Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Originally posted by: potato28
I feel heat, not smell...
Well radiant sources are felt immediately.
For example I can put you in third row of a presentation that uses what we call motion-effect feedback. We'll stick to the heat part for this discussion.
In this example there is a high energy action scene with lots of fire and an explosion. Think of the whacko flamethrower guy in the beginning of Lethal Weapon 4. :Q
Since we're on a living ship @sea, SOLAS doesn't allow us to use propane (real fire!) for effects so we have to resort to tamer things like Christie projectors, smoke, silver screen, and lasers. To make the feeling more realistic (and believe me EVERYONE wants to know LOL) there is a complex hidden apparatus above and to the sides of the stage.
Here's how it works. Basically there are banks of huge quartz halogen lamps that are sleeved so no perceivable light wavelengths visible to the human eye escape. Yet the tungsten-halogen lamp puts out crazy amounts of IR. This is what you feel as heat. A huge bank of condensers is charged and ready at all times. When the effect is triggered by a special soundtrack in the feature, banks of mercury displacement relays connect the condenser banks (several kilo farads) directly to the quartz lamps. Heat is instantly produced and felt on the faces of the audience. The effect is just like if a real fireball were on the stage and it will make people sweat because of a nervous reaction. It's that real.
A full blown system can use a plethora of effects from misters, water canons, electro-hydraulic actuators (EHA), plasma squibs (pacemaker users please use the exit!), and so on.
I could go on but I'm starting to really get off topic here. :Q