By Judith Rubin

Fading to gray is not an option

Fulldome systems provide new versatility under the planetarium dome, offering a universe of immersive, full-color visitor experiences through a growing library of playback content and the ability to navigate 3D databases in real time.

But ironically, as the technology stands today, fulldome can’t quite replicate the element that it tends to replace: the optomechanical star projector. Content-wise, digital displays can soar far beyond the starball’s Earthbound limitations. Presentation-wise, however, digital has difficulty matching the pristine starfield that a high-end optomechanical projector can achieve with simultaneous high brightness, high contrast and high resolution.

Fulldome plus optomechanical? Or fulldome vs. optomechanical? Both are tough subjects to write about. Honoring the legacy of night sky storytelling is a core issue for those venues with dedicated star theaters that for years have relied on the beauty and magnificence of the simulated night sky to achieve
affective educational goals, such as inspiring young people to study astronomy and related sciences. On the vendor side there remains much proprietary disagreement, and on the operator side there has been quite a bit of debate and discussion.

But “A problem is an opportunity in drag,” as Paul Hawken wrote in his influential book, Growing a Business, and numerousplanetarium system vendors
have jumped in to address the issue with combination optical/ digital projection systems for those institutions that desire the versatility of a digital dome
and the excellence of an optomechanical sky.

Combining digital and optical systems is not without challenges. Most digital projectors do not produce true blacks, but instead fade to a uniform gray sky. Attempting to overlay digital effects onto the velvet black night sky simulation from a starball can wash out the optical sky, obscuring dimmer stars and the Milky Way. Attaining accurate registration between digital and optical starfields is a geometric challenge, and synchronizing the motion of both skies is an especially difficult technical challenge.

Combinations

Vendors offering combination optical/digital systems include GOTO, Zeiss, Spitz Inc., Global Immersion, RSA Cosmos, Sky-Skan, Konica Minolta and others. We spoke with some of them about what they have currently installed and on the market.

“These systems are bought to teach with,” says Hawaii-based Ken Miller, USA liaison for Tokyo-based GOTO Inc. Miller’s 23 years in the planetarium business include 13 years at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. GOTO has done pioneering work in the fulldome field, notably with its Virtuarium system introduced in the mid 1990s.

“Since the beginning of the planetarium and the ‘magic lantern,’ slide projector operators have positioned things coincident with each other,” notes Miller, “such as laying a slide on top of a constellation. Manual placement was either done in real time or by using subtle cues and marks around the sky.”

GOTO’s modern vision of that is the GOTO Hybrid PlanetariumTM, of which the company’s first iteration was unveiled in 2004 at the Children’s Museum of Science in Morioka, Japan.

“We put together our Super Uranus planetarium projector with Virtuarium II, which is our fulldome system powered by Digistar 3—soon to be Digistar 4—with a control system featuring both manual and automated controls using hybrid software that seamlessly links the optical and digital skies.”

Miller points to the manual sliders and knobs as a key element of the system that facilitates real-time storytelling and education in the dome. “If you want to have the sun set at the end of your sentence, you need the real-time ergonomics of manual controls.” In a recent presentation at SEPA, GOTO  demonstrated how the system employs a motorized iris in the video projectors and a slider on the control console to adjust and coordinate the visuals depending on the desired effect.

“You can pinch off most of the gray of the video projector,” says Miller. “You can ride the throttle up and down, using your judgment as you go along, or you can pre-program the show by recording an operator’s selections or traditionally with a keyboard a mouse.”

To date, GOTO has installed 15 of its hybrid systems, packaged variously as the Super Helios, the Super Uranus, the Chiron and the Chronos. Venues include the College of San Mateo (California), China Science & Technology Museum (Beijing), Sudekum Planetarium (Nashville, Tennessee), and Sendai Observatory (Japan). The company has a preferred vendor arrangement with Evans & Sutherland and is the exclusive distributor of Digistar systems in Japan and parts of Asia. The Chronos is also available through Spitz in the US.

“Even the older starballs can fill the sky with tens of thousands of stars which are much smaller and have a wider dynamic range of brightness than video,” says Miller.

“The current working high end of video pales when compared to modern opto-mechanical systems. The resolution is much greater and I believe it will be for at least another decade.”

