Off the shelf technologies
are often the most reliable, and we use them whenever possible.
Sometimes, however, the world's tools need to be enhanced, modernized
or just plain surpassed.
Today,
High Definition Video is available to plan into a project. In
1995 one of our projects needed to synchronize three HD displays
in a 20 minute loop and interactively access alternate scenes.
Not possible anywhere else.
For our Windows into Space project, readied for delivery in June 1997, we had
to re-invent the whole idea of computerized HD display by extending
an emerging new technology called QuBit
into the lofty realms of high definition, synchronizability and
complete reliability because the project depended on running
three HD projectors 24 hours per day, seven days a week.
We
solved a film production requirement with a production technique
we call Metavision
Digital Film 30\24
which allowed us to create a film for NASA
using a hybrid of 35mm film, HDCAM and computer imagery. With
complete flexibility all these sources were combined in the same
production and the on-screen result has been judged noticeably
superior to the images you and I have been shelling out $7 to
see in our local theaters! So far, that show has won four major
awards around the world.
Recently
we created a real time virtual reality shopping center for Bon
Carré in Baton Rouge, Louisianna. Prospective tenants
could walk its halls, see its features and appreciate exactly
where their store would be and how it fit with the traffic patterns
of the center. Naturally it all played on one of the Panoram Technologies' GVR-120 immersive displays.
Clearly, technologies can
be stretched to fit a need but the result of this example goes
well beyond the current project. Metavision today can provide
film and electronic displays in a variety of higher resolutions
for all sorts of applications through technologies and experiences
that no other company can offer.
What lies in the future? Funny
you should ask. Since 1995, we've been using HD projection as
a component of a process that delivers images over three times
HD size! And what might we call that? How about Super Definition
Video: SDV. Perhaps you'd like to incorporate it in your attraction...
Sometimes, you just have to
make up a solution from whole cloth:
In
the mid 1980's Metavision invented and patented theatrical multi-projector
seamless display system called Video
Panoram. Our first
customer was the National
Geographic Society
and the show was the climax to their centennial celebration.
Repurposed after the year-long centennial exhibition, the show
continues today. It can be seen every day of the week in Explorer's
Hall at their headquarters in Washington D.C. With a whole-cloth
solution like Video Panoram, the opportunity has been seized
and an entirely new company was created to develop and market
it. Panoram
Technologies, Inc.
is installing theaters all over the world that use this format
to display the output of supercomputers.
We've
successfully thrown video cameras (and audiences) over Niagara
Falls, staged a dinosaur battle in 360°, given the world
the first DiamondVision display, flown the Space Shuttle before
its first launch, made a theater into a pop up book, time traveled,
created a shoot-em-up video game where the shooter held a camera,
brought the Serengeti into a restaurant and thrown an entire
casino into orbit. Inventing, along the way, whatever is necessary
to tell the story the best way possible.
Is this a fun job or what?
BREAKTHROUGHS