The Omnimax - Revisited

On a recent trip to Townsville in North Queensland, I took some time out to re-experience the OMNIMAX cinema at Reef HQ. Whilst IMAX boasts a 3 story screen, the image is flat. The key difference here with OMNIMAX is the domed screen that literally envelopes you in both the image [180 degrees horizontally and 125 degrees vertically] and the multi-channel soundtrack - talk about immersive...

THE ENTRY

This fact display is quite neat. Being a bit if tech head, I got quite a kick out of this visit and even spoke to the projectionist about the technology...

THE SCALE MODEL

Another piece of display showing the speakers behind the screen. This model was neat as it clearly shows the elements that make up the OMNIMAX cinema...

THE 70mm PROJECTION SYSTEM

Where conventional cinema uses 35mm film pulled vertically through the projector at 24 frames/sec, both IMAX and OMNIMAX use 70mm film fed through horizontally, not vertically.

Both systems were invented here in Australia, but for some reason IMAX tends to want to keep the projection system "top secret". This photo was simply taken through the glass display on the way in to the cinema, because here, they want you see "behind the scenes"...

INSIDE THE DOME

Although this image is dark, you can see the frame work that makes up the dome behind the Acoustically Transparent screen fabric. I was surprised that this frame was actually visible during the presentation, but it was not distracting.

The earlier presentations used to start with back lighting the screen to show off the sound system. It is said that more people are aware of surround sound for a soundtrack in their homes than are aware of the surrounds in a professional cinema. The demo [no longer used as a pre-show demo] certainly made you aware of the sound system by playing back isolated sounds from each speaker that blended to create a truly amazing 3D sound scape...

Mark

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