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49-492: The museum operates the Patricia Lubben Bassett Art Education Center , opened in 1998, as a learning facility. The facility houses two classrooms, a ceramics studio, and research library, all of which supports a museum-school-community creative exchange that provides arts education opportunities for all ages. The Robert H. Goddard Planetarium was built through an initiative shared by the museum and

98-591: A fisheye lens . Contemporary configurations employ raster video projectors , either singly or grouped together to cover the dome surface with full-color images and animations. Newer emerging technologies being utilized include flexible curved LED displays currently being installed at the fulldome MSG Sphere with assistance from Industrial Light and Magic . They are working together with 360-degree content creators to create feature-length fulldome content utilizing 360 degree cameras including Red Digital Cinema . Fulldome video projection can use

147-403: A bright, phosphorescent green, though many (including both visitors and planetarians) report they cannot distinguish between this green and white. Additionally, unlike a raster display, the calligraphic display is not discretized into pixels, so the displayed stars were a more realistic single spot of light, without the blocky or ropy artifacts that are hard to avoid with raster graphics. Due to

196-538: A full dome. Another disadvantage of central projectors is the loss of the center of the dome for optimal viewing of the reconstructed perspective view provided by true hemispheric projection, a problem shared with traditional planetarium projectors. However, this disadvantage fades as audience size increases (everyone cannot be at the center of the dome anyway). Single-projector mirror systems, initially pioneered by Mirrordome at Swinburne University, are now offered by various manufacturers. These systems are positioned along

245-476: A raster display, which has to touch every point on the phosphor plate before repeating. Likewise, the calligraphic technology allowed Digistar to have a darker black-level than full-dome projectors, since the portions of the phosphor plate representing dark sky were never hit by the electron beam. As it is only one tube, with no pixelated color filter screen, the Digistar projector is monochromatic. The Digistar projects

294-522: A seamless image that covers a hemispherical projection surface; splitting the entire image up into segments allows for higher-resolution imagery and projector placement that does not intrude on the viewing area underneath the dome. A disadvantage of multiple projection is the need to frequently adjust the alignment of projectors and the uneven aging of separate projectors leading to brightness and color differences between segments. Even minor performance differences between projectors can be obvious when projecting

343-421: A single (or mixed) video source displayed through a single fisheye lens , typically located at or near the center of a hemispherical projection surface. A single projector has the benefit of avoiding edge blends (see below) between multiple projectors. The main disadvantage of single fisheye systems is that they are limited to the resolution of one projector, and in the smallest dimension of the video image to cover

392-484: A solid color across the entire scene. Edge blended areas where projectors overlap often have some smearing, double images, and can have very obvious additive black level areas if poorly designed or configured. A wide variety of video projection technologies has been employed in domes, including cathode ray tube (CRT), Digital Light Processing (DLP), liquid crystal display (LCD), liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS), and most recently, two varieties of laser projectors (see

441-432: A star would be painted. Once all coordinates in the display list had been processed, the display would repeat from the top of the display list. Thus, the shorter the display list the more frequently the electron beam would refresh the charge on a given point on the phosphor plate, making the projection of the points brighter. In this way, the stars projected by Digistar were substantially brighter than could be achieved using

490-433: A variety of technologies in two typical formats: single- and multiple-projector systems. The individual projector(s) can be driven by a variety of video sources, typically feeding material rendered in either real-time or pre-rendered modes. The result is a video image that covers an entire domed projection surface, yielding an immersive experience that fills a viewer's field of view. Single-projector fulldome video systems use

539-491: A very wide color space . DOME lenses and standard lens are similar in some ways. They both depend on the type of display device: LCD, DLP, LCOS, D-ILA, etc.; and the size chip or panel that is part of this device. The unique feature of the DOME lens is the actual shape of the glass, the projected image spill out from the top and all around the circumference of the lens. The biggest advantage is how this type of lens maintains focus over

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588-404: Is Avatar Flight of Passage . December: Houston Museum of Natural Science opens SkyVision system as a permanent public theater, with seed funding from NASA in partnership with Rice University . First playback fulldome show: "Cosmic Mysteries". Houston Museum of Natural Science premieres the first Earth Science fulldome show "Powers of Time" Carnegie Museum of Natural history opens

637-455: Is a source of material for fulldome, that can be live simulator output, such as from planetarium simulation software, or prerecorded fulldome video. Live-Action FullDome videos are becoming more available for dome use as digital video camera resolutions increase. Real Time content can also be displayed, referring to fulldome content that is not pre-rendered and generated using VJ software or game engines . Notable films able to be displayed in

