The history of the cinematic experience is a rich chronicle of various viewing and projection machines. Before Hollywood reduced this diversity to its set of ubiquitous formats, there were a myriad of extraordinary devices, like the Lumiere Brothers Photodrama, the Cyclorama, Cosmorama, Kineorama, Neorama, Uranorama and many more. The Kaiserpanorama – a stereoscopic cylindrical peepshow – is an especially relevant forerunner of a newly configured display system, The Re-ACTOR.

Re-ACTOR derives from The Virtual Room originally developed at Museum Victoria by VROOM Inc. It is a hexagonal container whose six walls are passive stereoscopic back projection screens. Within the container are 12 projectors enabling passive back projection on each screen. Viewers stand outside the container, and moving around it are able to see a 3D virtual world from six distinct point of view. These virtual scenes can either be computer generated, or real world recordings with six stereo video cameras. Interaction interfaces and tracking devices can be added to this system.