SPHERE OF INFLUENCE?

170,000,000 Points of Light
Almost a century ago, futurist Buckminster Fuller sketched out an early idea for an interactive informational sphere (One Town Earth sketch, 1928). By 1960 he was describing the potential benefits of a 200-foot spherical television with “10 million points on the surface of the sphere in response to signals from a computer.”

He was not alone in imagining the possibilities of such a structure. Many of us in the planetarium field have discussed similar ideas for decades. I once asked Sky-Skan’s Glenn Smith, “What would it take to fill all the holes in a planetarium dome with LEDs, like a giant hemispherical video screen?” He replied, “Somebody with a billion dollars could do it.”

That somebody is James L. Dolan of Sphere Entertainment, who raised more than 2 billion U.S. dollars to build a 73-meter, self-illuminating dome featuring over 170 million LEDs on the interior screen.
Planetarians may be aware of similar LED technologies (COSM CX) that are being installed in the next generation of dome theaters, currently underway in LA, Prague, and Fort Worth and promising more realistic experiences than traditional projected displays.

Buckminster Fuller’s dream was that his sphere would be used for greater world understanding. James Dolan’s vision for Sphere is something else altogether: it is specifically designed for live performances. His concert venue opened in Las Vegas, Nevada, in September 2023 amid a flurry of excitement with astronomical ticket prices. To be clear, Sphere is a concert venue, and its vast interior accommodates exuberant, stadium-sized crowds.

The Las Vegas Sphere opening has inspired a lively dialogue on social media and in our fulldome community. This article explores some of the wide-ranging opinions shared by Sphere organization itself, by popular media, and by fulldome professionals influenced by Sphere.

“Sphere was designed to transport audiences to new places, both real and imagined.” Billboard Magazine

In an article in Billboard about the product announcement, “Dolan proceeded to read an excerpt from Ray Bradbury’s short story The Veldt, which describes a virtual-reality nursery with crystal walls that could reproduce any environment its users could imagine across all five senses. As he read through the excerpt, a rendering of what appeared to be a stadium-size, 360-degree, fully immersive planetarium appeared on the projector screen behind him. Suddenly, it became clear that Dolan was not simply waxing poetic about blue-sky scientific ideas: he was referencing a real, tangible project from Madison Square Garden, a portfolio of immersive, intelligent venues known as MSG Sphere.”

The New York Post described the venue in glowing terms. “Sphere’s stunning atrium — equipped with humanoid robots and make-your-own avatar stations, among more nods to AI and groundbreaking sound engineering, took stars), Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Bram van den Berg (sitting in for band member Larry Mullen Jr.) used these capabilities to debut their dynamic new residency, U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, an experience that includes all of the tracks from the Irish band’s 1991 album Achtung Baby, such as One and Mysterious Ways, as well as classic hits like Where the Streets Have No Name and With or Without You. U2 also used the occasion to debut its new song, Atomic City. From the opening performance of Zoo Station — during which the LED display behind the band appears as a cement wall that slowly breaks open as the show gets underway — U2 and the band’s decades-long creative director Willie Williams used the orb’s LED display as a canvas for a range of visual art. Sphere Entertainment Co. bet big that it can use the new venue to usher in the next generation of entertainment, and U2 gave it an exhilarating start.”

The Opening Film
Perusing Sphere’s own website gives interesting insight into its opening offerings. “Postcard from Earth (shown daily), a first-of-its-kind immersive film by Academy Award-nominated director Darren Aronofsky, is a portrait of our planet re-imagined as a sci-fi experience. Postcard from Earth is the first production to feature the venue’s multi-sensory, 4D technologies. This includes immersive seats with an infrasound haptic system that will use deep vibrations so guests can feel the experience, such as the rumble of thunder or a soaring rocket launch. Sphere also utilizes environmental effects to rouse the senses – the feeling of a cool breeze and familiar scents – which help audiences conjure the feeling of being there.”

