Premiere Design

One of the coolest demos at CES this year was in the Sharp booth, where the company had set up a "video cube" with 64 thin-bezel, 60-inch LCD panels tiled together, forming five faces of a cube. One side was left open for showgoers to stand at a railing and stare in amazement at the shifting images in front, to the sides, and above and below them. Now, the company has installed a larger version of this system at the Huis Ten Bosch theme park in Sasebo City, near Nagasaki, Japan.

As depicted in the artist's rendering above, the attraction, called 5D Miracle Tour, includes 156 PN-V601 60-inch LCD panels in a tiled configuration—the front wall, ceiling, and floor each have 36 panels, while the side walls each have 24, all controlled by a special image-transmission system. Unlike the CES demo, visitors to the Huis Ten Bosch installation can stand inside the cube, fully surrounded by stunning imagery that portrays the legend of Sirena the mermaid.

If the CES demo (shown above) is any indication, the handrails in the audience area are important—I definitely felt some vertigo when the images moved. And the attraction had better be well air-conditioned, since all those LCD panels radiate a lot of heat. I hope to visit the 5D Miracle Tour someday, and when I do, I'll be sure to bring along some Dramamine!