Why Aren’t Planetarium Shows the Way They Used to Be

Welcome to 21st-century Fulldome

“It’s wondrous…with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it’s not for the timid.” — Q, from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Dear planetarium/fulldome colleagues: there are important ripples of change moving through the domed community, and they are affecting how we all do our jobs. As planetarians, increasingly becoming known as fulldome professionals, we have at our disposal some incredible content offerings in pre-rendered shows.

At the same time, there is a continuing interest and development of expertise among our colleagues in giving live presentations. Technology is shaping both ways of presenting shows in ways that we already know and in some we have yet to understand.

It’s all good.

I think most planetarium folk know this, and many embrace it. Some do not, and insist that “the old days” had better shows, “real” images, and so on. I will leave those people to their unexpanded opinions, other than to say that NO visualization EVER used in the dome, even the starfield, is “real”. As a former research astronomer, I know just how much those images you see from HST and Chandra and the other observatories are a product of ever-improving, fast digital technologies that allow us to look at the universe across the electromagnetic spectrum. In some ways, they do for us what film could never do. The images of Mars we used in MarsQuest? Taken with spacecraft, colorized by scientists. The HST images we all gape at? Same thing. False color? True color? What’s “real”? That’s an ongoing debate in visualization circles. Do you think the Orion Nebula REALLY looks the way it does in all those images? That the fly-through of a 3D supernova explosion based on REAL data is a REAL look at how that explosion appears if you could REALLY be there?

I have a hint for you: It’s all a simulation based on real data. And, today’s simulations and visualizations couldn’t be done in the dome before the advent of computer animations. I remember when the first Star Wars came out, and the Cosmos series, and planetarians moaned that they would make our dome shows look old-fashioned. Well, today, we HAVE those capabilities, this wonderful technology, to bring fantastic animations to our domes.

Before that, we had imperfect film chemicals on plastic substrates, and before that we had our naked eye and a sketchbook to help us record the cosmos. There has been NO perfect representation of the universe. I remember back in the days when I was an editor at Sky & Telescope—we used have many editorial discussions about reality in visualizations. Because we KNEW what we were getting in astrophotography wasn’t reality. It was, at best, a gorgeous simulation. Still is.

Ask yourself: what does a night sky look like? If you step outside, it’s nothing like you see on the dome, even if you have the darkest skies on the planet. Nothing you show in the planetarium is “reality”. It is, at best, a fantastic imitation of the real sky, a visual interpretation of an object—just as slides were visual interpretations of things in the sky.

So, to argue that fulldome shows today aren’t “real” or are somehow “inferior” to some long-gone (or rapidly disappearing old technology) is to argue that what we used to show was somehow “more” real (no matter how bad it really looked).

I don’t buy that argument for a minute. This is the 21st century, and 21st-century tools are giving us more than we ever dreamed of from the cosmos. But, we have to train ourselves to recognize what we’re seeing, to appreciate what we’re being handed in the firehose of data that streams from our telescopes and detectors 24/7. That’s a test of our ingenuity, folks. Are we up to it?

Last month I participated in the IMERSA Summit, which was a veritable fulldome filmmaker’s feast. We talked about techniques, storytelling, live action, live shows, shared marketing talk, and saw a number of gorgeous fulldome shows. Planetarians should have been there.

Every year, I (and Mark) go to the Jena Fulldome Festival. The first year we helped judge shows, and came away with an awestruck feeling of “wow, this is the future of fulldome”. And, each year we go back and I wish that more planetarium folk from my own country could have been there to see what’s happening, and to share ideas with the fulldome folk in Europe and Japan and elsewhere who also see the dome for the endless possibilities it hands us.

What’s happening is, the digital age is changing the planetarium. It’s altering the landscape of fulldome presentations. Film (and the rectangular ratio it imposes) is no longer a medium (despite the plaintive insistence by some that slides are still available). For example, the last IMAX™ film ever to be made ON film is out this year. After this, it’s all digital. Fulldome took us down that road some years ago, when the infrastructure for slides started to crumble. We have new tools in our realm, and it’s high time all of us learned to embrace them. Or risk being seen as irrelevant. That is the nature of change. It might be uncomfortable, but people have dealt with technological change since forever.

