h a l f b a k e r yIt's as much a hovercraft as a pancake is a waffle.
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Once when I was daydreaming I though it
would be cool if you could get a 360-
degree planetarium as a room in your
house. The idea would be to have a chair
or such on a metal pole in the middle of
sphere with a retractable gangplank. When
turned on, it would create the sensation of
floating
in the middle of space, which I
think would be calming and meditative
(and hopefully not like the Total
Perspective Vortex!).
I don't think this could be done with
projection like traditional planetariums,
since I want to sit where the projector
would be. This could be done cheaply by
wrapping the inside of the sphere with
perforated sheets, but I think that would
look like crap. Better still might be if you
could curve high-definition displays then
you could run images on the inside of the
sphere theoretically (like floating outside
the galaxy and looking at it). Alternatively,
I suppose a good VR setup could handle
this more cheaply, but I like the idea of
not being able to wear goggles. And it
would be nice if you could make it large
enough that it could support multiple
people (maybe with a clear floor).
Celestia
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Virtual Galaxy, Open Source, downloadable for your computer (Mac, Linux and Windows) Very nice program, with lots of user generated add-ons. Not exactly a full spherical planetarium, but definitely 3D virtually tourable. [Soterios, May 13 2005]
The C6
6-Walled Cave at Iowa State
needs a 3 story building to house it, 24 4K projectors, full stereo, etc. Awesome, but not cheap. Someone needs to write a planetarium app. [cowtamer, Sep 01 2009]
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...for a cheap version, you could paint the night sky on the walls and ceilings with luminous paint. I've seen that done. Not the carpet, though, that didn't work so well. |
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Another HHGTTG fan! Welcome! |
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"Since the human head at most has 180 degrees of periphrial vision..." |
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There's some pro basketball players who might disagree with you. |
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You could do this with 2 conventional planetarium projectors, each covering half of the sphere. You could arrange them to be either above and below your suspended seat or on either side. In the latter example each projector would display either the eastern or western skies and in the former, the northern and southern skies. |
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One other thing to point out is that planetarium screens are rarely a subsection of a perfect sphere. They are usually closer to a parabola and need to be as the seating is well below the bottom edge. |
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Finally...ever priced a planetarium projector? Hint: the good ones are made by Zeiss. |
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I'l bet that, using a pair of even the far less costly Spitz projectors, along with 30' dome (or, in this case, sphere) construction would top $3 million, half going to the cost of the projectors. 50% more if you used Minolta projectors and god only knows how much more with Zeiss. |
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(By the way, UB, you have a magnificent Zeiss Spacemaster at the Brisbane Planetarium that's been customized to do all manner of extra things. It's one of Zeiss's double-ended or "dumbell" models and I bet it was millions) |
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