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SCISS represented at the International Planetarium Society Conference in Chicago last week. The IPS conference is the largest conference in the planetarium industry and occurs every second year. With one booth in each exhibit area, a portable dome together with The Elumenati, MPS, AMNH, NASA and NOAA in the Conference Center area and a workshop booth with two workstations in the Ballroom area Uniview was available to see and try for every visitor during the full six days of the conference.
Uniview was demonstrated and represented not only at these sites but also in the Global Immersion custom-built Zorro-powered dome and multiple sessions at the Adler Planetarium over the course of the week, including the Carl Zeiss Velvet projection system presentation and the groundbreaking remote session with John Mathers on the James Webb Space Telescope, the first Nobel Prize winner to give a talk at IPS. This presentation was made possible through the Octopus remote control functionality of Uniview and the collaborative effort by Joel Halvorsson, John Stoke, Carter Emmart and several others. We are very happy to have been part of this event.
As the grand finale of the whole conference all delegates met up at the Spirit of Chicago cruise ship for the banquet dinner sponsored by SCISS. During this dinner we placed single-use cameras on the tables so that the guests could help document the evening, and we are now happy to share these photos with you!
Also don't miss the official SCISS video from IPS 2008, featuring footage from the whole conference and an original soundtrack by Materia (aka the SCISS Market Relations Manager, as it were):
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As one of the major sponsors of the IPS conference 2008 at the historic Adler planetarium in Chicago we will present Uniview on several different projection systems together with our partners and friends.
Our first demonstration opens up the conference on Friday night, and from Saturday you can find us in both exhibit areas at the Hyatt McCormick.
Please read more information about IPS here:
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NASA Ames focuses on delivering technologies that enable NASA’s missions. Among NASA Ames’ numerous contributions are the Thermal Protection System used to protect spacecraft during their fiery re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, human factors research, a variety of education and outreach activities and critical mission development and support.
The Immersive Theater at the NASA Ames Exploration Center, originally installed by SEOS, was a beta testing site for Uniview during the early days of development at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. The current theater was installed by Global Immersion and includes a three projector theater which displays on a 42-foot by 12-foot screen. Initially, Uniview will be used as a realtime application for daily presentations, and in the future NASA Ames will use it to develop and produce full scale shows. The collaborative capabilities of Uniview Octopus will also be leveraged for VIP and other special events.
Read the full press release here.
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Today we made history by inaugurating a first Uniview domecast
session to and from Africa using the Octopus remote connectivity,
making it possible to share a Uniview session over the internet.
This marks the first Uniview installation in Africa and we are very
happy to add Ghana to our global network of friends!
Participating in this inaugural event were Dave Weinrich, Jacob and Jane Ashong (Accra, Ghana), Carter Emmart (AMNH, New York), Joel Halvorson (MPS, Minneapolis, MN) and Ken Yager (Elumenati, Ashville, NC).
The participants traveled from the streets of Accra to the edge of the
known Universe. This is a first step to adding the new dome at the
Ghana Science Center to a growing number of global partners.
Dave Weinrich from Moorehead State University is
currently in Accra, Ghana were he is helping Dr Jacob Ashong fulfill
a dream of building the Ghana Science Center and Planetarium.
This project is supported by, among others, SCISS, The Elumenati
and Audio Visual Imagineering Inc.
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Together with NAVET from Borås, we present Uniview and the pedagogical concept Taikonauts at the science center conference ECSITE in Budapest, Hungary.
Please read more information about this collaboration here:
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SCISS represented at the Immersive Vision Conference in Plymouth, UK whereby SCISS CEO and founder Staffan Klashed gave a talk on the possibilities of Uniview Octopus remote collaborations followed by a dome demonstration of the Octopus technology with local participants Staffan Klashed and Jan Warnstam (SCISS) and David McConville (The Elumenati) and remote participants Carter Emmart (AMNH), Chris Lawton (ESA) and Joel Halvorsson and Sally Brummel (Minnesota Planetarium).
To share a little bit of this week with you, we have put a selection of photos online:
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Featuring Uniview and the projectiondesign based solution of Global Immersion, Intech in Winchester opens to the public tomorrow. The VIP launch event yesterday was a success and got media coverage in several of the national TV channels and newspapers. Here is an excerpt of these:
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Wired went to the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas to report and found David McConville from the Elumenati in a portable dome running Uniview:
"We did see a couple of other cool things on the showroom floor, like this immersive data visualization suite called Elumenati. Taking data from NASA and other scientific sources, the company's software turns all those numbers into navigable and animated environments; and does it all running a Dell XPS with a GeForce 8800. The best part, however, is that you aren't just looking at screen, you're sitting inside an blow-up "geodome" that's about the size of your kitchen, and inflates in 20 minutes. It's disorienting, exhilarating and instructive."
