The first 3-D film in the IMAX 15/70 format was We Are Born of Stars, an 11-minute short funded by Japanese conglomerate Fujitsu for its pavilion at Expo 85 in Tsukuba, Japan. Written and produced by IMAX Corporation co-founder Roman Kroitor, it was entirely computer animated (using Fujitsu supercomputers) and used anaglyph (red/blue) technology to display 3-D from a single strip of film. In Tsukuba it was projected on a tilted dome screen, making it the world’s first 3-D film shown on a dome (Ferguson, 2016).

The first full-color 15/70 film in 3-D was Transitions (1986), a 21-minute, live-action short directed by Tony Ianzelo and Colin Low, and produced by the National Film Board of Canada for the Canadian pavilion at Expo 86 in Vancouver. In that theater, two mechanically synchronized IMAX GT 15/70 systems projected onto a flat screen, and the audience wore oversized linearly polarized glasses. It was one of only two IMAX theaters to use two full-size rolling loop film projectors for 3-D. (IMAX later developed a more compact dual-projector 15/70 film system for use in multiplexes called IMAX SR.)

The size, expense, and complexity of running two IMAX projectors led chief engineer William C. Shaw and his team to develop a single projector to project the two reels of 15/70 film needed for 3-D. They began shortly after Expo 86, setting up a “skunk works” in a separate facility across the street from IMAX’s factory in Oakville, ON, to invent and refine the many new technologies needed for the new system (Harris, 2022). The new dual-rotor projector would eventually be installed in flat-screen and dome theaters. (See IMAX 3-D)

The company hired a public relations firm to coin a name for the new “3-D on a dome” system; the result was “Solido” (Low, 2022). A few years later, the name would also be applied to the massive camera the company designed to shoot 3-D on two strips of 15/65 film, replacing the more cumbersome two-camera, beam-splitter rigs used previously. Thus, ironically, the Solido camera was developed too late to shoot the only Solido film.

Based on the success of We Are Born of Stars, Fujitsu asked Kroitor to make another 3-D dome film for Expo ’90 in Osaka, Japan. With the new projector it would be in full color instead of anaglyph. The Solido theater in the Fujitsu pavilion featured a tilted dome 20.9m (68.6 ft) in diameter and seated 285 (IMAX, 1992).

The 20-minute film made for the theater, Echoes of the Sun, was directed by Kroitor and Nelson Max. It combined “3-D computer graphics and live action vignettes … to illustrate how photosynthesis converts sunlight into stored energy in plants, which then provides energy to animals and humans”, according to the official synopsis. The CGI sequences were created by Fujitsu on its supercomputers and the live-action footage was shot with two IMAX 15/65 cameras using wide-angle lenses on a beam-splitter rig (Harris, 2022). It was the only film shot specifically and entirely for IMAX 3-D on a dome.

Echoes was the most popular attraction at the Expo. The next two were director Stephen Low’s The Last Buffalo in Suntory’s IMAX 3D theater and Kroitor’s Flowers in the Sky in the IMAX Magic Carpet in the Sanwa Midori pavilion (Konowal, 2022).

The Fujitsu pavilion was demolished after the Expo, along with nearly all other structures built for the fair.

In 1993, the first of two permanent Solido theaters was built by Fujitsu in Chiba City, near Tokyo. The Fujitsu Dome Theatre seated 315 in a 24.1m (79.2 ft) dome. It closed in 2002.

The only other Solido theater was built in Parc du Futuroscope, France’s theme park of moving images, which had opened near Poitiers in 1987. The Solido theater was the park’s fourth IMAX venue, opening in June 1993 with 295 seats and a 24m (78.7 ft) dome. It operated until 2017 – in 2019, the building was demolished to make way for a new attraction.

Both of these permanent Solido theaters ran Echoes of the Sun for much of their existence, but also showed other IMAX 3-D and 2-D films.