VISITOR ATTRACTIONS
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planetarium show Earth, Moon and Sun . The show is designed mainly for primary school students, and is a favourite with teachers seeking to bring their kids on school trips to Morehead. Fulldome theatre manager Richard McColman has worked at Morehead Planetarium since April 1992 and boasts four decades of experience in the field. “In this role, I oversee all aspects of what happens in the domed theatre of the planetarium,” he begins. “This includes spearheading the process of selecting pre-produced content that audiences experience in the theatre, setting the standards for live presentations, presenting some shows myself, training theatre staff – including undergraduate university student staffers – interfacing with visitors and managing the theatre’s technical operations. I also interface with our production team on shows they create for our dome.” Morehead currently has two Sony VPL-GTZ380 projectors, each one opposing the other in the theatre system. “Each of the two projectors covers roughly one half of the dome, and each is 4x2K resolution, together making a unified 4x4K dome image,” says McColman. “Using software-based masking as well as physical masking, the two images are blended together around the intersections of the two projector images, to effectively create a single, seamless dome image. “We chose these projectors due to their high brightness, high contrast and dense colour saturation specifications. All these issues are important when spreading images from just two projectors across a 20.7m-diameter dome, as we are doing at Morehead. Of course, the projection lenses – in this case, lenses that cover very wide areas of
Canada’s Infinity Dome features eight Christie Griffyn Series RGB pure laser projectors for bright visuals in 8K resolution
the dome – are equally as important as the projectors themselves in displaying high-quality images. Each of the two Sony projectors in our dome is mated to a Navitar Hemistar fisheye lens. “The Sony projectors and their mated lenses, as well as the rest of our system, were installed and configured by SSIA Technologies, which is based in Nashua, New Hampshire in the US. The fulldome planetarium software that drives the system is from a partnership between SSIA Technologies and Sky-Skan International GmbH.” Ben Fox has been digital production manager at Morehead for the last ten years, and has overseen some of the planetarium’s shows and multiple 360° videos and VR interactives. “The majority of our projects deploy the same core software tools that would be used in standard CG film production,” he adds. “Maya, Houdini, Nuke and Resolve are
The majority of our projects use the same core software tools that would be used in standard CG film production”
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