During an informal meeting, Korea’s CJ Group said that its 4DX technology is spreading across Asia and Latin America. Take-up is now accelerating in mature markets such as Western Europe and the USA. The company sees its ScreenX product (two cinema screens on the walls of the auditorium, in addition to the main screen – like Barco Escape) as “a move beyond the box.”
Although Dolby was putting a lot of effort in to promoting its Dolby Atmos audio solution, there were no new developments. The company had installed Atmos in the main auditorium. There was no news about the Dolby Vision HDR format.
Lightspeed showed the VR experiences it has been developing using its DepthQ codec (Lightspeed Develops High-Quality VR Player). The company has done a lot of work here to counter motion sickness, including examining motion, speed and distance to virtual objects. We saw two demonstrations: one a virtual rollercoaster and one a much slower virtual cinema. The first was very disorienting! We asked company president Chris Ward about the recent research done to reduce sickness by limiting the field of view (Restricted FoV Eases VR Sickness); he had read the paper but was sceptical, as this moves VR away from being VR!
Volfoni demonstrated its new 3D polariser, the Smart Crystal Cinema Neo. This device has 18% light efficiency and can polarise both vertically and horizontally. It is also modular; parts can be changed on-site.
