How IMAX Dome theaters offer a different experience to regular IMAX
It's a less-cinematic experience that's been the highlight of many museum field trips.
Understanding IMAX Variants
IMAX advertises itself as the world's most immersive movie experience, but with roughly five kinds of systems using varying technological setups, it offers different levels of immersion to movie lovers depending on which IMAX-branded theater they enter.
Film enthusiasts frequently travel to experience films in peak formats. One lesser-known format of IMAX viewing is the IMAX Dome. Readers of a certain age may recall field trips to science museums and other educational centers that showed films in OMNIMAX. Today, the system is more widely known as IMAX Dome, having been renamed in the 1990s, though some institutions still refer to it as OMNIMAX, including the Saint Louis Science Center. So what really is an IMAX Dome theater, what is it like to see a film in one, and where can you find them?
Dome vs Flat-Screen Technology
The term IMAX refers to a proprietary motion picture system put forward by IMAX corporation, that usually includes some combination of large screens, high-resolution imagery and an overall more immersive experience. What exactly you see, however, depends on how the movie was shot and what kind of IMAX you are viewing it in.
The main categories of IMAX include IMAX 70mm, which is shot on film and projected from a 70mm print. Closely following the 70mm experience is IMAX GT Laser, a dual-laser projection system that features 4K resolution designed for 1.43:1 aspect ratio screens. IMAX with Laser uses a single-laser projector optimized for wider 1.90:1 screens. Older installations use dual 2K projectors with xenon bulbs, often coupled with smaller theaters.
Finally, there is the IMAX Dome with Laser. These setups are more typically found at science museums and other educational centers playing nature films rather than Hollywood blockbusters. The Dome system, formerly known as Omnimax, hosts films shot with a fisheye lens that give viewers a 180-degree field of view. While a standard IMAX screen is vertical and typically approximately 52 by 72 feet, a Dome can stretch nearly 100 feet in diameter across the entirety of a domed ceiling.
Global Locations
While less common than other categories of IMAX theaters, Domes can be found in a number of locations around the US and abroad. Locations with an IMAX Dome include La Geode in France, the Speyer Technik Museum in Germany, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, the China Science & Technology Museum, and the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. In the US, institutions including the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois, the Cincinnati Museum Center in Ohio, and the Saint Louis Science Center all have IMAX Dome theaters.
Visitors should not always expect the latest Hollywood blockbusters to play in an IMAX Dome. The majority of Dome-optimized films have been educational documentaries. Still, almost all Dome theaters project at the full-height 1.43:1 IMAX aspect ratio, and select major features have been adapted for IMAX dome locations around the world.
