New software available: VLCWarper
warp-on-the-fly movie player for Windows (and Mac)

Finally, dome theaters with spherical mirror systems are no longer limited to running movies on the Mac platform!

Fisheye movies for spherical mirror systems need to be distorted or warped, so the projected result on the dome looks correct. Paul Bourke's Mac OS-X movie-player application WarpPlayer could do the warping "on the fly", but for years, there was no Windows solution. PC users had to go through the laborious process of "pre-warping" their movie content, feeding frame sequences into IMGWarper for Windows, then making new movies from warped frames — a time-consuming and error-prone multi-step effort.

Huzzah! Paul has now incorporated warping capability into the popular, open source cross-platform media player VLC. So we now have warp-on-the-fly movie players for Windows and Macs both!

Warp speed to VLCWarper!

Extrasolar Planets - discovering new worlds
a new show from Albedo Fulldome

Did you know that one in five stars in our galaxy probably has a planet up to two times the size of Earth in its habitable zone? The search for these and other kinds of planets is uncovering many worlds beyond our own solar system. What are these planets like? Are any of them habitable worlds like Earth? If life developed on our planet, could it arise elsewhere? How can we find those other planets?

These are the questions that led the team at Albedo Fulldome to create Extrasolar Planets – discovering new worlds, in cooperation with the Planetarium of the Science Museum "La Caixa".

Extrasolar Planets – discovering new worlds begins with a look at the planets we know about: the worlds of our solar system. It then turns our attention to how astronomers find planets around other stars in our region of the galaxy. The multi-year explorations done by the Kepler and CoRoT spacecraft have contributed a treasure trove of planet-hunting data. Follow-up observations have confirmed the existence of more than 160 exoplanets, and thousands of planet "candidates". At the rate exoplanet discoveries are happening, detecting alien life may no longer be the stuff of science fiction!

The Holy Grail of exoplanet discovery is to find a planet teeming with life, and maybe even life forms that can communicate with us. Fulldome theaters everywhere can now take audiences on a journey of deep space exploration to these alien extrasolar planets — to discover for themselves what these new worlds might be like.

Loch Ness Productions is pleased to add this informative new show to our catalog of fulldome productions. Read more, watch the trailer in HD, see full-length previews, and order online.

Begin your own planetary search here!

Dinosaurs at Dusk full-length show preview now online

Mirage3D is finishing work on what is sure to be the best show they've ever created!

We're excited about its upcoming release.

You can now go to our Dinosaurs at Dusk Previews page to watch the "sweet-spot cutout" version on the complete show.

Enjoy!

Dream To Fly — new fulldome show addition!

"I remember... being able to sail through the air with wondrous ease..."

Have you ever dreamt you were flying? Just spreading out your arms and swooping through the air? Or flying a plane high above the ground and looking up at the heavens above?

That dream takes flight in an amazing new fulldome show called Dream to Fly — a beautifully rendered story of aviation through the ages. It's an emotional, exceptional and unforgettable experience, easily one of the best fulldome presentations ever created. It takes audiences on an incredible journey through the history of flight, from the first generations of dreamers who imagined great flying machines to the dreamers of today who are building the star-faring machines of tomorrow.

Dream To Fly combines a rare combination of excellent writing, stunning visualizations, and narration by the gifted Polish actor Danuta Stenka. Her easily understandable English lends the show an evocative and exotic flavor. The show was produced by the Heavens of Copernicus planetarium at the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw, Poland. In pre-release screenings, it won the Directors Award at the Jena Fulldome Festival 2013, and the Best Script and Story Award at the Imiloa Fulldome Film Festival.

Mark C. Petersen, president of Loch Ness Productions, heralds it as a major tour de force. "This new show may become to fulldome movies what 'To Fly!' was to IMAX back in 1976 — a breakthrough!"

Dream To Fly belongs to a new vanguard of shows that expand the dome's horizons to embrace not only astronomy, but history, sciences, literature, art, and much more. And it's now the latest addition to our fulldome show distribution catalog. Read more, watch the trailer in HD, see full-length previews, and order online.

Dreamers, take flight here!

Four Minute Blast!

We've created a new showreel/montage of our fulldome show distribution catalog!

When we started distributing shows from other producers, we came up with a Two Minute Blast, and then a Three Minute Blast. Now, with more than two dozen other show titles, we're up to a Four Minute Blast! (And we made LNP Blast! — a sampler of the shows we created ourselves.)

By watching all these abbreviated clips blaze past, you really are made aware of the incredibly diverse array of styles and content being made and put on the market these days. Fulldome really is not limited to just the astronomy topics of its planetarium heritage.

