|
NOTHING BUT FIRST-CLASS SEATS AT THE MOVIES
30 December 2006 - Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
| Invisible, but audible, is the latest attraction at the Bavaria Film Studios near Munich. The "4D cinema experience" is the second movie theater in Germany to have departed from conventional multi-channel sound. The IOSONO system creates perfect surround sound at every seat. |
Visitors to the 4D cinema in the grounds of the Bavaria Film Studios can plunge into a completely new kind of movie experience. Not only are the images real enough to touch, as is usual in 3D movie theatres, but the sound, too, gives viewers the feeling of being in the thick of events. Against the backdrop of an abandoned mine, the wind drives bales of dry tumbleweed across the seats of the movie theater. A thunderclap makes the audience flinch, the thunderstorm is right over their heads. Then down comes the rain, so close that they can almost feel it. A hissing rattlesnake darts out of an old tipper truck and turns into the ghost of the old mine keeper, who takes the visitors on a helter-skelter journey through the haunted mine. The illusion is created by state-of-the-art video and audio engineering methods. The IOSONO sound system developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau ensures perfect acoustic reproduction in all seats, regardless whether a viewer is sitting at the front or the back, at the side or in the middle. Until now, only a few seats offered perfect surround sound. The traditional multi-channel system works by cleverly mixing the sound signals coming from right and left, back and front, but the desired surround-sound effect is only achieved at a central point in the room, the so-called "sweet spot". IOSONO no longer has such a sweet spot, or rather, the sweet spot is everywhere. A ring of loudspeakers is positioned right round the movie theater. The acoustic signals emitted by the speakers overlap and interact in such a way as to create the perfect surround sound experience in every seat. "The IOSONO technology makes sound waves spread evenly across the room, rather like the ripples you create when you throw a pebble into a pond," explains Dr. Sandra Brix of the IDMT, a member of the IOSONO development team. A "synthetic wave field" is generated by superimposing the sound waves from all 432 loudspeakers. Although calculated by several computers, this wave field conveys a realistic impression of natural sound. Nothing is left to chance: The sound engineer can place a virtual sound source at any point in the room, and the software ensures that the loudspeakers produce the corresponding acoustic signals, such as the rattlesnake, which appears poised to strike the viewer, regardless of whether he or she is sitting in the front or the back row.
http://www.fraunhofer.de
About: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft undertakes applied research of direct utility to private and public enterprise and of wide benefit to society. Its services are solicited by customers and contractual partners in industry, the service sector and public administration. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft maintains over 80 research units at more than 40 different locations throughout Germany. A staff of some 12,700, predominantly qualified scientists and engineers, works with an annual research budget of over one billion euros. Of this sum, more than € 900 million is generated through contract research. Two thirds of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s contract research revenue is derived from contracts with industry and from publicly financed research projects. The remaining one third is contributed by the German federal and Länder governments, as a means of enabling the institutes to pursue more fundamental research in areas that are likely to become relevant to industry and society in five or ten years’ time.The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is also active on an international level: Affiliated research centers and representative offices in Europe, the USA and Asia provide contact with the regions of greatest importance to present and future scientific progress and economic development. |
More News:
• For December 2006
• From Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
• For Contract Research Organisation
|
