PLANETARIUM SHOWS

A major component of our project is our continued production of immersive digital planetarium shows that teach Earth and space science in a full-dome environment, originally funded with seed money from NASA and major matching funds from the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS). These shows were first developed for established planetariums using the latest projection technology - multiple overlapping computer-driven projectors that achieve panorama (3 projector), full-view (4 projector) or full-dome (6 projector) productions. Our first production, "Cosmic Mysteries", opened December 1998. "Destination: Moon" opened July 1999, and "Powers of Time" opened January 2000. Since then we have helped produce and distribute dozens of full-dome digital productions. Our currently available planetarium shows are...

The online version of each show is warped for playback in a mirror or fisheye projection system. This format also makes our shows especially suitable for our portable inflatable dome system with single-projector display. After sampling the full-length, low resolution versions of the shows here, please visit e-Planetarium for information on purchasing.

PORTABLE DOMES

One of the most exciting projects at Space Update Inc is the development and distribution of our portable planetarium domes. Where before you had to visit a planetarium to experience the wonder of a full-dome immersive digital show...now the planetarium can come to you! Even if there is not a local planetarium near your location, you can still bring the planetarium experience to your classroom, school, science center, or special event. Our portable domes set-up and pack-away in minutes, can hold up to 30 school-age children, and run any of our numerous dome shows using a laptop, projector, and our MediaShow display software. Contact us for more information on our domes and shows, or visit our sister site e-Planetarium.com for sales and rental information.

SOFTWARE

A successful planetarium experience is due in part to the content of the show, and also to how seamless the immersive experice is for the visitor. As a show controller using a portable planetarium dome, it is especially important to have display software that is easy and flexible to use. Moreso than a fixed planetarium, a portable dome environment lends itself to rapid show changes, and the need for on-the-fly show controls. Our software application MediaShow was created specifically for the needs of the portable planetarium show controller.

MediaShow Pro This feature rich software application uses a button-box interface to control the display of images, image sequences, and movies in a separate display window. Its rich feature set allows complete configuration control over image zooms and rotations, and movie start and stop times. MediaShow Pro is a full windowed application best used in setups with 2 video outputs (e.g. a laptop hooked to an LCD projector with a fisheye lens or mirror-system.

MediaShow-Mirror | MediaShow-Mirror-1024 Single display setups (e.g. laptops running a projector through video-mirroring) can use MediaShow-Mirror. This version has a 1400x60 pixel control window locked to the top of the display, moving it out of view for most dome projections, with the display window filling the remainder of the view. It has only limited access to playback presets and controls. MediaShow-Mirror-1024 is similar but only 1024 pixels wide for even smaller display setups.

Marquee Marquee is a dual-display kiosk application to showcase shows and events for a museum, planetarium or other exhibit installation. Users flip through poster thumbnails which when chosen shows descriptive information on display 1 and either a movie or image sequence on display 2. Its intended use is as a COMING SOON or NOW PLAYING kiosk to showcase events for planetariums and museums.