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Gaming on an IMAX/movie projector in a theatre?

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Peltz

Member
Has anyone here ever done this? I'm sitting dead center in a mostly empty IMAX theatre right now watching previews before a movie... And the thought occurred to me that it would be amazing to play games on this thing.

I don't know how it would work with input lag or anything.,, but damn it seems like it would be so cool.

So, who here has actually done something like this?
 
Not sure if it would be possible. True Imax uses 70MM film which is a no-go, and lieMAX uses two 2K or one 4K digital projector, the 4K one may be possible with a beastly PC, the two separate 2K streams I dunno, I guess you could emulate dual monitor but the split weird resolution would be a pain.

Regular theatre projectors, most likely more possible.

liemax stuffs-
http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/106587114

http://www.slashfilm.com/qa-imax-theatre-real-imax-liemax/

(now who is surprised that they've never seen true Imax?)
 
God of War 3 remastered in Imax. It has to be done. Actually, 1080p probably isn't sufficient for an Imax screen is it?

It would probably be fine in a normal theater though.
 
I thought about trying to rent out a theater for local multiplayer gaming with buddies for my bachelor party, but ended up opting for something else instead.

You'd need some super long A/V cables, though.


edit: I think you guys are getting hung up on the IMAX thing. This thread should probably be about gaming in a theater environment.
 
zma1013 said:
God of War 3 remastered in Imax. It has to be done. Actually, 1080p probably isn't sufficient for an Imax screen is it?

It would probably be fine in a normal theater though.
Click to expand...

imax is 70mm, so its gonna be a much higher res
 
The input lag would make playing anything twitchy borderline unplayable. Would be cool for something like XCOM though.
 
LordOfChaos said:
Not sure if it would be possible. True Imax uses 70MM film which is a no-go, and lieMAX uses two 2K or one 4K digital projector, the 4K one may be possible with a beastly PC, the two separate 2K streams I dunno, I guess you could emulate dual monitor but the split weird resolution would be a pain.

Regular theatre projectors, most likely more possible.

liemax stuffs-
http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/106587114

http://www.slashfilm.com/qa-imax-theatre-real-imax-liemax/

(now who is surprised that they've never seen true Imax?)
Click to expand...

Wow. Didn't realize the deception at some theatres.

I'm definitely at a true IMAX theatre though. It's 72ft and looks enormous. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen true IMAX before today now that I think about it.
 
The pass through would have to be through the computer or the DCN system. They don't have HDMI ports or DisplayPorts so maybe VGA but that has a resolution limit.

nded said:
Are there input lag numbers for theater projectors?
Click to expand...

The location where I work doesn't do game nights. But other locations do I assume they work around the input issue.
 
We rented out a small local movie theater for friends bachelor party.

This theater had a digital projector setup for rented events. I am sure they had film projector also (this was a few years ago).

Was cool playing on theater screen. we tried to play LAN halo with other tvs but input lag made the projector/theater screen have a huge (edit: More like noticeable) disadvantage. We Switched to playing local fifa multi on theater screen.
 
Peltz said:
Has anyone here ever done this? I'm sitting dead center in a mostly empty IMAX theatre right now watching previews before a movie... And the thought occurred to me that it would be amazing to play games on this thing.

I don't know how it would work with input lag or anything.,, but damn it seems like it would be so cool.

So, who here has actually done something like this?
Click to expand...
Not in an IMAX theater, but a comparable regualr theatre. Smash is fun on the big screen!
The theater is liemax too so I would imagine the experience is comparable.
 
A couple of years ago, I had friends who worked at my local Empire cinema, we hooked up an Xbox 360 and play Guitar Hero 3 and Street Fighter 4.
 
My cousin worked in a small movie theater and was allowed to use the projector after work. I played Rock Band or Guitar Hero there with a full set of instruments and vocals, it was pretty cool.

They also played L4D some other time my brother told me.
 
I wanted to do that for a while, but the Cineplex chain in Canada only allows you to bring 360 games, can't hook up any other console.

Which sucks, cause I wanted to plan a get together with the friends I made at a Super Smash Bros Wii U Best Buy demo during E3 where we could hook up a Wii U to play Smash.
 
When Marvel vs Capcom 3 came out, a local theatre did an event where people played it on a movie screen (stadium seating, not IMAX though).
 
I have a buddy who used to run a business where he would have gaming tournaments at local movie theaters. Halo, SSF4, MK9, and MVC3 were his biggest crowd attractors. It worked perfectly, and he even used some footage of me playing MVC3 for his advertisement real.

As far as hooking it up went, it was really easy. We just hooked the 360s up to the projectors and used the wireless controllers in the theaters. There was no more input lag than at home.
 
You can hook literally anything into a digital projector. There's even an HDMI in. It's extremely simple to set up.

