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.