PLANETARIUMS
content is brighter. “The more brightness you have on there, the more the seams are visible, so it makes sense from the stand- point of not having something polluting the image or distracting the audience,” says Evans and Sutherland director of show pro- duction and marketing Michael Daut. Astro-tec, which currently offers stand-
ard lap seam domes as well as ultimate seam domes without horizontal seams, is working on another innovation — the world’s largest planetarium dome, at the Nagoya City Science Museum in Japan. The standard dome is 35m (114ft) in
diameter, with 696 panels, 96 ribs, and a total area of around 20,000sq ft (1,860sq m). “That size of dome has never been done before,” says Astro-tec sales man- ager Dale Lewis. Astro-tec has installed large domes in
the past, including a 24m (79ft)-diameter dome at New York’s Hayden Planetarium, and is getting ready to install another 23m (75ft) dome at Italy’s Rainbow Magic Land this summer. Lewis says large domes are defi nitely becoming a trend. “Domes can fall anywhere from 7m (23ft) in diameter to 35m at this point. The bigger science centres and museums, it just seems like everybody wants to go as large as they can. Now that we’ve done Nagoya, we’ve gotten a couple of requests for 35m,” he says. “You have 3D coming into play now, so I think you’re also going to see this trend continue as they start investing more money into these projects.”
“Domes can fall anywhere from 7m (23ft) in diameter to 35m at this point. The bigger science centres and museums, it just seems like everybody wants to go as large as they can” – Astro-tec’s Dale Lewis
Sightlines
Dome placement is a huge factor affecting the visitor experience. When Sky-Skan con- sults on planetariums, it tries to improve this by bringing down the spring line — the base of the dome. “It’s almost like a silo effect when the dome is so high, you lose the scale and the immersive feeling of being in that space,” says Berna. “We try to keep the spring line at eye level when you’re seated.” Having a tilted dome can be another
way of improving the visitor experience. Traditionally, planetariums have been laid out with a starball projector in the centre, and seats in a circular pattern around it, leaving viewers to look up towards the centre. With digital fulldome content the standard today, however, a tilted dome allowing everyone to look towards the front rather than up makes more sense. “When you develop fulldome content
[for circular seating], Saturn, for example, comes up on just one part of the dome, and it may be in front of you, or it may be behind you,” says Alan Caskey, Global Immersion’s US director. “What we see with our clients is very
much stadium seating, unidirectional, tilted dome, and then you can bring an object
into the prime viewing area so that every- body can have the same view.” Sightlines should also be considered.
Daut says a common problem is planetari- ums deciding on the size of dome they want, then trying to cram in as many seats as possible, leaving undesirable seats on the edges where the picture will be most distorted. “My advice is to overbuild the size of the dome in terms of diameter, based on the number of seats you want, so that you have seats in better positions and you’re not putting seats in places where nobody would want to sit.”
Flexible space Increasingly, planetariums and domed theatres are being laid out with an eye towards multipurpose use. “Sometimes people are concerned because [a plan- etarium] is really just a one trick pony, limited to whatever content you can put on there,” says Spitz CEO Jon Shaw. “What you might do is not have a tilted dome, and you might even have chairs that are remov- able. So now you have this big open space and you can do whatever you want.” He’s seen planetariums hold jazz concerts, din- ing, lectures and even weddings under the stars. “There are all kinds of creative ways to use the space.” Caskey is seeing some creative requests
from clients who want a more fl exible facility. “A current client wants stadium seating where the fi rst several rows can be removed, so they can have sleepovers for the kids,” he says. There’s a downside to removable seats though, he says — they’re more uncomfortable than permanent seats. Even domes are becoming move- able; The Queen Mary, a ship attraction in California, features a theatre used as a theatrical space, with a retractable dome lowered from the ceiling for some shows. “We’re doing a similar thing at the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre in New Zealand, where the dome comes down over the audience during planetarium
Our Dynamic Earth’s 4D fi lm was developed by the National Space Centre in Leicester
56 Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital AM 3 2010 ©cybertrek 2010
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