Immersive Industry Sees Promise in Full Dome Exhibition

variety.com:

Ben Croll Questions of distribution animated industry talk and private debate at this year’s NewImages Festival, as delegates considered new strategies to connect accomplished immersive works with the widest possible public.

Of the new opportunities presented, the Full Dome model – which sees 360 works projected on the large spherical screens – proved particularly eye opening, as acquisitions execs from Paris’ Diversion Cinema and exhibitors from Montreal’s Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) keyed into the immersive, multi-user potential found – among other possible locations – on the domed ceilings of your friendly neighborhood planetarium. “Unlike VR, [the Full Dome model] creates a social, group-based, and shared experience based on immersion,” says SAT general director Jenny Thibault. “The business model [for traditional VR] is quite complex.

Producing a work requires competitions, coordination and support. You can’t do volume exhibition, as it’s very expensive to have headsets for everyone.

So we encourage VR producers to develop a dome version as well, because there is already a whole network throughout the world.” One of those domes can be found perched on the roof the SAT itself, which has pioneered and evangelized the communal immersive model since 2011.