Realtime Interactive Show Production Realtime Interactive Show ...

Realtime Interactive Show
Production
Exploration Place
Boeing CyberDome Theater

Interactive Domed Theater Overview
• Armagh Planetarium, N. Ireland – 1985
• Buhl Planetarium, Pittsburgh, PA – 1991
• Boeing CyberDome, , Wichita, KS – 2000
• Multimedia domed theaters (video, star projection, slides,
surround sound audio)
• 3-5 button interactive handsets on each seat
• Polling, voting, branching decisions, direct control or
“flying” interaction (CyberDome(
CyberDome).

Armagh Planetarium
N. Ireland, 1985
• First use of video projection in a
planetarium.
• 100 seats
• 3-button polling interactive
driving 4 video disk players.
• MSX multimedia automation
• Video brightness and contrast tweaked by hand
• Branched programming – audience chose what topic to see
next.

Buhl Planetarium
Pittsburgh, PA, 1991
• 2 nd Interactive Planetarium in U.S.
• 150 seats
• 3-button seat mounted
interactive units
• Branch Programming
w/ SPICE Runshow
• Digistar
• SPICE Automation
• Tight multimedia/interactive
integration

• 60-Foot Diameter Dome
• 170 Interactive Seats
• 30-Degree Tilt
• 4-Projector StarRider
• Digistar II
Boeing CyberDome Theater
• Separate Video Field
• All-Sky Slide System
Wichita, Kansas, 2000

Boeing CyberDome Theater
Wichita, Kansas, 2000
• 2 nd E&S StarRider
• Real-time rendering
engine
• Full dome real-time
mass interaction

Interactive Overview
Types of Interactives
• Polling – Getting audience feedback using questions
• Branching – Audience choose show content
• Q&A – Content quizzing, testing and trivia
• Realtime – Actual control over graphic elements and
cameras.

Interactive Signal Flow

Boeing CyberDome Theater
Interactive Overview
• Mars Landing – from CyberExplorer
- Audience collectively lands on Mars
• Cell Wars – from CyberExplorer
- Audience destroys bacterial infection
• Continental Drift – from CyberExplorer
- Rearrange the continents to create a new earth.

Boeing CyberDome Theater
Interactive Overview
• Stellar Parallax – from Crack the Cosmic Code
- Guess stellar distances from their parallax movement
• Speed of Light Trivia – from Crack the Cosmic Code
- Just how fast is light?
• Crab Nebula/Black Hole Fly – from Crack the
Cosmic Code
- Navigate through these star remnants in search of clues

Boeing CyberDome Theater
Interactive Overview
• Spectral Analysis – from Crack the Cosmic Code
- Use the Hubble Space Telescope to get an object’s
spectrum and tell how its moving

Mars Landing Interactive
Goal: to safely land a futuristic
Mars glider on “Lowell Base”
on Mars.
Audience input is averaged
and resultant send to image
generator to control glider
More audience equals more
success

Cell Wars Interactive
Goal: After splitting up into
teams, each team’s white blood
cell must maneuver and
destroy a bacterial infection.
Each team’s input is averaged,
and the resultant sent to the
image generator.
Less players per team equal
more success

Continental Drift Interactive
Goal: After splitting up into
teams, each team is assigned a
continental plate to move
around the face of past and
future Earth.
Each team’s input is averaged,
and the resultant sent to the
image generator.
Result compared to common
reference point – an Earth map.

Stellar Parallax Interactive
Goal: After splitting up into
teams, each team is assigned
a continental plate to move
around the face of past and
future Earth.
Each team’s input is
averaged, and the resultant
sent to the image generator.
Result compared to common
reference point – an Earth
map.

Crab Nebula/Black Hole Flights
Goal: The audience is in control
of the theater as they search for
a pulsar in the crab nebula.
Later, they try and escape the
gravity of a black hole.
Audience input is averaged and
resultant sent to image
generator to control flight path.
Mysteries await as the audience
searches and explores on their
own.

Speed of Light Trivia Interactive
Goal: The speed of light is fast – but the Universe around us is
large. A series of questions let the audience guess at how long
light takes to travel to various parts of our solar system.
The audience votes for their answer. Score is kept and shown
through a seating chart of the theater.

Spectrum Analysis Interactive
Goal: Using a virtual space
telescope, the audience analyzes
spectra from different objects.
Are they moving toward us, away
from us, or are they spinning?
The audience votes for their
answer. Score is kept and shown
through a seating chart of the
theater.
Reinforces the basic concept of
red and blue shift in astronomy.

Other Notable Interactive Shows
Journey Inside the Living Cell, 1994
• Simple realtime interactive
rendering of video on dome.
•Audience collectively
maneuvers cells around body.
•CINEMATRIX Interactive
Entertainment System® wireless
interactive paddles with image
recognition camera.

The Future of Realtime Interactive
Show Production
• Create meaningful interactive experiences for visitor
• Graphic and projection quality will improve
• Production tools will get more artist friendly