Digistar 3

Digistar 3 is a dome-based projection technology created by Evans & Sutherland - to offer audiences immersive entertainment and education experiences that integrate fulldome video, real time 3D computer graphics, and a digital planetarium facility. Digistar 3 is fully scalable to meet up to >4k by >4k resolution video across a dome.

Digistar 3 is installed in a range of configurations from single lens projection systems for domes up to 9 m in diameter, such as the Argus Planetarium, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, through to multi-projector installations such as the giant 24 m diameter dome at Nehru Centre, Mumbai, India.

Digistar 3 incorporates the Direct3D real-time rendering standard to allow variation of shows based on audience interaction and presenter controls. The console comes equipped with a dialbox, a joystick and a palm pilot to making tailoring the show to the audience intuitive. The video is also distorted in real time to allow for multiple projector configurations without having to re-encode the video for each graphics processor.

Digistar 3 comes bundled with software to aid any planetarium in developing their own programs, though fulldome video, being a new medium, requires a new skill set to keep all the dome active. The Digistar Users Group focuses on creating content specifically for this system. Because of the new technical hurdles in creating 3D video content for the dome many planetariums opt to lease programs from institutions that have already gained ground in the fulldome field such as the Hayden Planetarium of New York or the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City, or from vendors such as Starlight Productions and Loch Ness Productions.