Bigger and Better: New HD trailers and previews

We've created new 16:9 "flat-screen" versions of all our fulldome show trailers. Their links on our pages point to YouTube; this allows them to be played on devices that don't support Flash, such as iPads and iPhones. And if you have enough bandwidth, you can select 1080p in YouTube's viewer to see them in full HD resolution.

We've similarly posted playlists for our full-length show previews, so they're also viewable with YouTube's viewer. These were a straight transcode from the original Flash videos on our Web site (and those are still here too).

These new HD trailers will now be included in all our show packages, so that our customers be able to display them in their lobby kiosks, for example. We'll write more about this in an upcoming Blog post!

New SpacePark360: Infinity previews

Progress is being made on our new collaboration with the masters of visualization at Dome3D. Three of the nine out-of-this-world theme park rides are now available for preview, featuring the latest pedal-to-the-metal Geodesium music tracks!

Check out Antartic Coaster, Alien Fallout and Scrambler — and hang on for the rides of your life!

Better and Better: Fulldome Show Compendium

We've tweaked the appearance of the Compendium, adding some enhancements such as beveling the edges of the sortable column headers to look more click-able, and adding a "quick jump" alphabet-selector line for faster scrolling.

Read more about our free online resource on our Blog!

Quantity discounts on CAS shows

At the risk of sounding like those hard-sell big-box retailers, we're happy to announce a special pricing offer for the three award-winning shows from the California Academy of Sciences: Fragile Planet, Life: A Cosmic Story, and Earthquake.

• When you buy a license for any CAS show, you can now get a 15% discount on a license of equal length for another CAS show.

• Or, buy licenses of equal length for all three, and get a 20% discount on the total!

Such a deal!

More options for Chaos and Order

Want it longer? Want it shorter? We've got you covered!

Media artists Rocco Helmchen and Johannes Kraas, creators of Chaos and Order - A Mathematic Symphony, have provided us with two additional versions of their epic math-and-music visualization show. You can now choose from a 3-, 4- or 5-movement symphony.

The original 40-minute show contains four movements — Form, Simulation, Algorithm and Fractal. In the new 29-minute, 3-movement edit, the first two movements have basically been combined into one, and the onscreen movement number captions were revised accordingly.

And especially for the planetarium theaters, there is now a 51-minute extended version, adding a new meditative movement of slowly rolling stars; the dance of the planets in their orbits; the lines, grids, and wheels of the "classic" planetarium projector — though of course now rendered in fulldome, from DigitalSky 2.

Losing the Dark now available in Japanese, Mandarin and Turkish!

That makes eleven languages so far, for our free-to-download show! And we have plans for creating even more.

Check it out!

Attention Readers!

We've instituted a company Blog, for some inside news and views... and so you can subscribe to receive updates automatically! Check it out!

Don't worry, we'll still be posting official news and additions to the Web site on this page, of course.

Losing the Dark wins Honorable Mention at Germany Film Festival!

We're pleased to announce that our light pollution show Losing the Dark was awarded an Honorable Mention at the Fulldome Festival 2013, held in Jena, Germany at the Zeiss Planetarium. The film was also honored at a special showing on the festival's gala awards night, due to its timely environmental message. The field of entries included 80 professional presentations from 17 countries, and a record number of student works from universities in Germany and the United States. Awards were given to 24 fulldome presentations at the Festival's Gala Awards Night held on 1 June.

"We are thrilled that our short film caught the attention of the judges at Jena," said Carolyn Collins Petersen, co-producer of the video and CEO of Loch Ness Productions. "It means a great deal to have our work recognized by the jury and to have it showcased on the awards night."

According to IDA's Scott Kardel, the video has reached more than 23,000 viewers on the organization's YouTube channel. "It is wonderful to see that the show's message is spreading," he said. "We're particularly pleased that the jury at the Jena Festival welcomed the show for its environmental message as well as its timely illustration of the problems of light pollution. We are honored, along with Loch Ness Productions, to see it recognized with an award."

Check it out!

Losing the Dark now available in Russian!

And we're continuing to work on creating even more translations for our free-to-download show!

Check it out!

Fragile Planet Promotion

To celebrate the five year anniversary of the release of the California Academy of Sciences' premiere show Fragile Planet: Earth's Place in the Universe, we're offering a special discount:

Now through June 30, 2013:

sign a 1-year or 3-year license for Fragile Planet

and receive a 20% discount on a license of equal length for:

Earthquake: Evidence of a Restless Planet
or
Life: A Cosmic Story

For those on fiscal year budgets, this is a good opportunity to make those end-of-the-year dollars stretch a little farther!

