Even by theme park standards, Futuroscope is unique. Recent partnerships with Moment Factory continue to explore how AV can take guests into new worlds and experiences, where technology is fluently integrated into the art and environment. This is not a new ethos for Futuroscope, just a new manifestation.
Futuroscope opened in 1987 in the French countryside, officially in Chasseneuil-du-Poitou, near Poitiers, about 200 miles southwest of Paris. When I visited there in the early 1990s, my husband was on a service call, responding to a projection emergency of some kind. We dashed to Paris, rode the scenic train to Poitiers, arrived in all urgency, and were greeted with an even more urgent issue: It was time for lunch. Projection could wait. Lillet and andouillette could not.
Later, while projection was solved, I wandered. At the time, Futuroscope was like a retirement home for some of the great World’s Fair attractions. Founder René Monory wanted an idealistic homage to exotic immersive film formats that he saw as not just history, but an “observatory of the future,” hence the name Futuroscope. The IMAX Solido film from the Fujitsu pavilion at 1992 Seville World’s Fair was there, a knock-out stereoscopic 3D experience on a tilted dome. The film content was 3D animated invocation of photosynthesis blended with live action elements, including enormous 3D taiko drummers, their beats rendered in an early six-channel immersive spatial sound system.
Futuroscope was also home to the incredibly rare IMAX Magic Carpet technology. We’d first seen it at the 1990 World’s Fair in Osaka, and Futuroscope became its first and only permanent installation. Magic Carpet was two massive IMAX screens: one directly in front of the audience and a second one positioned underneath their feet, visible through a transparent glass floor. Two 15-perforation/70mm IMAX projectors were electronically synchronized to play two separate films simultaneously—one for the front and one for the floor; the films cleverly handed off images from the wall to the floor but not like we do now– the films were completely independent. Although the theater was huge, there were only 246 seats spread quite far apart with a shallow rake to give everyone a view of the floor. Obviously, now we have LED floors in a variety of settings, but remember, at this time, we’re not talking digital, we’re talking IMAX film.
While I was seeing some of the cutting edge of the time, Futuroscope also honored the imaging past. They had built a permanent installation of the 360-degree cinema from Expo ’67 in Montreal and were running a Tour de France film in the round when I was there. Their Kinémax attraction borrowed directly from Expo ’67 and the IMAX GT system. That theater was, at the time one of the largest flat screens in Europe at 600 square meters. IMAX GT ran the 15 perf/70mm IMAX film horizontally for a nearly square 1.43:1 aspect ratio. It required massive, water-cooled 15,000- watt Xenon lamps to produce enough light to fill the giant screen, and the film was carried by a rolling loop mechanism that moved it like a wave, vacuum sealed to the lens.
Visual effects and technology pioneer Douglas Trumbull (from 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Back to the Future Ride) was represented with a film in the Showscan format he had invented (and won an Academy Award for). The Showscan format was 70mm film at 60fps (remember film was typically 24fps). So this film predecessor to 4K/60 was hyperreal, color-saturated, and eerily artifact-free. It had outings at the ’85, ’86, and ‘92 Expos before it came permanently to Futuroscope. When I was there, the film content was a feature created in collaboration with Trumbell himself. The Devil’s Mine Ride was the first-ever computer-animated motion simulator film and the first production by Ben Strassen’s nWave Pictures, a pioneer in immersive content.
So this was Futuroscope of the 1990s. My husband was there to tend to Electrosonic’s massive park centerpiece, the Pavillon de la Vienne. It was an enormous 160 square meter videowall mosaic consisting of 850 active CRT cubes in a 1250 cube configuration. Electrosonic was also at the time supporting the water fan projection in Yves Pépin’s nighttime spectacular on the Futuroscope lake where futuristic images were projected onto 25-meter water screens and integrated with fireworks, lasers, and multitrack audio.