A defining feature

“Someday, we admit it will probably all be done in video,” says Laura Misajet, sales manager of the planetarium division of Seiler Instrument & Mfg. Co. Inc. which distributes Zeiss products in the U.S. Misajet, who entered the field as an educator in the 1980s, suggested it is time to turn attention back to the classic starfield.

“People are asking ‘what defines us as a planetarium?’—and maybe what defines us is that quality starfield. Just as there are museums for art and nature and science and everything else, maybe now we ought to look at the planetarium as the museum for the night sky. With fulldome, the technology is now there to do all the fancy things—to take people to the Himalayas and the desert—but when we do present the night sky and stars, we shouldn’t have to compromise.”

Powerdome® (right) is the name given to Zeiss’s line of combination systems that bring together one of the company’s various star projectors with one of its various fulldome video arrays. Its top-of-the line pairs the new, proprietary powerdome®Velvet fulldome system(below) with a fiberoptic starball. According to Misajet, the Velvet contrast ratio was measured at 2.5 million to one, a leap forward in video blackness. “You can use both together seamlessly,” she says. 

“A live manual control panel lets you switch back and forth. The stars won’t compete, nor will they get drowned out or washed out by the video.” The Velvet’s higher price is balanced by lower long-range operating costs, according to Misajet.

Zeiss’s powerdome software for its combo systems features the Configurator tool for digital blending. The starball works on a separate control system linked to the digital system which monitors it, according to Misajet. 

“If you are talking about constellations and the night sky, you can have the optical stars up, and then you can add digital constellation outlines and grids and move them together perfectly in sync. When you want to fly a sequence or go to a scene where stars are less important, it seamlessly switches over.”

Misajet reported that Zeiss combination planetarium installations to date total 20-plus, including Bochum Germany, with the Universarium and powerdome®Velvet; Santo Ambre Brazil, with the Starmaster SB and powerdome® 4Dome (Sony SXRD projectors); and Judenburg Austria, with the ZKP4 and Spacegate Quinto. A brand new install featuring the five-projector Spacegate Quinto digital system with the ZKP4 star projector is in progress at the Fort Worth (Texas) Museum of Science and History.

Sky-Skan’s combination

Sky-Skan recently combined its Definiti 4K with a Konica-Minolta Infinium S for the Fujitsu Planetarium at DeAnza College in Cupertino, California. Building on that, Marcus Weddle of Sky-Skan reports they have developed “a new breed of opto-mechanical starballs has emerged that are designed specifically for fulldome.

They are less expensive, respond faster because they are smaller, and use photographic plates to show millions of stars.” Included in this category are Sky-Skan’s new Megastar-II or Megastar-zero starballs, packaged with its Definiti Optical system that was first announced at IPS 2008 and including an interfacefor the company’s DigitalSky 2 software.

Sky-Skan’s first installation with Megastar is scheduled for later this year.

In favor of digital 

Global Immersion’s Director for Americas, Alan Caskey, sees an all-digital solution on the near horizon. “Gray is the enemy when striving for faultless night skies. But we think the question is evolving from ‘should I have fulldome with my starball?’ to ‘do I really need a starball with my fulldome?’ True-black digital projectors are clearly the leading contenders in the digital planetarium game, and 2010 will become the year when these projectors are setting
the new benchmark.”

Continues Caskey, “Is the fulldome system there to enhance the astronomy presentation, have the impression that IPS pays for all officer travel! The comments that people make at regional conferences and even the IPS Conference, when I discuss my travels, inform me of this widely-held misconception.

Global Immersion recently introduced the Zorro® projector in the “true-black” category, and, in June, demonstrated at SEPA the company’s Fidelity GO™ system, which uses new high-contrast projectors with LED-based light engines having lamp lifetimes said to exceed 100,000 hours. Currently this  technology is limited to domes up to 13 m, but Caskey indicates that LED-based projectors are something for the planetarium community to watch as
their available brightness levels increase.

Also claiming a place in the true-black video category is Sky-Skan, reporting a 30,000:1 native contrast ratio for its Definiti D-ILA high-contrast system, which is installed at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and was demonstrated at IPS 2008.

Keeping the best seats

Ryan Wyatt, director of digital visualization and director of the Morrison Planetarium for the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, says, “Modern science is digital, so the modern planetarium needs to be digital, too. We chose to keep the best seats in the house—in the center of the dome—and eschew a starball. That said, we have also reinterpreted the traditional optomechanical console to give analog control over our fully digital sky.”

