The Cybersphere has more new shows

The Cybersphere now has four new shows and we have already begun showing them, starting with Kaluoka’hina. Below are the new shows in the order I plan to unveil them to the public on Saturdays (subject to change). Note: There is likely a fifth show on the way, so stay tuned.

Kaluoka’hina: The Enchanted Reef – Now Playing in February & March

The vastness of our planet’s oceans guards unimaginable secrets. One of its most precious is “Kaluoka’hina,” the enchanted reef whose magic protects it against humans finding it. Kaluoka’hina’s colorful inhabitants live in peace until the volcano erupts, and the spell is broken. Now it’s up to Jake, the young sawfish, and his paranoid pal, Shorty, to restore the magic of Kaluoka’hina.

Africa: The Serengeti – Playing in April & May

The Serengeti is a huge area of grassland in Tanzania, Africa. Once a year, in the time of drought, about two million herd animals like antelopes travel north to feed and mate before moving south again, when plants there begin to blossom.

The Zula Patrol: Under the Weather – Playing in June & July

The stalwart heroes of the Zula Patrol are on an expedition collecting samples of weather for scientist Multo’s research — using their loyal pet Gorga’s ability to collect and bottle all kinds of weather. But when the Zula gang inadvertently hurts Gorga’s feelings, he decides to leave Zula and find another planet to live on. Interplanetary villain Dark Truder then tricks Gorga into stealing the weather from other planets – part of his latest nefarious scheme to rule the Universe. The ZPers find out and go after him – in the process learning all about weather, both terrestrial and interplanetary.

Ice Worlds – Playing in August & September

The delicate balance between ice, water and the existence of life has been a topic of exploration and discovery in science for generations. In travels to the Arctic and Antarctic regions of our planet, we’ll examine the ecosystems that live and thrive there and see how their survival is connected with our own. Beyond Earth, we’ll see how the existence of ice shapes the landscape and the natural systems on other planets and moons in our solar system.

The Cybersphere now has SpacePark360 from Dome3D!

See more on their website! http://www.dome3d.com/spacepark360/index.html

D3 In My Backyard is Complete!

Finally! After many weeks of work, our Digistar 3 conversion of In My Backyard is finally complete! We can begin showing it once again as part of our “Classic Collection” to both school and public audiences. We did add a few improvements to the show during the process and will certainly continue to go back and enhance it where able.

Lites Flashing Before Your Eyes

Last night’s shows went off without a hitch, including the new Dark Side of the Moon. The turnout was low as to be expected since we haven’t had shows on Fridays in years and our advertising is almost non-existent, but the few that were here really enjoyed the new show. Here’s to hoping this coming Friday will be even better and that we will have the full resolution show ready before then.

Eclipsed by the Moon

After yet another lengthy copying and renaming process, I got the video onto all of the graphic processors and modified a script accordingly to play them. The show plays all the way through and looks reasonably good despite the lower resolution.

I had to do a little tweaking here and there to get everything where it should be (or at least where I think it should be), that is to say, synced up with the audio, have effects in the right place, and so on. So even though we don’t have the full resolution version working yet, we do have something that will keep you happy and entertained.

That said, I believe we may have sniffed out the cause of the problem and are currently working on encoding a bit of test footage to see if the seams turn out proper. Our fingers are crossed.

The Lunatic is in My Head

Well, all is not well in the kingdom. Something isn’t right and each of the splices of video do not align properly. We’re currently trying to figure out why, but in the meantime, I’m going to be working on an acceptable solution to tide us over until it’s fixed. Using channel 0, I can get a working version of the show, although its resolution will be significantly least than the full video.

The New Dark Side

We got the drive with all of the files and I’m going to be spending some time working to get them all copied to the appropriate graphic processors. Hopefully, everything will go together without any problems. Onward to battle!

D3 Projector Maintenance

The blends on the D3 projectors have been bothering me for… well, forever! Over time they move because of vibration from the speakers and such, but that’s not why they annoy me. It’s pretty much impossible to get them perfect… especially up at the top around projector 6… there’s always a bunch of shadows up there! I totally need something cleaner looking. I don’t know how much customers pay attention to it, but I’m sure there are quite a few that notice, even though no one has said anything.

So anyways, I’ve spent some time today playing with the blends, trying to reduce the amount of shadows / light areas in between the projectors as much as possible, but alas, many remain.

Another thing I decided to do today is rearrange the bulbs in the projectors. As the bulbs age, they lose a great deal of their intensity, and though there are 2 bulbs in each projector, the difference can still be staggering if the projectors are going bright, dull, bright, dull, and so on. I went around to each of the projectors and wrote down the hours on each of the bulbs. I then proceded to “even them out.” Each projector now has 1 relatively new bulb and 1 relatively old bulb, with the oldest of the bulbs being in the projectors that point to the back.

Some of the bulbs aren’t going to last much longer. Out of the 12 bulbs, 3 of them have over 2000 hours on them and 1 is nearing that. The others all have less than 800 hours on them, with the newest only having 68. With the bulbs having a hefty $700 price tag on average, it’s certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Anyways… as with any maintenance that involves touching the projectors, I had to then open up the alignment program and fix some spots where the projectors no longer matched up.

Tetris Boredom

So I got bored at work yesterday and started to play around with creating objects in Max to be exported into D3’s .x format. Figured I’d start with simple objects. You know, boxes and what not. I then got an idea… Tetris blocks! I started creating the various tetris blocks and then I started playing around with making simple textures for them. I went through a couple of different texture ideas, seeing what they looked like when up on the dome.

After 4 variations, I finally settled on a texture I wanted to use. Of course, now I had to create different color versions of that textures to go on the different blocks. Still working on doing that at the moment, but it won’t take long. You might be wondering why I’m creating Tetris blocks… me too. I did get bored after all… but on the other hand, maybe I could make a kickass fulldome Tetris musical show.

“Special” Show

I’m having a special group come in today to learn a little bit about the dome and what it has to offer, then enjoying a few shows. This group is being brought down by a guy that used to work here years ago, back right after the center opened. I’m gonna show them some demos on D3 and a little bit of laser awesomeness. Our Laser U2 show was requested by him because he did the work on the preprogrammed D2 segments of the show. I completely understand wanting to show off.