Hollywood Reporter adds, “The U2 performances [are] averaging $1.8 million per concert and Aronofsky’s Postcards From Earth [are] averaging $400,000 per showing.”
When you add revenue from food, beverages, souvenirs, parking, and outdoor advertising, the Sphere is generating an impressive revenue stream for the investors.

The Technology of the Big Sky Camera
Filling the spherical screen at full resolution (16,000 x 13,500 = 216,000,000 pixels) is no small task, especially for show playback at 60 frames per second. Necessity inspired innovation, and the results are spectacular.

Deanan DaSilva, (the lead architect of Big Sky camera at Sphere Studios) described using this new technology. “Big Sky allows us to capture cinematic content at a level of detail never before possible (18,024 by 17,592 pixels),” he said, “opening up extraordinary possibilities and pushing immersive imaging technology forward in a way that will resonate throughout the entertainment industry.”

The Show
Michael Daut, (IMERSA & large-format filmmaker) had the opportunity to see Postcard From Earth, in December and shares his experience:
“Much like my reaction to the groundbreaking [CX LED Dome] demo that COSM hosted for the GSCA in March of 2022, I was once again blown away by how transformational LED technology can be when applied to dome theaters,” Daut said. “LED panels that cover the interior of a dome overcome nearly all the technical and physics problems that have plagued fulldome video systems since their inception. Domes that use traditional video projectors suffer from low contrast due to cross-reflection of light, relatively low brightness compared to cinema, limited projection angles to avoid shadowing, inconsistent projector alignment, etc.

With an LED dome, contrast is not a problem since the dome surface is black much inspiration from his Radio City Music Hall. After all, Radio City was considered to be one of the world’s most high-tech venues during its own inception nearly a century ago. Sphere’s debut delivered a satisfying mix of ooh and ah moments while hearing — and experiencing — a spectacular feast for the senses.”

Variety quoted James Dolan as saying,
“No longer is the venue a place to spectate. It’s a place to go and participate and will revolutionize the way artists and audiences connect via the next generation of transformative, immersive experiences.”
Even the Hollywood Reporter joined the chorus of media praise for the venue. “U2 opened the Sphere concert venue; before an audience of an estimated 18,000 (including many Hollywood

View of the Sphere Experience- POSTCARD FROM EARTH, Bob Raikes, 8kassociation.com.
and light does not bounce off of it; plus, with LED panels. Black is the ‘off’ mode, which makes black as black as it can be.

“Since the dome is self-illuminating, both resolution and brightness can be established by the number of pixels per panel. The maximum light level the LEDs can output is a lot. It is about 10x the brightness of digital cinema. Finally, the LEDs are fixed in place, so they remain in alignment.
In Sphere, the reported resolution is 16,000 x 13,500 (>200 MegaPixels); four times the resolution of an 8K dome display (>60 MegaPixels) and sixteen times the resolution of a 4K dome. The sheer number of pixels combined with more than 140-foot lamberts of brightness, and seemingly infinite contrast create a sublime near-real experience in the sphere. There are moments when the screen disappears and becomes a very realistic ‘portal’ into another place and time. LED technology in a dome, when used to its full potential, creates the closest thing I have seen to the Holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The sound system (by Holoplot) is also quite spectacular. In a typical fulldome theater with a standard surround sound layout, the acoustics of the dome itself interact with the sound waves causing the audio to sound different in various seats in the dome. Sphere overcomes these issues by employing wavefront synthesis technology. Utilizing 168,000 loudspeakers that can direct essentially perfect surround sound to every seat in the theater. This is quite a phenomenal achievement that enhances the immersion in a never-before­possible way.

I noticed a few new challenges that this amazing technological platform creates. Most notably, because a 16K canvas can produce such an unprecedented sense of realism with its full resolution, any content presented on the screen that is less than 16K surprisingly falls short in comparison. Lower resolutions, even 8K can spoil the experience once our eyes have seen 16K in all its glory.
In Postcard From Earth, there was a wide mix of content in various resolutions with focus set between perfect and slightly soft (which also breaks the illusion of reality). I’m sure Big Sky Camera with 165-degree-Field-of-View, 120 FPS frame rate @ 50 Gigabytes/second, (Image 7)
a lot of this resulted from the Sphere Studio team developing their brand new fisheye 16K camera while the film was in production. Maintaining an established look and sense of visual reality seems to be critically important and raises the stakes for producers to be able to deliver a consistent ultra­high level of visual quality never before required.

