Image courtesy of Evans & Sutherland (www.es.com) As a panoramic photographer for about ten years, Dome Theater became one of Greg's specialties. Domes are classified as "immersive environments" along with other display technologies like virtual reality goggles and caves. They also seem naturally to be one of the best ways to view panoramic imagery. There are two basic arrangements: the flat dome in which the audience looks straight up and the tilted dome with stadium seating. Greg has worked most with the Gates Planetarium in Denver, but there is also one close by at Glendale Community College. By normal standards, whatever is animated is probably going eight or nine times too fast. It takes an audience a longer time to absorb a dome image. The rapid cuts and camera movements expected from traditional animation and filmmaking should be avoided. When enveloped by imagery, such as a dome is designed to do, the audience may get the sensation that the room is moving when the picture does. This sensation can be reduced, and equilibrium maintained, by panning and resting the image. It seems to take an average of about three minutes to view an entire image using this method. Light bounces around inside a dome. Therefore, there is a legitimate threat that light from one side could bleed into a darker area of the other obscuring important detail. HDRI technology can be an effective solution to this problem. Every dome has a "sweet spot". It will be different based on the tilt of that dome and how much the seats lean back, but it is usually in the direction people are naturally facing when sitting in their seats. A tip from Greg: whenever you go to a dome theater try to get the seats in the very center, they are the best. This chart demonstrates the various areas of viewing quality within a typical dome. (Image courtesy of Ka Chun Yu, Denver Museum of Nature and Science). Sky Skan, Inc. - Dome Content Creation Spitz - World's Leading Projection Domes

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