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On a huge domed screen, several media, including the world's largest film format, fly the audience from the outer planets to the canyons of Hawaii
In San Diego, California, audiences attending Balboa Park's magnificent new $4 million Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater find themselves traveling from a futuristic deep-space adventure to the untouched beauty of primitive Polynesia in the world's first "wrap-around" motion picture house.
Presented in OMNIMAX, a dome-projected film process specially developed for the local complex, the first offering is a 44-minute presentation which includes "VOYAGE TO THE OUTER PLANETS" (see Page 990) and "GARDEN ISLE" (see Page 1026).
OMNIMAX is an off-shoot of the 70mm 15-perforation horizontal frame IMAX system originally developed by Multiscreen Corporation Limited, of Galt, Canada, for the filming and projection of "TIGER CHILD" in the Fuji Group Pavilion at Japan's EXPO 70. The same IMAX rolling loop projector that was built for the Japanese exposition is now employed in the globular Cmesphere theater at Toronto's spectacular Ontario Place.
OMNIMAX utilizes the identical 70mm, 15-perforation horizontal film format as IMAX, but differs markedly in its projection system. It employs a specially designed 29mm "fisheye" lens, and the projector head and lamphouse unit travels upward on elevator rails into the theater itself while the huge feed and takeup reels remain in the projection room below.
Utilizing OMNIMAX, the widest-angle film projection system yet developed, and the world's largest and most unique motion picture projector, the process covers 180° of the moviegoer's field of vision, so that spectators have an actual sense of participating in the screen action. The 76-foot curved screen and the extreme wide angle, which extend the picture beyond the boundaries of peripheral vision, create an almost three-dimensional effect. A full-surround sound amplification and audio effects system uses 71 speakers.
Spectators lean back in comfortable seats with head-rests and look up toward the tilted dome of the 350-seat auditorium, while being surrounded by views of the solar system, as well as the tropical rain forests of Hawaii's Kauai.
"We take viewers on a realistic space voyage in the year 2348," comments Executive Director W. Michael Sullivan. "The theater becomes a spaceship for their trek to Saturn, with...