It basically a badge for a more premium film experience. It’s a bigger screen, on an aspect ratio that fills the vision, with seating that puts you in the right place, rather than trying to see over the person in front.
The confusing part is there are different types of IMAX’s. My nearest cinema has IMAX screens but they are just slightly larger theatre screens for the most part. But downtown there’s a 70mm film IMAX and if a film was made for it, I’ll go out of my way to see it there - Interstellar and Dunkirk come to mind. Seats are closer to the screen and the aspect ratio is more square, and film just has a certain charm to it.
Many years ago, I ended up with a membership to a local museum that had a OMNIMAX theater, which is IMAX, but with a dome and a fisheye lens is used ot shoot the film. The projector is, essentially, in the middle of the room and shoots “up” at the screen / dome at about a 45 degree angle. The net result is the film is pretty much half-a-sphere in front of you. Your entire field of vision is filled by the media.
They almost always showed educational films or documentaries specifically filmed for the format. I specifically recall some stupid one about snowboarding of all things, which was really just an excuse for the filmmakers to go snowboarding and ride helicopters with an expensive movie camera in the mountains. It’s very, very cool.
Even if there aren’t any major studio movies made for these theaters, if you ever get a chance to see something on one of the few left in operation, take it. Totally worth it.
It’s still the highest spatial resolution format. The recent laser systems do win for dynamic range, but for sheer detail you’d need roughly the equivalent of 16K while most theater digital projectors are 2K to 4K.
An estimate for “enough” detail when doing foveated rendering is 12K, so 16K uniform is pretty decent.
Why do people get so hyped for IMAX? There’s gotta be something more to it than just an even bigger screen, right?
It basically a badge for a more premium film experience. It’s a bigger screen, on an aspect ratio that fills the vision, with seating that puts you in the right place, rather than trying to see over the person in front.
Huh, yeah I’ll just stay on my couch.
That’s as premium as it gets: deep OLED color, pulled pork out of the crock pot, blankets to curl up with, the works.
The confusing part is there are different types of IMAX’s. My nearest cinema has IMAX screens but they are just slightly larger theatre screens for the most part. But downtown there’s a 70mm film IMAX and if a film was made for it, I’ll go out of my way to see it there - Interstellar and Dunkirk come to mind. Seats are closer to the screen and the aspect ratio is more square, and film just has a certain charm to it.
Many years ago, I ended up with a membership to a local museum that had a OMNIMAX theater, which is IMAX, but with a dome and a fisheye lens is used ot shoot the film. The projector is, essentially, in the middle of the room and shoots “up” at the screen / dome at about a 45 degree angle. The net result is the film is pretty much half-a-sphere in front of you. Your entire field of vision is filled by the media.
They almost always showed educational films or documentaries specifically filmed for the format. I specifically recall some stupid one about snowboarding of all things, which was really just an excuse for the filmmakers to go snowboarding and ride helicopters with an expensive movie camera in the mountains. It’s very, very cool.
Even if there aren’t any major studio movies made for these theaters, if you ever get a chance to see something on one of the few left in operation, take it. Totally worth it.
It’s still the highest spatial resolution format. The recent laser systems do win for dynamic range, but for sheer detail you’d need roughly the equivalent of 16K while most theater digital projectors are 2K to 4K.
An estimate for “enough” detail when doing foveated rendering is 12K, so 16K uniform is pretty decent.
It’s good at home since it can fit the entire 16/9 display.