686-562: Is filled with real-time (interactive) or pre-rendered (linear) computer animations , live capture images, or composited environments. Although the current technology emerged in the early-to-mid 1990s, fulldome environments have evolved from numerous influences, including immersive art and storytelling, with technological roots in domed architecture , planetariums , multi-projector film environments, flight simulation , and virtual reality . Initial approaches to moving fulldome imagery used wide-angle lenses , both 35mm and 70 mm film , but

735-890: The American Alliance of Museums since 1978. The Roswell Museum’s permanent collection features a historical collection, and a visual art collection. The historical collection includes the American West historical collection, Native American collection , Spanish colonial historical items, and the liquid-propellant rocketry collection. The visual art collection includes regional art, modernist works from Santa Fe and Taos; 20th-century artworks, Southwestern Art ; Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth Collection; contemporary art, international print collection; WPA -era art; decorative arts ; and landscape artists. A donor program brought in works by Georgia O'Keeffe , Marsden Hartley , Stuart Davis , John Marin , and others. Esther Goddard gifted

784-467: The laser video projector ). For multi-projector systems, in particular, display devices must have a low black level (i.e., project little or no light when no signal is sent to them) to allow for reasonable edge-blending between the different projector footprints. Otherwise, overlapping video images will have an additive effect, causing a complex pattern of grey to appear even when no image is being projected. This becomes particularly important for users in

833-482: The planetarium field, who have a vested interest in projecting a dark night sky. The desire for projectors to "go to black" has resulted in continued use of CRT technology, even as newer and less expensive technologies have emerged. LCD projectors have fundamental limits on their ability to project true black as well as light, which has tended to limit their use in planetariums. LCOS and modified LCOS projectors have improved on LCD contrast ratios while also eliminating

882-407: The "screen door" effect of small gaps between LCD pixels. "Dark chip" DLP projectors improve on the standard DLP design and can offer a relatively inexpensive solution with bright images, but the black level requires physical baffling of the projectors. As the technology matures and reduces in price, laser projection looks promising for dome projection as it offers bright images, large dynamic range and

931-476: The E&;S Picture System 2. Later versions of Digistar 1 used a DEC MicroVAX 2, driving a custom version of a PS/300. The original Digistar and Digistar 2 had a physical control panel that was used for running the star shows. This control panel was approximately 3' x 4' and contained a keyboard, a 6 DOF joystick, and a large array of back-lit buttons. One button that was used for moving the viewpoint forward in space

980-579: The Fulldome format are Flesh and Sand by Academy Award winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu and three-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki . The immersive film won a Special Achievement Academy Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . Another notable film able to be displayed in the Fulldome format is The Protectors from Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow . Other similar fulldome content

1029-662: The International Planetarium Society, stated in 2000, anticipating Digistar 3's full-dome video , "I think the next ten years will see the most dramatic advances in all-dome presentations since the invention of the projection planetarium in the 1920s and the arrival of the electronic Digistar in the 1980s." The Digistar Users Group has been operating since the mid-1980s and consists of several hundred facilities that have installed Digistar systems. Fulldome Fulldome refers to immersive dome -based video display environments. The dome, horizontal or tilted,

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1078-477: The LEA and the true D2. Digistar was the brainchild of Stephen McAllister and Brent Watson, both of whom were long-time amateur astronomers and computer graphics engineers. In 1977, E&S had been consulting with Johnson Space Center regarding training simulators for astronauts. McAllister had been writing proof-of-concept software for this consultation and in summer 1977 entered the data for 400 bright stars and wrote

1127-494: The Milky Way across the sky. On more complex models, especially three-dimensional ones, brightness and details may be lost in this process, so it is not useful in all situations. The Digistar and Digistar 2 also suffer focus limitations. Because they use a single lens to cover the entire dome, it is difficult to gain perfect focus across the dome. Coupled with this, stars greater than a certain brightness are "multihit" points, meaning

1176-586: The Roswell Independent School District in 1968. Once considered the largest planetarium in New Mexico, it is capable of reproducing the night sky as seen from any point on Earth. The Robert H. Goddard Planetarium is home to a state-of-the-art, full-dome digital theater system with Digistar 6 programming. The museum was founded in 1936, after funding from New Mexico's Works Progress Administration (WPA) (authorized by manager Lea Rowland), with

1225-678: The day, rejected the Digistar and Digistar 2 because of this, ignoring the other advantages of the system. The CRT in the Digistar and Digistar 2 begins to burn out and lose brightness after roughly 1000 hours of use. This means most planetariums must change out the tube after every year or year-and-a-half. While the original Digistar ran on large VAX computers, Digistar II runs on the much more compact and advanced Sun Microsystems SPARCstation 5 . D2 uses two primary file types, .vl and .sf. .vl files are binary model files, while .sf files are binary show data files. Model files contain vector, line and dot data, as well as parametric changes to data within

