Hex [2024 Refurb]: General Discussion

[DiogoJ42]

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Good to know, cheers! *bookmarks*
(I still have the same good old 2" / 4' UV tube that's served me well since the mid 90's. But I live in constant fear that it's gotta
be on borrowed time now!)

 

[Poisson]

LED 3200Ks are available now as well.

 

[James]

My main concern with the lighting is the possible change in atmosphere. Previously, the lighting gave a very ominous feel and a sense of mystery. If all these lights are added (”extra 200 lights” gulp!) and the whole place is suddenly brighter #DiscoHex, I will be disappointed. Time will tell.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

But what about the video file of the story in the cinema room? The quality was quite poor, I hope we can expect a huge improvement on that.

Realistically, the best you could hope for in "remastering" the videos will be a melding of old and new. Any graphics in that video, or anything computer generated, can be remade in a higher resolution, so theoretically we could see something in 4K. The tricky part, however, is the source video for live action scenes.

It's possible that sections were filmed on 16mm for the TV advert, but it's much more likely that they were filming on DigiBeta (a standard definition digital video format).

If sections for the TV advert were filmed in 16mm, and they've retained the original prints, they could scan them in at a higher resolution and re-use, or re-edit them to create a new HD or 4K video (with film being analogue there's a fair bit of room to manoeuvre).

If, as I believe, all of the source live action video footage is filmed on DigitBeta, you're not going to be able to upscale it to a satisfactory standard. Its resolution will be 720 x 576 anamorphic pixels, it will look like trash if you try and blow it up to 3840 x 2160 square pixels. I don't care about whichever prosumer tool you've seen which promises 4K upscaling, I don't care what you think AI can do, it is entirely a product of its time and will remain that way.

One option would be to film new live action sections for the videos. They could attempt to recreate the legend video shot for shot, but with digital cinema cameras. This would effectively "future proof" for a while. It entirely depends on how far they want to go with this.

The likely outcome, I think, is this:

The line queue documentary, shown on the goold old CRTs, wil remain the same. A documentary is a documentary, they are products of time, if anything the ageing looks and feels just adds to the legend and story at this point. It looks like a BBC documentary shot in the late 90s.

The cinema room video will be remade from scratch, but will retain the original voiceover. A shot for shot remake is possible, but unlikely. It'll be mostly the same but won't retain some of those turn of the centuries wonky, on the floor, MTV camera angles. Their only other option is simply to keep the original as it is and leave it alone. There's nothing to be done to it to "remaster" it.

 

[Poisson]

I think they'll setup the cinema room to make the original video look the best it can. That's it.

 

[MaxPower]

My main concern with the lighting is the possible change in atmosphere. Previously, the lighting gave a very ominous feel and a sense of mystery. If all these lights are added (”extra 200 lights” gulp!) and the whole place is suddenly brighter #DiscoHex, I will be disappointed. Time will tell.

Exactly this.

The lighting was great as it made the whole thing very mysterious and allowed you to see just enough of the set pieces.

Some of Merlins more recent efforts with lighting upgrades have been ott.

 

[tayspru]

I wonder if they would try AI upscaling, it has been applied quite successfully recently and is one of the few useful applications of AI

 

[Zeock]

I would be a little bit disappointed if they don't try to upscale the Hex video, but it doesn't matter too much to me. However, I would be far more disappointed if the original atmosphere of the ride is changed for the worse due to brighter lighting.

 

[rob666]

My main concern with the lighting is the possible change in atmosphere. Previously, the lighting gave a very ominous feel and a sense of mystery. If all these lights are added (”extra 200 lights” gulp!) and the whole place is suddenly brighter #DiscoHex, I will be disappointed. Time will tell.

200 new lights does not have to mean 200 bright lights though.
They can be subtle.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

I wonder if they would try AI upscaling, it has been applied quite successfully recently and is one of the few useful applications of AI

I half addressed this, but the available video information in a (presumably) DVD render of a video filmed primarily in DigiBeta isn't enough to upscale it with modern AI tools. It especially doesn't help that the video is incredibly dark and high contrast, so the little information there is dwindles further.

The best example we have, at the moment, with AI upscaling tools is Peter Jackson's "Get Back", which is a marked improvement on the technology he first used in 2018's "They Shall Not Grow Old". The reason why these films, in particular, could be remastered to decent quality is entirely because the source material was shot on analogue film, mostly 16mm, but with some 35mm. The information you can gather for a rescan is effectively limitless, as it's light captured on celluloid. This type of remastering isn't really available for the commercial market, being incredibly labour intensive and specialist.

AI upscaling, for a professional project, also isn't really an option with MPEG2 lossy compressed digital video. There's more information available in DigiBeta (it's not compressed as heavily), than DVD, so you may have an OK result with that, but that would presume that they exported the final project to DigiBeta for archiving purposes.

AI could get there, eventually, but we're not at the stage yet where it's commercially available for this type of project.