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The Kuwait National Planetarium in Kuwait city was inaugurated in 1986
and was one of the first in the Gulf region. In 1990 the building suffered
partial wreckage during the Gulf War. Now, more than ten years after the war damages,
the rebuilt planetarium has been reopened and recently equipped with Zeiss
powerdome 4DOME, Sony cinema projectors as well as Uniview.
Read the full press release here.
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Tonight, a few hours after midnight GMT, with a clear sky an avid observer will be able to witness a lunar eclipse. However, should you either be at bed or out of luck with clouds, we are happy to give you these screenshots of the phenomena as seen through the eyes of Uniview.
 
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As of today Universeum, an exciting science center in Gothenburg, runs two new installations of Uniview for their sports break space focus week - one interactive ISS installation and one auditorium in the exhibit area called Rymdlust where guides take kids, parents and other visitors on a journey through the universe several times a day.
Photo: Leo Andersson
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The new Morrison Planetarium, part of the California Academy of Sciences in San Fransisco, has decided to go with an institution-wide implementation of Uniview. Uniview will be used both in the Morrison Planetarium and by travelling researchers and outreach programs, leveraging also the capability to network Uniview sessions across different locations on our planet.
Read the full press release here.
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We are happy to give you all 24 fresh wallpapers created with Uniview. They are available in two sizes - download them here!
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Uniview is featured in today's edition of the newspaper Metro Teknik.
Read the Swedish article by following the link below.
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Anders Ynnerman from NVIS in Norrköping, Sweden and co-founder of SCISS AB recieved the prize "Guldmusen - IT Person of the Year 2007"
at Hotel Rival in Stockholm.
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The first powerdome®Workshop was held at Carl Zeiss and in Jena´s Zeiss Planetarium in November 2007. 22 powerdome users and other interested parties from Germany, Austria and Switzerland met to get familiarized with the details of Carl Zeiss powerdome®Systems. The participants also worked with Uniview, the 3D visualizing software for all of the explored universe, developed by SCISS in Sweden. Uniview can be integrated into all powerdome®Systems made by Carl Zeiss.
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In the middle of the spectacular City of the Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, the Hemisfèric is being equipped with Uniview operating on a ZEISS full dome digital projection system.
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Lakeview Museum's planetarium is an astronomical resource serving all of central Illinois. For their new planetarium setup they have chosen Uniview as the vessel to travel the universe with their visitors. The planetarium has been equipped with a ZEISS opto-mechanical star projector, a powerdome digital playback system and Uniview running Digital Universe from AMNH.
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According to the press release from Morrison Planetarium, part of the California Academy of Sciences in San Fransisco:
"Technology plays a central role in modern planetariums, with relationships that last long past the delivery date of computers and projectors," says Wyatt. "We look forward to working closely with the talented people in the companies we have selected."
Read the full press release here.
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The Elumenati partnered with Obscura Digital to provide a large dome for the Google Zeitgeist 2007 VIP event with guests dining in inside, watching high-resolution imagery from glaciers, forests and finally a tour through the universe using Uniview.
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SCISS represented at CAP2007 (Communicating Astronomy to the Public) in Athens, Greece and Jan Warnstam did a live presentation of some of the new features in Uniview.
The presentation was filmed on location and you can now view the webcast archive here:
Also feel free to look at our photo gallery from CAP2007 here:
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Focusing on our home planet, Geoscope adds new GIS functionality to the Uniview application. Aiming to help geoscientists within all fields - such as geography, geology, biologi and environmental research - communicate their stories, Geoscope allows the user to show both super high resolution maps as well as GIS vector data on the Earth.
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SCISS Historium, a new visualization platform for historical environments, was introduced in Scandinavia this summer. First out was the Askeby Historium in Sweden, where the technology is used to tell the history of the town Askeby and the importance of the region in the 15th century Sweden. Askeby Historium was installed in the old Askeby monestary, merging the cutting edge technologies of SCISS Historium with an exciting historical environment.
SCISS would like to take the opportunity to extend our gratitude to the team from Askeby, who have supported the development of this exciting new medium throughout the last 12 months.