1274-523: The edge of the dome to enhance seating capacity, reduce costs, and facilitate the transition of analog planetariums to digital formats without sacrificing their star projectors. It is also possible to build such a system at relatively low cost. The main disadvantage is noticeably lower projection quality compared to purpose-built lenses, despite being able to project a higher proportion of the projector resolution. Multiple-projector fulldome video systems rely on two or more video projectors edge-blended to create

1323-410: The expense and ungainly nature of the film medium prevented much progress; furthermore, film formats such as Omnimax did not cover the full two pi steradians of the dome surface, leaving a section of the dome blank (though, due to seating arrangements, that part of the dome was not seen by most viewers). Later approaches to fulldome utilized monochromatic vector graphics systems projected through

1372-585: The file. Digistar II show files are programmed in a language related to Pascal . Further, Digistar II can run animation files, .af, with the ASCII format .afa. An animation file consists of several model files, grouped together and loaded as one object. The Digistar II can either select frames individually, or animate the entire file. Digistar II is able to convert Digistar show and model files. Similarly, Digistar 3 can convert Digistar II model files, though it cannot, at this time, convert show files. Despite its limits,

1421-431: The file. Show files contain commands to the system, regarding the manipulation of the observer and models declared within the file. Several show files are often strung together underneath each other in show production. Both .vl and .sf have ASCII equivalents for editing--.vla and .sfa respectively. These are converted to their binary equivalents by a utility built into the Digistar system, which also checks for errors within

1470-475: The first time showing stars from points of view other than Earth's surface, travelling through the stars, and accurately showing celestial bodies from different times in the past and future. Beginning with the Digistar 3 the system now projects full-dome video . Unlike modern full-dome systems, which use LCD , DLP , SXRD , or laser projection technology, the Digistar projection system was designed for projecting bright pinpoints of light representing stars. This

1519-468: The four sides at the tip of the pyramid would recede into the housing, exposing the lens and appearing as a cut-off pyramid. As Digistar II was being developed, many planetaria were sold Digistar LEA projectors. The LEA, called Digistar 1.5 by many users, was effectively a prototype of the D2 projector, compatible with Digistar and upgradable to Digistar II. There are no significant differences in performance between

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1568-538: The full 180 x 180 field of view. A single standard flat field or curved field lens would have major focus and distortion issue. Several lens developers offer DOME lenses with each designed to a specific projector class and a display device. These lenses can cover a variety of pixel sizes and display resolutions. 360-degree and 180-degree content creator filmmakers are developing more and more refined feature-length ready fulldome films and virtual reality content every year. And computer graphic (CG) content

1617-558: The goal of storing Southeastern New Mexican items for the local historical and archaeological society and acting as a community center. The museum opened on December 10, 1937, as one of the numerous cultural centers established by the WPA during the Depression -era. Early museum exhibits included regional archaeological and ethnographic objects; artifacts; paintings by Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth (daughter of N.C. Wyeth ); and others. After

1666-474: The limitation of traditional star ball technology that only allowed display of star fields from the point of view of Earth's surface. By using computer graphics the stars could be displayed from viewpoints in space, including simulating the appearance of space flight. Likewise, planets and moons within the Solar System could be displayed accurately for any time in history, from any point of view. The system used

1715-531: The location of real stars from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue , as well as random stars. A laboratory prototype of Digistar was used to generate the star fields and tactical displays in the 1982 science fiction film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . Filming was done directly from the Digistar display in the lab. ILM projected the effort would take two weeks, but in fact it took from late November 1981 until mid-February 1982. The last shot recorded

1764-563: The museum received a collection of western art and historical artifacts donated by Rogers and Mary Ellen Aston which prompted the opening of the wing named, the Rogers Aston Gallery of American Indian and Western Art. Digistar Digistar is the first computer graphics -based planetarium projection and content system . It was designed by Evans & Sutherland and released in 1983. The technology originally focused on accurate and high quality display of stars, including for

1813-433: The museum with one of its most significant historical collections, Dr. Robert H. Goddard 's material research on liquid-fuel rockets . In 1959, the museum added a new wing dedicated to Goddard, and includes a reproduction of his laboratory. Goddard's rocket tower now stands in the museum's courtyard. The Robert H. Goddard exhibit contains a Moon rock donated by Harrison Schmitt from the 1972 Apollo 17 Mission. In 1980,

