Bryson Posted June 21, 2003 Share Posted June 21, 2003 Has anyone ever tried to do a 360 degree projection - ie - with the audience in the round inside the screen? Sounds like a truly awful nightmare to me, but I said I'd ask around. Problems I can see: Sourcing - it's all to be one continous image - so how do you feed sections of an image to 4 (or whatever) different projectors? Curvature of screen - it's unlikely to be a massive tour, so I suspect the screen curvature will be significant (ie: smallish circle) so I guess you'll get focussing issues with either the edges or the centre of the image. Touring - that's right, they want to tour it. What do you reckon are the chances of getting this to fit into touring venues? My moneys on almost none. To be honest, I reckon it's a non-starter without serious quantities of cash being spent. But I did say I'd ask around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stebee Posted June 21, 2003 Share Posted June 21, 2003 Bryson, I think your fears are going to be realised on this one. all the problems you mentioned are of course present. I do However remember someone telling me once that a Rolling Stones movie was projected in this way one time, or perhaps that was 180 deg. it might be worth asking on some of the american boards.however just 'cos it's difficult is no reason not to do it. you might explain to the director the cost implications, and suggest doing the show with four flat screens (four walls if you will), thus saving on number of projectors and focus issues too. Also a Square with the same internal "diameter" as a circular screen would fit more punters, which is a line the beancounters love to hear. keep us posted ste Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Posted June 21, 2003 Share Posted June 21, 2003 I don't know what your aplication is for this but it makes me immediatly think of a planetarium style solution but can't think how it would be made to work, What does the director want to do with the 360 degree projections? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themadhippy Posted June 21, 2003 Share Posted June 21, 2003 how about a couple of those high end moving mirror projector thingys ,get the mirrors spining fast enough and it should give a continus image ,I'll er get my coat then Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben Posted June 22, 2003 Share Posted June 22, 2003 how do imax cinemas do it?? I have been to some that are circular and have the projection over the entire circumfrence of the screen, might be worth having a look into Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben... Posted June 22, 2003 Share Posted June 22, 2003 how do imax cinemas do it?? I have been to some that are circular and have the projection over the entire circumfrence of the screen, might be worth having a look intoI think IMAX falls into the "throw cash at it" category :) I guess it all depends what's being projected... if it's shifty patterns, or background images, you might be able to get away with circular truss / scaff with weighted white drapes, and a load of projectors in the middle... but if they want to show video, and would like a proper tensioned screen then it's probably time to hide <_< And even if circular drapes and data projectors were acceptable, it probably wouldn't be a cheap exercise... you'd probably need 4+ data projectors, and either an expensive PC with 4+ video outs (or 4 PCs) or 4+ good SVHS players / DVD players. All of which won't be especially cheap... and I guess that you'd probably need five or six of everything to get an acceptable brightness all around. Not to mention that, unless you back project (which would need improbable screen rigging) you'd need to put the projectors in the centre, which might be tricky in some venues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Dave Posted June 22, 2003 Share Posted June 22, 2003 Its perfectly possible to do - but cash would be needed. The images/video can be programmed using someting like Dataton Watchout or Barco Viewscape to give the seamless image and then it just matter of using the correct projectors for each venue. It really depends on what effect the director is trying to acheive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew C Posted June 23, 2003 Share Posted June 23, 2003 The focusing would be the big problem if you can overcome the cash issue. For a small radius curve, the difference between the throw to the centre of one image compared with the edges will make it impossible to get it all in focus, without using an inordinate number of projectors. Unless of course you can shoot your video with a lens that will pre-compensate for this (as IMAX, I believe) Good luck, you'll need it! <_< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Dave Posted June 23, 2003 Share Posted June 23, 2003 You just need to use CRT Projectors (as they do at the Planetarium). You can compensate for the curvature within the lens line up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryson Posted June 23, 2003 Author Share Posted June 23, 2003 The saga continues...turns out that the director is already got onto Barco who are interested in sponsoring it...no idea why she's asking me anything in that case... <_< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Posted June 24, 2003 Share Posted June 24, 2003 turns out that the director is already got onto Barco who are interested in sponsoring it...no idea why she's asking me anything in that case... :)Don't you just hate it when they do that. "Don't bother with the second scene in Act 2, I've already blocked it" Now that would go down well. <_< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark b Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 The whole thing is possible but not easy. There are boxes out there that will allow you to project onto curvatures , hemispheres ect. They take the input image and split it into several sections, these sections are then deformed (via software) to the optimum shape to project onto your oddly shaped screen. (things like the curvature in degrees of your screen and the angle of the projector in relation to the floor end up being the parameters for the software to do its calculations.) We will have this very thing at our open day in oct. PM me for details. But on the whole EXPENSIVE. Another issue is content creation. If you have an image in 1074 x 768 and you split it over six projectors then the resolution of each projector drops to 171 x 128! not a very nice res to work in. to keep 1024 x 768 you would need to produce all of your content in 6144 x 4608. There is not a graphics card on the market that can do this. So you end up concatonating 6 images via a video wall driver. Then you have the issue of creating content on multiple screens and trying to marry it up. You could do it in photoshop and break the image down once you are done.??( hmmmm..... why did I not think of that sooner?) Would need a Beefy 'puter to make it workable.Thinking on my feet time to stop. <_< Nb the catalyst ting could indeed do the job but would not be the most elegant way of doing it. The moving heads would be next to redundant and you would need a media server for each projector. expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryson Posted September 21, 2003 Author Share Posted September 21, 2003 I'm afraid I need to resurrect this bad boy... Ok: Here we go. What we have is: A circular screen surrounding the audience who are in the middle. Action takes place all the way around them. The screen is 8m Radius, so that's 50m (ish) circumference and 4m high. Like a fat cylinder. This is to be covered with the same image repeated 4 times from 4 projectors. So far, so easy. (Except it's a bit big, but we can work with that.) My problem is thus: The difference in throw distance from the nearest part of each screen to the projector, and the furthest part is going to be almost 2.3 metres, over a 11-metre wide image. I can't see how the hell I'm going to be able to get any kind of sharp focus on the damn things using normal LCD or DLP projectors. So, is there anything that I can do? Is there any kind of lens trickery that can be done to get this thing to focus? Or am I going to have to use a big CRT projector? (Not used them before..I understand lens line-up is an art.) Or do you reckon if I get the focal point in the middle it'll be acceptable? And...is there any problem with projections crossing through each other mid-air? I can't think of any logical reason why not...but have never seen anyone actually do it... Oh, and for extra and giggles, they also want to tour it to other venues that can't take the full-size set. So it would have a much reduced set size, so yet more mathematics are going to be required. (PS: Barco are still unsure as to whether they fancy getting involved...if anyone knows anyone there..I'd love them to help out...please...) (PPS: The more I think about it...does anyone else want this job? ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kate Bonney Posted September 21, 2003 Share Posted September 21, 2003 In terms of cheapness and convenience, might she be bought round with a hexagon rather than a circle? Would overcome many of the problems of focussing... Shut me up if I am missing the point. Kate x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryson Posted September 21, 2003 Author Share Posted September 21, 2003 Tried that...she has her heart set on a circle...plus the screens in manufacture already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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