wide by 17-foot-tall curved screen. A 32-channel, surround-sound system provides realistic audio.
- The amazing end result. The system produces to a picture that's much like AR, and miles more immersive than regular 3D or IMAX. Trumbull analogizes the viewing experience to Star Trek’s holodeck – where people can virtually inhabit a seemingly physical space.
Futurizing the movie theatre experience could result in significant innovation spillovers. It's somewhat comparable to how virtual reality (VR) is going mainstream in China – where brick-and-mortal VR cafes are warming the market to emerging technology, with some retailers using spaces that aren't dissimilar from Magi Pods. Netflix is also trying to remold the cinema experience,premiering original films in iPic's upscale multiplexes. The idea of iPic showing enhanced 3D – or full-fledged VR/AR – films in the near future is not farfetched, especially given that Netflix already integrates with VR devices like Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream.
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