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SCISS represented at DomeFest in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one of the largest gatherings for fulldome professionals. A remote controlled demonstration was held over three different time zones - Carter Emmart in New York and Staffan Klashed in Stockholm together with Jan Warnstam on site in Albuquerque did a joint presentation using the new Uniview networking tool Octopus.
In his reports from the event, David Beining, DomeFest 2007 organizer, described this as a "very important moment in the medium".
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Wired writes of a "fantastic imaging software" used to research the Overview Effect at AMNH, where Carter Emmart "used laptop controls to glide over South America, and zoomed in on clouds spiraling above a rainforest".
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Carter Emmart from AMNH operated Unview as a backdrop for Al Gore as he spoke at Live Earth in Washington DC.
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SCISS represented at the annual ISDE5 conference in the San Fransisco Bay Area, showing how Uniview can be used within the digital earth community.
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Gaia Journeys is a collaborative multimedia art performance conceived by internationally acclaimed audio visual artist Kenji Williams, with the aid of staff at the Denver
Museum of Nature & Science, and using imagery by panorama photographer
Greg Downing.
During the performance, Williams played the violin and keyboards while Uniview was navigated live on the dome behind him.
Uniview allowed the audience to simulate orbital flight with high resolution imagery and digital elevation maps of the virtual globe.
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Uniview has been selected as the interactive platform for the upcoming space exhibit at the Museum of Technology, Stockholm. Introducing high end interactive elements into its exhibits strengthen the museum's position as an innovator and leader of the community.
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Together with the city of Linkoping and the Askeby monestary, SCISS is developing a full archeological environment for science communication on historical and archeological stories.
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Located in Austrian alps, the Schwaz planetarium has been equipped with a ZEISS opto-mechanical star projector, a powerdome digital playback system and Uniview running Digital Universe from AMNH.
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Located at the top of the town tower in Judenburg, the spectacular Judenburg Planetarium has been equipped with a ZEISS opto-mechanical star projector, a powerdome digital playback system and Uniview running Digital Universe from AMNH.
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We are proud to announce that Uniview was today installed at the Gates Planetarium, Denver Museum of Nature & Science. SCISS has worked together with the DMNS team, and SEOS Ltd from the United Kingdom as distribution partner, to provide an eleven channel Uniview system. This installation marks the beginning of long term collaboration between SCISS and DMNS whereby the educational tools of Uniview will be greatly enhanced. The first results from this collaboration are seen already in the currently available version 1.2 of Uniview, where elements and features from DMNS' Cosmic Atlas project have been incorporated into Uniview. In addition, the installation of Uniview at the Gates Planetarium features the Digital Universe datasets from the American Museum of Natural History.
Uniview will be used for interactive shows and lectures by DMNS curators and staff members. This includes Curator of Space Science Dr. Ka Chun Yu, whose ongoing Astronomy Learning in Immersive Virtual Environments (ALIVE) project is the first research attempt at determining how visualization tools, such as Uniview, can be most effectively used to teach astronomy.
"Uniview offers the flexibility and features that are crucial for our experiments," says Dr. Yu. "The ability to transport students smoothly from the surface of the Earth to the edge of the universe contributes to student understanding in a way not possible with traditional teaching techniques."
Planetarium Director Dan Neafus adds "After considerable investment in our own Cosmic Atlas software we are enthusiastic about having many of its features migrated to Uniview. The Museum's commitment to scientific accuracy and offering first rate real-time immersive experiences for our audiences will be much more sustainable using Uniview. SCISS has demonstrated a commitment to supporting our needs as well as the requirements of other users. All of us will benefit through this ongoing collaboration."
Staffan Klashed from SCISS: "The in-depth knowledge and understanding of astronomical visualization that Denver adds to the project has already proven to be one of our most valuable resources. We are delighted for this opportunity to make Uniview even more useful and visually appealing, so to improve the already enjoyable experience Uniview offers to both the presenter and the audience".
A twelve node visualization cluster of HPxw8400 workstations was donated to the planetarium by Hewlett-Packard, each featuring a pair of Intel Quad-Core chips, alongside the latest generation of the NVIDIA Quadro FX series of graphics cards.
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On the Culture Night festival in Norrkoping, Sweden, SCISS performed two full-on 45 minute live shows with the Norrkoping Symphonic Orchestra playing to live Uniview imagery. The sucessful event was one of the signature experiences of the festival and attracted several thousand visitors from all over Sweden.