I played TR2013 on a theater screen (I used to manage theaters) and it was cool. But also kind of not. Visual fidelity isn't that great and the actual size of the screen makes it difficult to play. Don't get me wrong, it's cool, but I don't find myself wishing to have that experience again.

Maybe a racing game would have been better.
 
My local theater used to have a 360 set up with whatever the latest WWE game was before PPV's. That was great fun.

My local theatre allows you to hold Xbox parties so I'm thinking of getting some people together and holding a Rare Replay party where we play Battletoads, Banjo-Tooie, Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, and Conker multiplayer.

Brofield said:
I wanted to do that for a while, but the Cineplex chain in Canada only allows you to bring 360 games, can't hook up any other console.

Which sucks, cause I wanted to plan a get together with the friends I made at a Super Smash Bros Wii U Best Buy demo during E3 where we could hook up a Wii U to play Smash.
Click to expand...

They have Xbox Ones now too.
 
Finale Fireworker said:
You can hook literally anything into a digital projector. There's even an HDMI in. It's extremely simple to set up.

I played TR2013 on a theater screen (I used to manage theaters) and it was cool. But also kind of not. Visual fidelity isn't that great and the actual size of the screen makes it difficult to play. Don't get me wrong, it's cool, but I don't find myself wishing to have that experience again.

Maybe a racing game would have been better.
Click to expand...

Flower was fun.

One time before the premiere of Pacific Rim we had classic Rampage being played on the screen for the audience to participate in.
 
That probably won't work. But it's great on a full HD gaming projector like the Epson 3200.
You can go really big.

It has a responsetime of 18.5ms.. So pretty damn fast!!
It's 1080P and has a lot of light (i can even play and watch during daytime
 
I just checked and my local theatre chain only lets you play Xbox games for 2 hours. How stupid. Better than nothing I guess?
 
I used to be a manager at a movie theater, like 12 years ago. All the projectors were still film reel based but "The Twenty" which was a bunch of ads and slides that played before the trailers were on smaller digital projectors. Nothing fancy. They had RCA input and the audio cord was 3.5mm, so we were able to hook up an original Xbox for Halo and a Gamecube for Smash Bros and Super Monkey Ball. It wasn't that great; the projectors weren't really made for that so the image was pretty dim. Plus I didn't want to mess with the projector settings at all to make it easier to hook everything back up when we were done; we weren't supposed to be doing this so I had to be able to put it all back after. We needed long ass A/V cords so the consoles could be in the theater with us, since the controller cords were only so long and the actual equipment is behind the window up top. Bigger was not better in this case, playing on a CRT in a regular room turned out to be better than this setup.
 
I actually had the opportunity to play the first half hour of The Force Unleashed in my local cinema, by winning some random competition. Was handed a PS3 controller and was sitting in the middle of the theatre.

Game looked absolutely fantastic. Altough it was quite a few years ago, I'm pretty sure that wasn't the PS3 version. The half hour went by in an instant and I loved every bit of it. Funny thing is, I barely even touched the game on my console.
 
I think my local AMC has one of those "fake IMAX" screens. But the only other IMAX I've ever seen are those old dome-shaped ones they have in museums and shit.
 
LordOfChaos said:
Not sure if it would be possible. True Imax uses 70MM film which is a no-go, and lieMAX uses two 2K or one 4K digital projector, the 4K one may be possible with a beastly PC, the two separate 2K streams I dunno, I guess you could emulate dual monitor but the split weird resolution would be a pain.

Regular theatre projectors, most likely more possible.

liemax stuffs-
http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/106587114

http://www.slashfilm.com/qa-imax-theatre-real-imax-liemax/

(now who is surprised that they've never seen true Imax?)
Click to expand...
When the vast majority of IMAX theaters in the US are digital, it ceases to be 'liemax'. That's the product they're selling. People know what they're buying.
 
I used to work for a large well known movie theatre chain in my college years and they would have employee parties and sometimes special movie showings. I also got to be pretty good friends with some of the managers and we ended up hooking up a 360 to the projector and were playing Halo 3 on the big screen.

A lot of fun though we did have some issues properly getting the sound to work but eventually they got it up and running.
 
LordOfChaos said:
Not sure if it would be possible. True Imax uses 70MM film which is a no-go, and lieMAX uses two 2K or one 4K digital projector, the 4K one may be possible with a beastly PC, the two separate 2K streams I dunno, I guess you could emulate dual monitor but the split weird resolution would be a pain.

Regular theatre projectors, most likely more possible.

liemax stuffs-
http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/106587114

http://www.slashfilm.com/qa-imax-theatre-real-imax-liemax/

(now who is surprised that they've never seen true Imax?)
Click to expand...

This remined me of this from SimPit Technologies. Using two projectors to create one image.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHMXsjsScD4
 
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