1862-407: The original Digistar and Digistar 2 are limited to only projecting dots and lines—meaning only wireframe models can be projected. To compensate for this, the projector is capable of defocusing specific models, blurring lines and dots together. An example of this is in the Digistar 2's built-in Milky Way model. The model is a circle of parallel lines that, when defocused, appear as the continuous band of

1911-509: The original Digistar was well received by many planetarians, and has been distributed worldwide. Though it lacked the pin-point stars of opto-mechanical projectors, and the full-dome rendering abilities of the later Digistar 3, many planetarians consider it a good balance between the two, especially considering the novel capabilities of seeing heavenly bodies from any point in space and time. The Digistar line has an installed base of over 550 planetaria as of 2019. Terence Murtagh, past president of

1960-410: The projector draws two dots at the given position to accommodate the brightness of the star. Errors in the projector can lead the second dot to be slightly out-of-place with the first one. These two issues together, along with other issues that can occur within the projector's focus system, give the stars a blobby look. Some planetarians, used to the pinpoint opto-mechanical projector stars ubiquitous in

2009-647: The restructuring of the WPA in 1941, the City of Roswell assumed control of the museum. From 1952 to 1955, Vernon Hunter served as the museum director; followed by the directorship of David Gebhard from 1955 to 1961; and Joseph M. Stuart from 1961 to 1964. By 1986, museum attendance reached over 45,000 visitors yearly. From 1967 to 2002, the Roswell Museum oversaw the operation of the Roswell Artist-in-Residence (RAiR) program. The museum has been accredited by

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2058-428: The software to display them. Steve and Brent both originally saw the system's purpose as celestial navigation training. Brent, who had until recently worked at Hansen planetarium , asked his planetarium coworkers what they thought of a potential digital planetarium system, and then Steve and Brent both targeted the system toward planetaria. The primary goal of the planetarium system was to use computer graphics to overcome

2107-453: The stars and wire-frame models to be displayed by the projector were stored in computer RAM in a display list. The display would read each set of coordinates in turn and drive the CRT's electron beam directly to those coordinates. If the electron beam was enabled while being moved a line would be painted on the phosphor plate. Otherwise, the electron beam would be enabled once at its destination and

2156-411: The team repeatedly used Salt Lake City 's Hansen planetarium to beta test the system at the planetarium at night. The Digistar team performed one week of shows at the planetarium as a fund raiser to benefit the planetarium. The company also later gave the planetarium an improved prototype Digistar to replace "Jake", the planetarium's aging Spitz planetarium projector. The first customer installation

2205-446: The use of vector graphics, as opposed to raster imaging, the Digistar does not have the resolution issues that many full-dome systems have. Thanks to this, and the brightness of the CRT, only one projector is needed to project on the entire dome, whereas most full-dome systems require up to six raster projectors, depending on dome size. The projector in the original Digistar was housed in a square pyramid-shaped sheathing. When powered on,

2254-579: Was accomplished using a calligraphic display, a form of vector graphics , rather than raster graphics . The heart of the Digistar projector is a large cathode-ray tube (CRT). A phosphor plate is mounted atop the tube, and light is then dispersed by a large lens with a 160 degree field of view to cover the planetarium dome. The original lens bore the inscription: "August 1979 mfg. by Lincoln Optical Corp., L.A., CA for Evans and Sutherland Computer Corp., SLC, UT, Digital planetarium CRT projection lens, 43mm, f2.8, 160 degree field of view". The coordinates of

2303-419: Was labeled " Boldly Go ". Later iterations of Digistar replaced the physical control panel with a common graphical user interface . Digistar 3 was the first Digistar system to offer full-dome video in 2002, using six projectors. Digistar 4 was able to cover the dome using only two projectors. Though technologically advanced in its day, and the closest system to true full-dome video at the time of its release,

2352-520: Was to the newly constructed Universe Planetarium at the Science Museum of Virginia in 1983, the largest planetarium dome in the world at the time, for $ 595,000. By September 1986 there were four installed Digistars. Even at this point the long-term success of the product was very much in doubt, but as of 2019 Digistar has an installed base of over 550 planetaria. Digistar was driven by a VAX-11 /780 minicomputer, with custom graphics hardware related to

2401-400: Was what became the first entirely computer generated feature film sequence. It was the opening scene of the film, a rotating forward translation through a star field that lasted 3.5 minutes. It was recorded in one take, at a rate of one frame every 3.5 seconds, taking four hours for the shoot. The Digistar team members are credited in the film. After prototyping in labs at Evans and Sutherland

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