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The high demand for our eclipse videos has resulted in excessive bandwidth usage. As a consequence of this, the video clips have been unavailable for download at a number of occasions during the last two weeks. Each video has now been duplicated to a mirror site in order to reduce the load for each server. We apologize for any past inconveniences and hope that the bandwidth will be enough from now on. Finally, we want to thank everyone for showing such great interest in these clips. It really makes the work worthwhile!
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With the help of Uniview, we have created a number of video clips depicting the solar eclipse that will occur the 29th of March. Apart from showing the event itself, the videos also give you a glimpse of several new functionalities in Uniview, such as high precision positioning using the NASA SPICE system and a much improved shadow casting model. More information about these and other exciting features will be posted here as they are finished. But now, let's take a look at the eclipse!
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Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History, has been awarded an Honorary Doctor's degree at Linkoping University in Sweden. At the Hayden Planetarium and elsewhere, Dr. Emmart has given millions of people a greater understanding of astronomy and our place in the Universe. He is, since 2002, working closely with visualization scientists at Linkoping University. SCISS, which originated from this collaboration, is very happy to congratulate Dr. Emmart on his new title!
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As a part of a pilot project for upcoming functionality, Uniview was used by the American Museum of Natural History to produce a science bullentin animation of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and the moon Charon. The animations represent the encounters between the New Horizons spacecraft and Jupiter in 2007, as well as the encounter between the spacecraft and the Pluto-Charon system in 2015.
NTSC resolution versions of the animations are available for download from AMNH. The animations were originally created for high definition video and show some signs of degradation from the conversion to NTSC.
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We are proud to announce that Uniview will be a major part of one of this year's most exciting installations - The Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland. SCISS have worked with SEOS Ltd. to provide a six channel Uniview system featuring the Digital Universe datasets from the American Museum of Natural History.
"There is nothing more important than teaching kids of all ages about the Universe. We are very excited about the tools that Uniview gives us to do that", says Alexandra Barnett, CEO of Chabot Space & Science Center.
Uniview is planned to be used for interactive shows, featuring a staff member from Chabot giving live tours of the universe, initially on two occasions per week.
Staffan Klashed from SCISS: "Chabot is a milestone for us. With this installation, we are now initiating a process to put the result of many years of hard work in the hands of astronomers and educators globally. Combining stunning visuals with very intuitive controls, the Uniview platform will provide an enjoyable experience both to the presenter and the audience".
Uniview is running on SEOS new media server, a windows-based PC cluster with graphics hardware from the NVIDIA Quadro series. In addition to the interactive capabilities of Uniview, the cluster also comes with SEOS groundbreaking media server system for video playback and manipulation.
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At this year's SIGGRAPH conference, held in Los Angeles, the official 1.0 release of the visualization software Uniview was showcased for the first time.
Together with the American Museum of Natural History and Elumenati, SCISS performed more than fifteen Uniview shows in an inflatable dome theatre at NVIDIA's SIGGRAPH booth.
More...
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Click the image below to see a number of screen shots demonstrating our new HALO planet rendering engine.
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SCISS is proud to announce that we have been selected as one of Sweden's ten most promising startup companies. Out of almost 300 participants in the Venture Cup competition, SCISS made it all the way to the finals mainly thanks to our strong Uniview product and the unique features it brings to the market.
The final presentation was held in the Blue Hall of Stockholm City Hall, where the Nobel Prize Banquet is held every year. In the audience attending SCISS' presentation was among others the Swedish minister of Industry and Trade, Tomas Ostros.
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SCISS is proud to announce that the company won the second leg of the Venture Cup competition.
Again, the award was won in heavy competition against roughly a hundred competing startups. SCISS has now won three out of three contests in which the company has participated. We are eagerly awaiting the exciting final third leg in Venture Cup.
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SCISS was selected one of ten winners in the first leg of the Venture Cup competition, aimed at startups in Sweden. SCISS is proud of this award, as it was won in heavy competition with almost 300 other startup companies.
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SCISS is proud to announce that we have won the national business plan competition VINNU2004. The price money will be invested in creating a marketing network for our Uniview product family.
The contest was arranged by the Swedish Innovation agencies VINNOVA and NUTEK jointly, and was aimed at innovation-intensive startups. The price money, 300 000 swedish kronor (about 30 000 Euro), was a well-found reinforcement into SCISS' startup funding.
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