“Chabot Observatory & the American Museum of Natural History Rose Center have all but retired their starballs, and Denver and the California Academy skipped them altogether,” observes Dan Neafus, director of the Gates Planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “From over 1,000,000 visitors to the digital Gates, I have received only three written complaint letters from the public about the lack of pristine stars—and none since we updated the system in 2007.”

That said, Neafus added, “there remains a wide range of opinions on the topic of digital vs. analog—a hearty debate that has its roots in the early 1970s when the first Digistar replaced a starball—and one that will likely continue for decades more.”

In future columns we will continue to explore this issue with additional input from users, vendors and audiences.

Upcoming events

If all goes according to schedule, the new Zeiss planetarium theater in Fort Worth will be the setting for a screening during ASTC 2009 (October 31-November 3) of the fulllength version of the new fulldome show Touching the Edge of the Universe, for which Zeiss is the U.S. distributor.

The show boasts live-action footage captured with a special new fisheye camera developed specifically for this purpose. The full show will also screen for attendees of the GLPA meeting in Bay City, Michigan, October 21.

Touching the Edge was produced at the University of Applied Sciences in Kiel, Germany for ESA (European Space Agency) in cooperation with a number of planetariums in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

After its premiere in the German speaking planetariums in May and June, the show is now available for distribution in fulldome format and as a digital kit for classical planetariums.

The show, made for the 2009 International Year of Astronomy, tells an exciting story comparable to a motion picture with live actors and stunning visual effects, conveying concise information about the Herschel-Planck space missions to the general public.

The trailer for Touching the Edge will be shown during the annual Fulldome Showcase at ASTC on the morning of Monday, November 2. The Fulldome Showcase, organized every year by Spitz, is a sampling of what’s available in the fulldome content library and a must-see for anyone having or considering a fulldome system.

Shuttle buses will run from the convention center to the nearby University of Texas (Arlington) planetarium. (Note: it will be important to pre-register if you want to attend the Fulldome Showcase, because they tend to book the number of shuttle buses based on advance signups.)

DomeFest is coming!

DomeFest 2009 is nearly here. This annual celebration of the digital dome, with sessions, screenings and socializing, organized by ARTS Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico, takes place September 25-27. The festival will include the world premiere of J. Walt Adamcyzk’s real-time performance The Omnicentric Universe, as well as the 2009 DomeFest Juried Show with the presentation of this year’s Domie Awards.

Other highlights include the U.S. premiere of Touching the Edge of the Universe and a “making of’’ screening of Fragile Planet, and special sessions by IMERSA. Details at www.domefest.org

Looking further ahead, mark your calendars now for the German Fulldome festival to be held May 7-8, 2010, and of course, IPS 2010 in Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria Egypt. Details to come.

This article was first published in The Planetarian, published by the International Planetarium Society. Reprinted here with kind permission.

More from Judy Rubin on Blooloop here

See also:
Fulldome: Marketing & Branding, Part II
Special Venue Media: Immersive Film Festival Names Fulldome Winners
"A Breakthrough Medium" for Visitor Attractions. Fulldome: Marketing and Branding part 1  
Trends in Fulldome Production and Distribution: The Paper
Trends in Fulldome Production and Distribution ; The Slides
The Future of FullDome: Pioneering a New Medium
Introduction to FullDome Theaters
"FullDome" Digital Surround Theater Technology Ready to Explode into Special-Venue Markets
Fulldome: Global Immersion's Martin Howe talks about the Morrison Planetarium at the new California Academy of Sciences

Images: From top 
Central placement of the 2 JVC video projectors on either side of the GOTO CHIRON allow for 100% fulldome coverage with no starball shadow on the dome at Fujisawa, Japan the most recent HYBRID dome. Image courtesy GOTO.
Zeiss’ powerdome® workstation. Shown here is the demo unit; customers can purchase the computer system plus the projector and mini dome to preview content in a remote location. It’s compact and requires little space.  The Velvet project. Photos courtesy Zeiss
One of Sky-Skan’s Megastar starballs; this one is about the size of a basketball! Image courtesy Ohira Tech Ltd.