The Sphere in Las Vegas is easily one of the coolest attractions in the city. The
only problem is it's really expensive and also I don't live in Las Vegas.
Fortunately, I just found out we have Spirit Home. Welcome to the dome. It was
the brainchild of some of the folks who worked on the OG in Las Vegas, but due
to uh budgetary constraints, they had to
get a little creative to make their vision a reality. See, while you and I
might share fond childhood memories of laser light show night at the
planetarium, when this Zeiss projection system was current, we hadn't even
landed on the moon yet. And this one in
particular is so broken that even the platform that lifts it up into position
is leaking hydraulic fluid. So, they've had to be a little scrappy, or at least
as scrappy as something can be when it is packed to the gills with 4K Christy
projectors, not to mention 20,000 watts
of JBL surround. With that said, guys, budgets are relative, and when you
consider how much less they had to work with here, the end result is absolutely
stunning. And we're going to give you guys a behindthescenes tour of how it
was all stitched together right after I stitch in this segue to our sponsor,
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is incredible. I haven't set foot in what used to be known as the Star
Theater at the HR McMillan Space Center since I was a child watching a Charlotte
Diamond laser show. And outwardly,
nothing has changed. This was a real challenge for Tobias and his team at
Volutric Camera Systems because not only
did they have to modernize a very old
installation, but they had to do so while it was open the whole time doing
daytime shows. That means everything they did had to be done in bite-sized
chunks during closing hours. Take for instance cleaning the screen. See this
panel behind me? How it's a little bit whiter than the rest of them. Okay. Do
you also see how the rest of the dome has these bright visible seams between
the panels? Well, what Tobias's team discovered is that those seams aren't
supposed to be visible. But in order to eliminate them, they have to wipe down
the front of the panel and get around to the backside with a vacuum to remove the
70 years of dust and crud that is built
up in the perforations of the projection screen. Perforations that are needed to
make the screen acoustically transparent for the carefully positioned speakers
all around the dome. But enough yak yak about what hasn't changed. Let's take
you somewhere where few people have ever been. The beating heart of the planet
Arium, the server room, where this rack of Nihalum era servers runs the daytime
shows, but has been replaced with a
single machine hidden behind the screen
that we are going to go find, I guess.
Good gravy. I'm not sure quite what I expected, but
not working light switches apparently. But you can really feel the history in
this place. all the different eras of equipment that were in here. Like
they've got these ancient DC power connectors that apparently act as
triggers for the old effects projectors for the older shows. Right next to a
random D-link switch. Here's some tubing that I assume was for a fog machine at
some point. We've still got fog machines, but apparently we don't use
that tube anymore. Okay, this is cool. Here's one of our
new Christy projector. Do not bump. I
touched it ever so lightly. >> No, no, it's fine. You can touch it. I don't care. >> Okay. Okay, cool.
>> Coolest part of this one, though, is this is one of the small ones. They're
using three Christy 4K projectors for their mains and three of these smaller
ones to kind of fill in the holes because, as you guys can plainly see,
it's a bit of an oddly shaped screen. In
total, that gives them a 10K 10K
resolution image. The original plan had actually been to use one of the big ones
with the fisheye lens that you guys saw in the intro, but what they found was it
just plain wasn't enough resolution. So, they went with this stitched together
approach. We're going to go find one of the big projectors. But first, I wanted
to show you guys behind the screen. How
freaking cool is this, man? So cool. Hi,
Adam. Something I didn't really think about before being back here is how much of
the light gets completely wasted just
blasting through the screen into this layer of both acoustic and
lightabsorbing material that lines the inside of the dome. Man, there's so much
flipping power. It's like a contractor asked, "How many outlets would you
like?" And they were like, "Yes." Like there's 20 within my arms span here. 22.
24. Oh, there's a power strip. There's
there's like another 10.
What? January 1990 that was installed.
This a little newer. This is one of the
big Christies. And they had to come up with, again, the theme is scrappy,
right? An innovative solution for cooling it. They've got three of these
550 CFM AC fans, each dedicated to one
of the large projectors just kind of blowing out here to be taken up by the
intake for the entire room here. And wow, it really does blow. Like, can you
see my hair moving? Sorry, it really does suck. I mean, but it's good at it.
Anywh who, each of these is running to a Christy D4K 2560, and these are the main
workh horses of the setup. These are capable of 4K 60fps. They're also
capable of 25,000 lumens of light output, which is where all the heat
comes from. Wow, the bottom's actually quite hot, but is what makes them
capable of projecting onto such large screens. Fun fact, these actually use
the same model bulb as some of the local movie theaters. So, when they had a show
emergency and needed a replacement bulb real quick, apparently the folks at the
Scotia Bank Theater were bros and uh lent them a lamp to get them back up and
running. Fun fact, by the way, whether it was
intentional or not, this textured concrete that separates the cove or the
the backstage area, as they call it, from the theater itself does an amazing
job of blocking all of the fan noise. Check this out.
