Tag Archives: D-Box Simulators

Problems with Audio Mixing; How to Experience Star Wars: The Force Awakens

30 Dec
A frame of the IMAX scene in TFA.

A frame of the IMAX scene in TFA.

Is watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens (TFA) three if not four times within opening week enough? When the film is a thrill ride from beginning to end, the answer is a resounding yes! Mind you, each viewing was done slightly differently to savour the cinema enhancing technology of RealD (3D), IMAX sized screens (a cinema slimmed version versus the 8 story sized proper screens), D-Box Motion Simulation (a flight simulator) and UltraAVX (3D sound with a large screen sized the same as IMAX’s).

Seeing it the way as J.J. Abrams intended will simply mean going to a regular showing with no thrills attached. When no 3D cameras were used during filming, there’s a difference that can be felt in the presentation. But heading to a proper IMAX cinema for that one sequence, presumably when Finn and Rey are running around on Jakku, what this director filmed is worth heading to the right theatre to.

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Are D-Box Simulators the Future Movie Experience?

23 Dec

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Approximately 70 movie theatres worldwide have D-BOX Simulators, customized seats which attendees can park their rear end to. Some may have more than 40 available chairs and for those people willing to pay the added premium, they will move with the flow of the film; in theory, they will experience the movie on a whole new level. The motion sometimes work and at other times will not. There’s no proper road map for the engineers to follow when they program the chairs’ gears and gyroscopes to respond to the movie.

The technology debuted when The Fast & Furious released on April 3, 2009. Not many theatres offered this thrill ride and patrons had to be living near major metropolitan centres that had a movie multiplex who bought into this format early. In Victoria, British Columbia, Cineplex Entertainment retrofitted their SilverCity Victoria location over the summer and I waited for the right film (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) to come out before taking on this experience. To lurch and sway to the motion of the Millennium Falcon made the experience fun! I lifted my feet off the ground so I could allow the chair to fully control my center of gravity than my body.

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