As a producer, I have been privileged to get a panoramic view of the change in domed shows because I deal with the community in the aggregate. I get to see a lot (and produce some) of what’s coming. I applaud people who want to embrace the technological changes for live presentations as well as pre-rendered videos. What’s happening to fulldome is the wave of the future; what’s happening to fulldomers—being multi-lingual in both live and recorded formats—is part of that wave. There is definitely space in our domes for all that we want to do, and more.

But, and this is important, there’s space for even more content offerings that deliver “outside the box” thinking—shows that take you through the wonders of mathematics, of physics, of oceanography, of flight. You name it, there are shows and visualizations done (or coming) about things—not all of them astronomical—that work well in the immersive space.

And, taking off my vendor hat and putting on my “love the dome, love what it can do” hat, I really want to show people examples of those shows. To let others see what I’ve seen at the festivals and meetings where us video producers and users get together and share the state of the art and the state of the upcoming art in both rendered and live content. To share with you the great stuff that we at Loch Ness Productions, and our friends and colleagues at Evans & Sutherland, and Sky-Skan, and Spitz Creative Media, and the genius whizzes at the California Academy of Sciences (home of Earthquake and Life: A Cosmic Story), and many other filmmakers are doing in the dome. There’s a whole ecosystem of fulldome filmmakers out there, embracing the change and working for the community to create incredible content and beautiful visions for the dome.

Several weeks ago we had friends visiting our studios and we showed them one of the most beautiful shows I’ve ever seen, called Dream to Fly. It works on so many levels as an educational, entertaining piece that it remains with audiences for a LONG time. It does all the things I learned as a science communicator to do: evoke emotion and awe, and tell a story about science and exploration, and take the viewer out of the everyday to a realm of possibility. It’s one of those shows that I think is a ground-breaker for fulldomers.

We have another one that teaches about mathematics, called Chaos and Order: A Mathematic Symphony that is as purely educational AND gorgeously artistic as anything I’ve seen in a long time. The first time I saw it, I said, “Where was this when I was having trouble with calculus!” It takes the precepts of math that we learn in the classroom and APPLIES them in a way that captures the attention of the math major, the animation major, the artist, the musician, the scientist… and brings the subject alive. THAT, to my way of thinking, is an important part of what prerendered content in an immersive space brings to education. And, I would LOVE to show others those shows and expound on how they would transform and add to their domed experiences. NOT to replace live presentation, but to be part of the experience—a role that movies and storytelling have always played in our cultures.

Each of these shows tells a story. They engage. They are beautiful works of art. And, along with digitally enhanced live shows, they are the wave of the future. Planetarium folk can embrace them AND give live shows, AND be confident that they are bringing the universe to people in their domes using the latest visualization tools.

Everything I’ve just said here is the gist of a much longer talk (with show clips) that I’d love to give at a planetarium conference some day, if I am ever invited to do so. It’s the viewpoint of a production professional with a widely panoramic view of our unique profession. And, even though I come from the days of slides, and I grew up giving live shows, I’ve grown and come to see that fulldome is the wave of the future, and the shows that are being created are only a tiny tip of the content iceberg that a dome can bring to our audiences.

Can’t get to the festivals but want to see what I’m talking about?

Here’s a challenge for folks who want to see the latest in fulldome shows, especially for those who may not be very familiar with the complete fulldome oeuvre. I invite anybody to visit our show web pages at Loch Ness Productions and PREVIEW all the shows that we have to offer, to see just what IS happening in fulldome these days. To enjoy the diversity and beauty being created, for fulldome audiences. Also, check out the Fulldome Show Compendium, which has links to shows we don’t happen to sell, but many ARE online for preview on the producers’ pages. These links are there to inform and teach, not just pitch and sell.

You don’t have to buy anything. This isn’t a sales pitch. No one’s going to chase you around to make you buy a show. This is a chance for you to learn what’s out there (IF you don’t already know). I’m handing you an educational challenge, if you haven’t already perused or know what’s happening in fulldome production: come check it out!

Just sit down, and prepare to see the fulldome world as I and many others are seeing it change. Then think about if the future of fulldome as you see it here is where you want to be. If so, consider supporting those shows (rather than tear them down sight unseen as some folks have done), and support the amazing talent that it took to create them. Yes, they’re going to cost you some money. But, the payback in terms of audience enthusiasm will be WAY more than you expected.

Things aren’t like they used to be. 21st-century fulldome is handing you a test. As Lois McMaster Bujold has written in her Vorkosiverse science fiction stories, tests are gifts. Great tests are great gifts.

What will you do with YOUR gift?