Right. Once you're in the theater area, it's
not disruptive at all. Neat. Also here
in the Cove is an unassuming looking Lenovo Think Station that acts as the
heart of their nightly shows. It uses a 12 core third gen Threadripper
processor, 128 gigs of RAM, and probably
most importantly, four NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs with a Quadro Sync card,
allowing them to output to 16 different
displays and keep everything perfectly synchronized, whether they're running
pre-rendered content or adding particle
effects that are rendered in real time or using Unreal Engine 5 or Touch
Designer. The plan is actually to replace the old girl with an HP
workstation that uses NVIDIA's new A6000 GPUs, but they just haven't had the
time. And looking around here, I definitely can see why. Oh, one last
thing that I missed is that they're not running HDMI to all the projectors.
They're actually using adapters so that they can run their video signals over
category cable, or as we'd more commonly refer to it, network cable. That's it
for downstairs. Let's go up. Apparently, this door is the fastest way to get
there. >> No, they actually made it specially for you. It's your size. See? Authorized
personnel only.
>> That didn't even end up being the fastest way.
Now, this is cool. You can see the
entire curvature of it. You can see all the wiring. Speaker mounts.
Woo! Man, I would not want to have to haul
stuff up here. Like, how'd these stairs
get up here? Never mind the stairs. What about the dual 18-in driver subwoofer
that's under here from JBL? How did you guys get this up here?
>> Oh, uh, we didn't. That was 15 years
ago. Whoever did the install of that. >> Oh, okay. This was a 15 years ago
project. >> But they just plugged it in. They didn't do any calibration. They didn't do any
tuning. They just plugged it in and left. So, there's a lot of room for improvement.
>> More speakers. I think we're looking at the center channel here. And no way. A
ladder. Has anyone ever dreamed of
climbing the planetarium screen?
I hadn't until this day. Now I know that
that's been my entire life's ambition. Holy crap. This is nuts. Holy crap. I am
very high up. Does it go all the way over the top?
>> It does. That's crazy.
Oh, there's a speaker at the very top.
What's that one? >> It's called a Zenith speaker.
>> That's sick. >> Yeah, it's used for effects, used for voices. Uh, it's not part of the
standard 5.1, but it exists. >> This is the apex of the planet Arum.
Goodness, I am extremely high up. >> He's going somewhere where no man has
ever gone. >> Yeah. Don't forget, if I ever fall and
die during a video, you got to monetize my death.
>> Oh, we already got a sponsor for your funeral. Don't worry. That was the
coolest thing that I had no idea that I wanted to try. You guys ready to game on
this thing? Cuz I am. To get this done,
we brought a 5090based gaming machine from home. And Tobias
has a way to connect that. Yeah, we're using NDI to connect over the network
and sending the 4K ultrawide directly into the stitching computer, the Lenovo.
>> So, you're saying the latency is not going to be great. >> We'll see if you notice it.
>> I think I'll probably notice it. >> Yeah, he's a little whiner about that.
>> Oh, come on now. >> Yeah, you're always like, "Oh, the latency is so bad."
>> It's my job to whine about that. >> Whoa, buddy.
I don't know if I'm going to care about the latency with a screen this big.
>> What are you doing right now? This is just various skewing, stretching,
manipulation of the image for our curved screen. >> Yeah. So, what we got here is a touch
center template created by Andrew Hazelin. And what these are ST maps.
These ST maps are basically distorting the image to match what is on the dome.
And we have various different projections. We have 160°, 150°, 140°.
We can change and stretch the screen to be whatever perspective you want. Kind
of see what it's doing over here while it's loading. It's basically taking our
screen and then stretching it like this >> to match the dome.
>> I got to go try this. >> You actually had a mouse pad?
>> Yeah. Never leave home without it. >> Literally, not a week ago, we had to get
you a different flight cuz you left without your passport. Are you telling
me that that that was packed? >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. I had my mouse pad. You're missing the bigger picture here,
Adam. That kind of seen. >> The big picture is prettying big, dude.
I don't know how this works. something to do with the way it's but the way it
almost has a 3D look to it. >> It looks like it's coming towards us though is weird.
>> It's like a CRT bubble out. >> Yeah. >> As opposed to going into like a dome.
>> Dude, this is incredible. >> Yeah, >> he's right. The latency is actually not
that bad. >> Look at this.
>> This is incredible. >> It's all the butt of the car, though. Uh
yeah, look at how dinky you like from the right angle you're like Yeah. It's a
little skewed. It's a little skewed. Like all the way over there. That's
where your freaking ammo is. >> Don't worry about it. And then your
objectives are all the way over there. Yeah, you can almost read them.
>> I am going to be I'm going to be ill. This is This is a lot.
>> I have gamed on some wild displays. This is new. Like theoretically, this is the
same as just sitting closer to a smaller screen. And yet it's not.
>> In theory, you'd think like, oh, if you put an iPad right here, it would be just
as immersive. >> No, but your eyes can feel the
difference because they have to focus a different at different stuff. What?
>> It looks and it feels larger than life. Of course, this is not the kind of
content that it's intended for. So, why don't we invite some paid friends to uh
come and check out one of the real shows? I think that would be fun. We're all here at the dome to see Pink Floyd's
Dark Side of the Moon. It's going to be super cool. If you're excited, say,
"Woo!" >> Woo!
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see any of the shows that Tobias and his team puts on at
>> dome vancouver.com. >> That's the one. We'll have that linked down below. Thanks so much for giving us
this full access tour. I hope you don't get into too much trouble for me
climbing the dome. >> We tried to stop you. >> Yeah, they did. I overpowered him.