Chasseurs de Tornades, Futuroscope Park

Chasseurs de Tornades, the Futuroscope new immersive attraction, relies on Modulo Pi’s media servers

New flagship attraction of the Futuroscope park, Chasseurs de Tornades takes visitors on a unique immersive experience. The attraction takes place at the heart of the largest circular LED screen in Europe. Made of +800 Samsung tiles and powered by Modulo Pi’s Modulo Player media servers, the LED cylinder offers a 21K resolution for a truer-than-life immersion.

Since July 2, 2022, visitors to Futuroscope can follow a team of researchers in their all-terrain vehicle in pursuit of tornadoes. Chasseurs de Tornades is the result of 4 years of work carried out by the park and the company FMD to create a complete immersive experience supported by state-of-the-art audiovisual technology.

From the pre-show, the audience enters the experience thanks to the discovery of the Center for Extreme Meteorological Studies and its protagonists. Visitors then join a 6m long holographic theater mixing video and actors. For this pre-show space, 20 x Samsung IFR25 2.5mm pitch panels are installed and powered by 1 x Modulo Player Pro media server by Modulo Pi, equipped with a 4K output.

The public then enters the attraction: A 120-seat dynamic motion theater surrounded by a 360° LED screen are central to the immersive experience that spectators are about to live.

Designed by Dynamic Attractions, the 11m diameter rotating platform has been designed to convey sensations of movement throughout the experience. It can evolve on 3 axes and turn up to 27km/h, lower itself by 20cm and rise up to 1m thanks to a system of motors and cylinders.

The platform is surrounded by the largest circular LED screen in Europe designed to support the immersion and the story unfolding. Composed of 800 x Samsung IFR25 tiles with a pitch of 2.5mm, the cylindrical screen thus formed is 8 meters high and reaches 420 square meters.

Two parts of this circular LED theater go up and down as the show progresses, revealing real set elements, as well as actors and their all-terrain vehicle. There, a backdrop composed of 105 x Samsung IFR25 tiles completes the attraction’s display system.

To power the 360° LED screen, 4 x Modulo Player Pro media servers equipped with 4 x 4K outputs have been installed. The Modulo Pi media servers allow to play the film designed for the attraction, corresponding to a video playback in a 21K resolution and 60 FPS.

The media servers are also responsible for the audio playback of the attraction. The sound system of the immersive circular theater is based on the L-ISA spatial sound technology by L-Acoustics.

Familiar with the Modulo Pi media servers already installed on other attractions in the park, teams of FMD have chosen to integrate Modulo Player on Chasseurs de Tornades for its quality-performance-price ratio. The reliability of the system was also a key factor for the attraction which welcomes up to 1,000 guests per hour for 10 hours each day.

The attraction also incorporates varied sensory effects designed to represent the tornado, offering a total immersion to the audience.

To create such new attraction, Futuroscope spent €21 million which is the largest investment for an attraction since the creation of the park.

Chasseurs de Tornades is a tremendous success. Acclaimed by visitors, the attraction is also recognized by professionals in the amusement parks industry.
Outside the IAAPA London 2022, the attraction was awarded “Best Dark Ride or Media-based Attraction of the Year” and “Best Product Innovation of the Year” at the Park World Excellence Awards 2022. During the European Star Awards 2022, Chasseurs de Tornades won the award for the “Best New Ride of the Year”.