New Dinosaurs at Dusk movie poster!

And Mirage3D is continuing to work on create what is sure to be the best show they've ever created! We're excited about its upcoming release.

While we're waiting, check out all the production snapshots they've posted on the Mirage3D Studios Facebook page.

Losing the Dark now available in Polish!

And we're continuing to work on creating even more translations!

Losing the Dark now available in five languages

Those five are: US English, German, Hindi, Korean, and Spanish.

To help pay for all the additional production work to create all the fulldome and flat-screen versions, the IDA has set up a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo, called Taking Losing the Dark Global. If you can contribute to the cause, and help us can get the word out about this serious issue, we will all appreciate it. And you'll see the results right here on the Losing the Dark downloads pages.

Go to the IDA's Indiegogo campaign!

Chaos and Order - A Mathematic Symphony

And now, for a refreshingly different take on entertainment "light shows" — a wonderfully choreographed journey into the world of mathematics visualization.

Chaos and Order - A Mathematic Symphony is a virtuoso performance of animation and music. Media artists Rocco Helmchen and Johannes Kraas take audiences on a majestic trip through the fascinating world of mathematics.

Losing the Dark now available in German

It's been out for only a few weeks, and already our show Losing the Dark has had more than 10,000 views from its various postings on YouTube, and hundreds of downloads. We're very pleased with all the positive comments and reviews we've received.

We produced the show in English first, of course, and it was always planned that we would make several translations available thereafter. Today, the first one out of the studio is German, and more languages will be following soon.

How many more? Well, the International Dark-Sky Association has had more than 18 requests for additional languages so far — a pretty good indicator of the show's popularity. We're all gratified by the response, of course, and we want to meet the demand.

To help pay for all the additional production work to create all the fulldome and flat-screen versions, the IDA has set up a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo, called Taking Losing the Dark Global. If you can contribute to the cause, and help us can get the word out about this serious issue, we will all appreciate it. And you'll see the results right here on the Losing the Dark downloads pages.

Go to the IDA's Indiegogo campaign!

Losing the Dark now available

Loch Ness Productions, in collaboration with the International Dark-Sky Association, is proud to announce the availability of a new free-for-download planetarium show highlighting the issues regarding light pollution. It's called Losing the Dark.

Written and narrated by Carolyn Collins Petersen, produced by Mark C. Petersen, and soundtrack music from Geodesium, Losing the Dark introduces and illustrates some of the issues regarding light pollution, and suggests three simple actions people can take to help mitigate it. The show gives planetarium professionals a tool to help educate the public about the problems of light pollution.

The 6.5-minute public service announcement is being distributed in two forms. Of course, it's a fulldome video, for digital dome theaters. We've also made the show as a high-definition flat screen video; classic planetarium theaters without fulldome capability can show this version using their traditional video projectors.

The show is currently available in English, but translations are underway that will allow the program to reach a worldwide audience — and if you can help in the process, the IDA would love to hear from you!

Major donations from Starmap and the Fred Maytag Family Foundation funded Losing the Dark. The project was launched with seed money from the International Planetarium Society and donations from IDA members.

Go here to help bring back the dark of night to planet Earth!

2012 State of the Dome address now online

At the IMERSA summit last weekend, Mark gave what's become a quasi-annual presentation: his State of the Dome address.

It's an overview of what's been happening in the fulldome world over the last year, what projector systems are out there, and how fulldome shows are being presented. It can provide some answers to the quintessential questions: "Who are we, where are we, and what are we doing?"

Along with the "State of the Dome" presentations from previous years, the latest edition is now posted as an article in the Reference section. We hope you find it useful and enlightening!

Immensely immersive new show: Into The Deep

There are two environments particularly suited to the immersive expanse of the dome: outer space and underwater scenes. We've got them both — as we dive Into The Deep.

From Austria's Ogrefish Filmproductions comes this exemplary documentary, combining marine biology and underwater geology with the fascinating history of deep-sea exploration. Audiences will experience dives to the "Lost City" and the RMS Titanic in the Atlantic, the famed Galapagos "black smokers", and the Challenger Deep, the lowest point of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. In the deepest parts of our oceans, we glimpse bioluminescent life forms so strange-looking they could be from the realm of science fiction.

As we've done with other shows (such as last year's Lars the Little Polar Bear), we have adapted Into The Deep's original script, and recorded a new narration — this time with California-based voiceover actor Jon Mohr making his first appearance on the Loch Ness Productions talent roster.