Lastly, I was surprised at the film’s dark and dystopian message. I would have expected a more uplifting and inspiring show as Sphere Studio’s first audience experience. I won’t spoil it for you but be prepared to be the villain in the storyline of the show. All this to say that this bold experiment is an overwhelming success technologically, providing a stunning immersive audio-visual canvas that, at its best, transcends reality.”

Something new?
Julieta Aguilera, IMERSA Director and long-time visualization expert, commented as well. “The Sphere venue has opened up a number of paths ahead,” she pointed out. “Whereas domes are sometimes cornered into focusing primarily or even exclusively on children, especially in the United States, Sphere is a whole family or adult population experience. This has deep implications because its immersive capability is now open to the vast majority of American households, which do not have school-age kids in them.

A second path has to do with the scale of the audience: an immersive event is now available to an order of magnitude larger number of people who can experience immersion together (Sphere features 17,600 seats and standing room for 2,400 more). This is significant because this level of emotional engagement was only partially available at concerts or sport events via techniques such as choreographed projections or large screens showing the faces of performers, among others.
Furthermore, the scaling of the whole immersive environment that holds this immense, mostly adult audience has the potential of advancing both scientific and aesthetically oriented visualizations. Showcasing data and compositions in relation to human scale requires that people in the audience (hopefully beyond school age kids and their families, or science college students) understand how connections and relationships change depending on the presented scale, the dynamic navigation of scales and the visual resolution afforded throughout.”

Ruth Coalson (IMERSA & independent consultant to the fulldome/immersive industry) also weighed in on the possibilities that Sphere opens up. “I have seen a marked shift in enquiries and a rapidly building excitement since the opening of Sphere. Even though I’m based in the UK, the impact has been amazing. I have been inundated with new inquiries from many different sectors interested in this ‘new’ film format. I’ve had meetings with agents that represent well-known artists who want to perform or produce content in this space. I’ve also met with private entrepreneurs who want to invest in dome systems.

Sphere has made people see the beauty and the power of the immersive nature of the dome, and even more poignant is how audiences feel after they have experienced it. I’m looking forward to introducing new companies, audiences, and artists to our amazing world. Sphere has literally shined the brightest light into the industry that I love.”

The Blazing Icon
Sphere’s 1.2 million exterior LED fixtures outshine the surrounding gambling mecca, creating perhaps the largest advertising billboard on Earth. But this iconic and sometimes humorous animated video display is not loved by all. London’s Mayor, Sadqi Khan, reacted to plans for building a similar Sphere in his metropolis. “The significant light intrusion resulted in significant harm to the outlook of neighboring properties, detriment to human health, and significant harm to the general amenity enjoyed by residents of their own homes,” he said.

Charlie Warzel (The Atlantic) had a similar reaction to Sphere: “It’s the architectural embodiment of ridiculousness, a monument to spectacle and to the exceedingly human condition of erecting bewildering edifices simply because we can,” he said.
Sphere animation.
Numerous planetarium consultants have expressed that well-placed and designed architecture should stand as a landmark, inviting audiences to come inside. Ideally these locations become embraced by the local community. This regional visibility and acceptance are strong influences for the long-term success of a dome theater. Certainly, Sphere is well placed, and draws attention!

Influencing our community
Of course, 360 performances in a dome are not something new. They proliferated long before any influence from Sphere. What is exciting and new is that audiences are discovering these performances in Hamburg, Brno, Denver, Jena, Boulder, Heilbron, Montréal, Melbourne, Boston, Plymouth, Cardiff, and dozens of other dome theaters around the world.

Yet, it is clear that Sphere’s marketing has greatly raised awareness about fulldome experiences. It is pretty exciting to read and hear reporters using our jargon: multisensory immersive storytelling, experiential technologies, immersive cinema, and 3d-spatial audio.