They could use something like Topaz Labs Video AI, but I've had very mixed results and certainly wouldn't consider using it for a project like this. You could get a passable 720p version, from the 576i original, but nothing really better.

 

[Trooper Looper]

The original lighting really was something else. A great mixture of warmth and colder ones for the more supernatural scenes!

From: https://x.com/etparchive/status/1807041301205889304?t=9AxW7xYwm7BX_jASVV-OSA&s=19

 

[Ryan]

Have the people arguing that it is too strong ever actually seen a generator blow? Like one that is under full load, they can go with a huge bang, 10x more sparks than this reworked one, with lots of fire. I am going to take an educated guess and say no, they have not seen one blow.

I haven't seen a generator blow. But I would expect anything bursting into flames and firing out 10x the sparks shown on this video, to not sit there silent for a minute, and then quietly restart itself back to normal operation.

I never really thought of the generator as blowing. More that it mysteriously ceased to function, and just as mysteriously chugged back into life.

The queueline video explains how workers on the site were experiencing strange, mysterious, unsettling things. "Cold draughts, moisture, condensation on their hands, equipment malfunctioning (electricity crackles and a bulb is shown getting brighter)" - I'd always just linked the behaviour of the generator to that, in fact the whole Octagon scene functions as that sentence brought to life.

It's that kind of attention to detail that makes Hex incredible to me. Maybe I am just a moaning about things changing, but for me personally, if the generator cutting out looks anything like that video in Hex 3.0, it'll have lost a sense of mysterious unease so amazingly crafted in Hex 2.0.

 

[Jb85]

Caught up on this thread. Are we really really moaning, again, about theming improvements and refurbishment.

If the Curse and Nemesis Reborn have taught me anything it’s to wait until you’ve actually experienced the ride.

I feel sorry for Bianca and the team if they read our forums. All the effort they are putting in - just for a brigade of moaners

 

[s_g_k]

Caught up on this thread. Are we really really moaning, again, about theming improvements and refurbishment.

If the Curse and Nemesis Reborn have taught me anything it’s to wait until you’ve actually experienced the ride.

I feel sorry for Bianca and the team if they read our forums. All the effort they are putting in - just for a brigade of moaners

Exactly this. Take the new spark machine for example - we’ve only seen a 1 second clip of this, meaning we’ve seen it completely out of context, on a screen and not in the octagon surrounded by all the other immersive effects etc. I actually do do some part time theatre production work and when choosing pyrotechnics we watch demo videos on the Le Maitre website, and they look underwhelming because it is literally just a video of the effect going off, totally absent of meaning, purpose and immersion.

Chillax guys, it’ll be great. And as others have said, filming content inside dark rides will always require additional lighting and for the theming lighting to be dialled up - just like we saw on TCAAM.

 

[Ryan]

I feel sorry for Bianca and the team if they read our forums. All the effort they are putting in - just for a brigade of moaners

I'm sure they're all big and adult enough to cope just fine with people sharing their opinion, based on a video they made with the purpose of sharing their vision for an attraction.

I'm sure they're not out of touch enough to expect everything they share, everything they do, to be met with unending praise.

If the Curse and Nemesis Reborn have taught me anything it’s to wait until you’ve actually experienced the ride.

I'm not sure if this is it. No discussion, praise or criticism until the ride is open? It's a discussion forum, not a review site.

There's been as much praise as there has been criticism on the changes. I've enjoyed reading the praise as much as writing my concerns. You could just scroll on if you're struggling with it?

 

[Islander]

I'm sure they're all big and adult enough to cope just fine with people sharing their opinion, based on a video they made with the purpose of sharing their vision for an attraction.

I'm sure they're not out of touch enough to expect everything they share, everything they do, to be met with unending praise.

I think, more to the point, they're probably clued up enough to realise that the views of those on an enthusiast site represent a small minority of their overall customer base.

 

[rob666]

A small minority?
Make that tiny minority.

 

[WillPS]

Pretty sure all the GP will care about, if anything, is that it isn't open - and for frequent visitors hasn't been open for some time.

 

[tech]

And, unless I'm mistaken, it was also an effect that would require routine maintenance to keep it in working order.

You are correct - it was a genuine spark generated by a small motor. During the 2017 refit one of the guys spent forever and a day getting it to work again, and when it finally did, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't much more dramatic. I think I even reported it as down one morning when actually I just didn't spot it

 

[tech]

Realistically, the best you could hope for in "remastering" the videos will be a melding of old and new. Any graphics in that video, or anything computer generated, can be remade in a higher resolution, so theoretically we could see something in 4K. The tricky part, however, is the source video for live action scenes.

The bottleneck was always the show control system. The projector had been replaced a few times, as had the screens, but the playback system was the same and I think if you fed it a new 4K vid file it'd probably generate more sparks than the generator ever did.

Getting Hex preshow running on Medialon is a huge win, and brings it into line with most of the other attractions making maintenance and ongoing updates so much easier.