In a tiny private theater in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, filmmaker Douglas Trumbull is screening one of his latest creations. At first, the movie looks familiar: it’s footage of astronaut Chris Hadfield singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in a clip that went viral on YouTube a couple of years ago. But halfway through the song, the film shifts from Hadfield strumming his guitar in the International Space Station to 3-D shots of planets and stars so detailed that I feel as though I’m on the ISS itself, looking through its cupola windows. A huge image of Earth fills my field of view and begins rotating. I’m wearing 3-D glasses, but the picture is far brighter and sharper than is typical in 3-D movies. Next to me, people mumble things like “Completely unreal” and “Awesome.”
This is Magi, a system that captures images in 3-D and “4K” ultrahigh resolution and displays the resulting frames at five times the usual rate. Trumbull developed the technology as a way to create movie experiences more immersive than regular 3-D or giant-screen IMAX—and restore the joy of going out to the movies.
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