Some media sources also described the experience with easy-to-understand language; “The opposite of TikTok,” “demanding your full attention,” “making the screen disappear,” “being in the middle of the action,” “the future of entertainment,” and a “glorious new age of cinematography.”
Animator and fulldome supporter, Ken Scott, initiated a lively conversation on IMERSA’s Facebook group discussion board by declaring: “Serve your local community by providing a local Sphere alternative, with as much Sphere-like content as possible. If you have a tilted dome with stadium seating, then your facility is a ‘Sphere,’ not a ‘Planetarium.’ If you want people in your community to IMMEDIATELY understand what’s possible in your facility, then rebrand using ‘sphere’ in your facility name.”

Pat Pomerleau (NEST Immersion) replied: “In my opinion, renaming all planetariums using the word ‘Sphere’ is not what the public wants, they want good shows for them.”
Mike Smail (Adler Planetarium): “Sphere has captivated an online audience, but not one that’s necessarily representative of humanity. For our [planetarium] field, that’s celebrating 100 years of existence, trend-chasing [or] renaming themselves, especially in a fashion that would further add to confusion about their identities (flat v tilted) would do more harm than good.”
Maciej Mucha (Creative Planet): “I believe every planetarium in the world is unique (which is a bad and good thing simultaneously!). Striping this uniqueness now by changing the definition and the NAME because there is a new big guy in the market? I am against it. There is no hype in Poland for your American Sphere. In my bubble, the sphere gets to me ONLY because of my industry friends. I doubt any of my non-planetarium friends heard anything about Sphere. From the Marketing Perspective—we can only win by sharing the hype—while being ourselves.”
Glenn Smith (Sky-Skan): “Sphere has certainly illuminated the concept of the immersive experience and I think that any human being capable of reasonable thought, and conclusion, will make the logical association with some of today’s planetariums that offer wide-spectrum programming. In my humble opinion there can only be a benefit to our industry.”

Reflections on Sphere
In the end, regardless of the past of fulldome and spherical experiences, Sphere does mark something of a new beginning in immersive performances. It is a purpose-built concert venue in a tourist town known for extravaganza and spectacle and its excess has made a gigantic impression. Audiences are paying big money and flocking to the spherical venue to experience concerts, and a thrill-seeking 360 film, in the state-of-the-art venue.

Social media influencers have even adopted our fulldome jargon to describe the Sphere Experience. We give our audiences something just as exciting to talk about. We must take advantage of this growing interest in dome shows. The Sphere hype has increased the public awareness of the exciting things that happen in dome theaters. We offer something more sophisticated than Sphere (though less expansive). Our INTIMATE dome theaters enable more meaningful interactions between performers, audio­visual media, and audiences. The best of these experiences are enriching, poignant, and purposeful.

I am hopeful that the popular success of Sphere will inspire a growing creative community to produce more enthralling, transformational programming and timeless works of art, SPECIFICALLY FOR OUR dome environments.
Thanks to all of the contributors cited in this article, IPS and the IMERSA Board of Directors.
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Links to articles and images cited in this article:

Links to articles and images cited in this article:

bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/geoscope/ investor.sphereentertainmentco.com/press-releases/default.aspx variety.com

theverge.com/tech/24008239/sphere-las-vegas-experience-u2-screen  thespherevegas.com/shows/the-sphere-experience sphereentertainmentco.com

indiewire.com/features/commentary/the-sphere-las-vegas-experience- aronofsky-movie-1234913870/

holoplot.com/news/sphere-immersive-sound-powered-by-holoplot nypost.com/2023/07/24/inside-the-msg-sphere-in-vegas-a-once-in-a-

generation-opportunity/

hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/sphere-u2-opens-las- vegas-1235598725/

theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/11/inside-las-vegas- sphere-u2/676000/

slashgear.com/1336606/technology-las-vegas-msg-sphere-explained/  8kassociation.com/24x7.com.au/