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We’ve heard the phrase “visual computing” being used a lot lately – it refers to the use of computers and graphical environments to interact with and manipulate heady data sets and other textbookish content. Well, we’ve encountered one of the most visually stunning and impressive examples of visual computing in San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium, the new $20 million dollar facility that’s a part of the recently reopened California Academy of Sciences. This isn’t your daddy’s planetarium (nor is it Barack Obama’s famous $3 million dollar star charter, either).
The Morrison Planetarium is a technological marvel, enabling astronomers not only to show traditional star charts, but to guide visitors through an immersive fly-through of our universe – realistically rendered in real-time. We were fortunate enough to be invited for a private screening of the new exhibit, and went behind to scenes to check out exactly what PC hardware drives this modern stellar cartography lab. And before you ask – yes, the system can play Quake.
We'll guide you through a tour of the planetarium, show you what visitors get to experience in the amazing digital presentation, and then walk you behind the scenes for an exclusive look at how the tech gods who built the whole system make it work. Trust us, you'll be impressed.
First, some details about the physical facility. Walking into the Academy of Sciences building, you can't miss the giant Morrison Planetarium dome sitting right in the middle of the building. The actual planetarium is a 75-ft diameter dome housed in a 90-ft diameter shell, making it the largest planetarium in North America, and one of the biggest in the world. The room accommodates 300 visitors, and unlike most planetariums, seating is sloped at a 30 degree angle so patrons aren't hurting their necks looking up into space, but feel like they're watching a wholly immersive IMAX movie.
While the original Morrison Planetarium, built in 1952, wowed audiences with its custom-made star projector, the modern version does away with lasers and fills its 75-diameter screen with six high-resolution professional-grade projectors. This makes the Morrison Planetarium not only the largest digital planetarium in the world, but also the largest digital theater as well.
The change in background color isn't due to our camera's exposure settings. A ring of thousands of LED lights run along the rim of the dome. The RGB LEDs themselves are very programmable, and could be their own light show.
A view from the top: The planetarium has 300 seats, arranged in a 30-degree slope like a movie theater. This is probably the only time you'll see it look empty -- every showing has been packed and sold out since the Academy of Sciences opened its doors earlier this month.
Next, the Fragile Planet presentation
Comments are closed on this article
vistageek
December 25, 2008 at 12:17pm
I want to see crysis on that screen. (OK, I don't care if it only does openGL, just get those cards doing directX or hook up 3DTX 280 XXX's to each projector) That would be most cool thing ever!!! Oh, and while we are at it, let's enable stereo 3D with the glasses. (The best experiance ever even on a 24 inch monitor) I think I will have to put that experiance on my christmas wish list!!!
lewishaus
November 13, 2008 at 4:19pm
Went to planetarium this week - WOW!!! - and was looking forward to your article - but:
The 'stellar cartography lab' link <http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u17625/voyager_astrometrics_cut_0.jpg> leads to a blank page.
The 2nd phograph is blank. The link <http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u17625/planetarium_cut_sm.jpg> leads to a blank page.
The 'Star Trek's astrometrics lab' link <http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u17625/voyager_astrometrics.jpg> leads to a blank page.
Since no one else has mentioned these issues, I thought it was me, but I tried 3 different computers and encountered the same problems on all. What are chance of getting the links in this story fixed, please. Thanks.
jbkirkpatrick
November 12, 2008 at 12:02pm
What does that caption on page 4 (I think) mean that says "softwad and hardware blending"?
It sounds vaguely dirty....
(and I liked it and that scared me):)
V-Lad
October 29, 2008 at 11:53am
I've been to the planetarium, it is something everyone should see!
lemony
October 23, 2008 at 2:47pm
"If at any time during tonight's presentation you feel dizzy, just simply close your eyes and the sensation will soon pass."
I had to do this three times while reading the article.
dgrmouse
October 23, 2008 at 9:28am
Reading this article, along with the "Load Letter" that heralded it, made me picture Norman's portrait replacing the "actual stock photograph" of the writer in the last issue's piece suggesting that we should write blogs for $10 a pop.
The second software system is called Global Immersion, which is the
hardware that powers the main presentation playback. The video is
stored in a proprietary Pixar format, and packs the 30fps video over a
string of files that require significant hardware muscle to process.
They're not just playing a large AVI file here. A combination of
software and hardware blending is also required to align the six
projectors so that the video is perfectly synced and aspected to look
like one giant display.
Classic! Way to go, Normie - you earned your $10 today!
Number Six
October 23, 2008 at 6:42am
This was a great website feature! I love computers as well as astronomy, so was very interested in the new Morrison Planetarium and the hardware that runs it. Thanks MPC!!!
P.S. Please fix the cut-through image-- it's a bad link.
Moneyless
October 22, 2008 at 9:24pm
This reminds me of the IMAX dome / OMNIMAX theater at the Ontario Science Center where I live, in Toronto Canada. :) The theater room is exacly the same on the inside.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMNIMAX
s3th
November 04, 2008 at 12:23pm
LMFAO KEITH
- That thing looks like its packing some pretty technical and phenomenal hardware. I wonder if they use regular HDD's or is their some other method of storage, I can just see an array of like 100 TB Velociraptors in RAID 0 or some shit.
- Also playing a game on that thing or doing anything, watching a movie on the worlds biggest projector, can you even imagine... With a little 2 x 4 mouse and a 6x 10 keyboard, your controlling a screen thats in like 100000x 100000 resolution, playing Crysis on that bay would need like 600 GPU'S.
xs0u1x
October 22, 2008 at 1:19pm
for some reason i cant help but think that this would be badass to watch porn on. hahahah
jtroll
October 22, 2008 at 11:06am
Mmmmm... nanoseams. So when are you guys going to be playing MoH II on this baby? You know you want to, Norm.
willsmith
October 22, 2008 at 12:14pm
I brought my copy of Sins of a Solar Empire, but we decided not to try playing on it.
