Sussex-based 7thSense Design has supplied core technology to the Daily Planet, an immersive dome experience just opened by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC, USA.

An 80,000sq ft extension to the Museum - the Nature Research Center (NRC) - has been designed to bring research scientists and their work into the public eye. The Museum hopes that it will demystify research and inspire a new generation of scientists to follow in the footsteps of those whose work it showcases. The centrepiece of the NRC is the SECU Daily Planet, a hemispherical dome using multimedia technology to link the virtual and natural worlds together.

At regular intervals during the day, scientists will use the 40ft high, high-definition curved screen of the dome to present their latest research and its impact on current issues. One unusual aspect of the screen is that it can be viewed from any one of three floors within the dome. Ian Macpherson, director of 7thSense, revealed that the company supplied the NRC with a single Delta server to drive all six of the Christie projectors for the main display wall, with 2K x 2K uncompressed media resolution and real-time warp-and-blend to make a single, continuous canvas.

A second Delta server then feeds another timeline into the live inputs of the first one. This allows the show-control system to drop media in real time onto this server as Timeline B, while Timeline A is playing the primary Delta. A seamless transition between the two timelines is ensured by the provision of luma-key transition movies created by batwin+robin productions (b+r), responsible for the creative concept and content execution at the Daily Planet.

7thSense worked with b+r throughout, with AV systems contractor Electrosonic and show-control provider Smart Monkeys also playing key roles in the creation of the project. Image courtesy of batwin+robin