In subsequent years, the park of course moved to digital formats and experiential and interactive attractions, and continued to deploy groundbreaking images, including planetarium imaging. Starting in 2011, La Compagnie des Alpes became a major shareholder, leading to a €300 million investment to refresh the park, which grew to 40 image-based attractions. In 2022, the Chasseurs de Tornades attraction became the largest circular screen in Europe, composed of 800 Samsung 2.5mm LED tiles and powered by four Modulo Pi media servers.
In 2024, the company made a $100m investment to open a companion park, the Aquascope water park addition, a groundbreaking use of massive LED scenery, storytelling, and content elements in conjunction with water attractions.
Enter Moment Factory. Perfectly aligned with Futuroscope’s spiritual history, the pioneering Canadian content company took the legacy of pioneers and did them proud in a modern visual vernacular. As part of the 6000 square-foot indoor waterpark, Moment Factory designed an experiential and thematic space that immersed visitors in video, audio, and in water.
Les Abysses de Lumière is a multimedia experience that brings storytelling to the waterpark experience. It invites visitors to explore an ever-shifting realm of multiple water worlds that have been compared to James Cameron’s Avatar. Visitors meet Kraki, an otherworldly creature, and discover the Crique and its submerged bioluminescent beaches; they explore a mysterious cove alive with fantastical flora and fauna; and encounter the Eauculus and its strange seabed. In the Kiné’eau, an “aquatic cinema” pool is surrounded by a 270-degree video screen. While guests swim, the water vibrates in sync with the visuals.
It was a big lift for Moment Factory, which, for all its groundbreaking projects, had never created such a vast immersive zone in an aquatic setting. The creative team brought together multimedia technologies, including video-mapping, immersive lighting, spatialized sound, on-water projection, and interactivity. In the Eauculus, for instance, an underwater video feed to submerged LEDs gives rise to unique optical illusions. The space utilizes sensors so that the projection reacts to guests. The environment is constantly shifting, integrating 64 channels of spatialized audio with 200 lighting fixtures and choreographed water effects, To handle the high humidity and chlorinated air, the studio collaborated with Futuroscope’s technical teams to build customized control rooms to protect projection equipment.
This new space is the result of close partnership, merging the expert skill sets of teams from Futuroscope and its FMD subsidiary, Moment Factory, Groupe Crystal, and Universal Rocks.
In February, a second Moment Factory attraction opened that also organically integrates AV into a living world. La Serre des Mondes (The Greenhouse of Worlds) is an interactive attraction that takes guests into a virtual storyworld of plants.
The studio led creative direction and technical design for the multi-sensory project, overseeing narrative design, scenography, projection mapping, video content, interactivity, lighting, and audio design.
Unfolding across four rooms, the La Serre des Mondes journey invites guests into a botanist’s workshop to explore extraordinary plants, unlocking discoveries through observation, touch, sound, and smell. When a problem arises, guests take part in an interactive mission to restore balance and protect the plants.
The project demonstrates how a multiroom walkthrough can expand a theme park’s offerings, creating new ways for guests to engage through immersive storytelling, interactive multimedia, and gamified activities.
The attraction uses hidden sensors that detect visitor movements, triggering reactions in the digital environment. As you walk, fantastical vegetation appears to blossom beneath the guests’ feet. Projection mapping further brings scenic elements to life, and a 64-channel sound system provides immersive, directional audio that shifts and changes based on where visitors are in the four-part narrative journey. The experience also incorporates smell and touch. Visitors can interact with physical instruments and “extraordinary plants” that respond to physical contact. In the finale, guests gather around 18 physical drums connected to a giant tree. By playing these drums in sync with pulses of light, they “restore” the digital ecosystem through a collective rhythmic effort.
It’s all part of a continuous and concerted multiyear, multi-million-dollar plan to expand Futuroscope to a multi-day destination resort, according Rodolphe Bouin, the Chairman of the Futuroscope Board. As such there are now two Futuroscope hotels and plans for continuous attraction building and cycling through 2030. Next year, Futuroscope will celebrate its 40th year of being one of the world’s epicenters of image-based attractions.