Into the Deep is a exciting, engaging and engrossing exploration of Earth's oceans, using the immersive power of the dome theater to transport audiences to the spectacular hidden depths of our home planet.

Descend here... Into The Deep!

Dazzling new entertainment show: Chaos and Order - A Mathematic Symphony

And now, for a refreshingly different take on entertainment "light shows" — a wonderfully choreographed journey into the world of mathematics visualization.

Chaos and Order - A Mathematic Symphony is a virtuoso performance of animation and music. Media artists Rocco Helmchen and Johannes Kraas take audiences on a majestic trip through the fascinating world of mathematics.

This 40-minute tour de force goes beyond the functions and equations to show us how math is the underpinning of every structure and event in the cosmos. Learn the language of the cosmos in a whole new way, through this beautiful and breathtaking immersive program.

Loch Ness Productions is proud make this show available to you and your audiences. Your students will never look at math the same way again!

Refreshingly new cosmology show: Cosmic Dance

And now, for a novel approach to quantum physics...

How do other cultures see the universe? What stories do they tell about the cosmos?

Cosmic Dance, from filmmaker Harald Singer at LivinGlobe, is an intriguing and thought-provoking show that explores the universe through the eyes of Leela, a beautiful young Canadian physics student and dancer, as she gets in touch with the cosmos through her cultural upbringing. It's a fascinating tour of an exotic culture, and gives your audiences the chance to see the cosmos through Hindu eyes.

Cosmic Dance is a beautiful fulldome show filmed in Canada and India, featuring alternative views of the nature of the cosmos, while at the same time offering a perspective of modern science not often illustrated in textbooks. Leela's interpretive dance movements provide evocative entertainment, while the Bollywood-style dancing and choreography, digitally juxtaposed on the most colorful space imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope, will take inquiring minds on an unforgettable trip!

This is definitely one of the most fascinating cultural fulldome shows you're likely to experience, combining state-of-the-art science and cosmology with the viewpoint of one of the world's oldest religious and cultural populations.

Step this way... to Cosmic Dance!

Dynamic new show:
Earthquake: Evidence of a Restless Planet

We're pleased and proud to add to our catalog of educationally diverse fulldome offerings the latest from the California Academy of Sciences' Morrison Planetarium: Earthquake: Evidence of a Restless Planet.

This sweeping geological journey surveys the many forces that lead to changes on the surface of our planet, using data-driven visualizations and location photography to bring audiences a real feel for the tectonic forces that affect our planet and our lives.

This is a great show for planetary science and geology classes, as well as members of the public curious about just what causes earthquakes, and what we're learning about how best to prepare for them.

Prepare to be moved...

Enhancements to the LNP Fulldome Show Compendium

We made the LNP Fulldome Show Compendium, our listing of practically every fulldome show on the market, even more useful.

First, we've come up with new criteria for sorting the entries. We now classify shows by two additional categories: GENRE and target AUDIENCES. Assuredly, some programs have content that transcends a solitary descriptor, or appeals to more than one specific age group. Still, we hope you'll find our general categorizations helpful when scanning what titles are out there.

A column previously called "Subject" is now called "Topics". It's not sortable, but it is keyword-searchable, using your browser's Find function.

Then, we've added a new column with fast links to online previews. For shows that we distribute, you jump right to our Previews pages; otherwise, a new window opens and takes you to trailers posted on YouTube or Vimeo. Now if you're browsing the listings and a title catches your eye, just one click and you're watching it! Pretty nifty.

We've made easier to spot the shows that Loch Ness Productions distributes — by including their movie posters in the listings, as well as a quick-jump button to the all-important Price pages!

And we've provided a Listings Key to explain all this additional functionality!

Finally, we describe in a little more detail what shows we list (and what we don't), as an FAQ spindown at the bottom of each Fulldome Show Compendium page.

Unlike some other fulldome show database sites so heavily laden with flash animations that the pages take forever to load and bog down your browser, our intent is to get you as much useful information as quickly as we can. You just scroll through our sortable listings — then a single click of the mouse takes you to the Web page for the show, the preview if it's online, and the pricing (if it's a title we distribute). What could be simpler?

With the ever-increasing number of fulldome shows available (more than 250, from more than 75 producers — totals that are another enhancement you can now see on the pages), we hope the LNP Fulldome Show Compendium will aid you in compiling your shopping lists! (Hint: go for the ones in green boxes!)

Here's last year's news, if you haven't been here for a while and want to catch up.

Mark C. Petersen, webmaster