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2010-07-02 - Carter Emmart TED talk online
Following the global success of the YouTube move The Known Universe, with over five million views, Carter Emmart, director of astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History in New York was invited to present at the well-renowned TED Talks in February 2010.
This presentation is now available in streaming video format online.
Visualization Center C in Norrköping was opened on Thursday, May 27, by His Majesty Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden. The formal ceremony was held in the dome theater which ended with a speech from the King, followed by His Majesty cutting blue and yellow virtual ribbons with a laser pointer.
The center, located by the river in the old industrial area, is the result of a close collaboration between the Municipality of Norrköping, Linköping University, Norrköping Science Park and Interactive Institute. In 2000 the first step was taken when Norrköping's Visualization and Interaction Studio was built - an experience laboratory and a virtual reality (VR) theater that was also the home of the initial phase of the Uniview development.
The 14.8 meter dome has 102 seats and is of the new Spitz Nano Seam variety. The UK-based company HoloVis has delivered the projection solution delivering active stereo across the dome using six separate projectors running at 120 Hz.
The opening show has been co-produced with Dr. Carter Emmart from the American Museum of Natural History and features extensive use of Uniview.
2010-04-28 - SCISS receives Innovative Company Award
We are happy and proud to to announce that SCISS has been awarded the Innovative Company of the Year Award by Dataföreningen for a "software based on mathematical formulas and graphics that take us on amazing journeys from Earth, to new galaxies and all the way to the edge of knowledge." SCISS takes over the trophy from last years winner Spotify.
"Actually, this is a prize to our innovative team, a nice mix of people from the visualization industry and the gaming industry", says CEO Staffan Klashed. "In addition, it is especially exciting to win both the members vote, which I think is stronger than a jury prize, and to take over after one of our favorite companies - Spotify. I think we are being recognized for actually managing to balance a very creative atmosphere with a financially responsible and sound business model."
2010-04-19 - First Uniview Usergroup Meeting a success
The first ever Uniview Usergroup Meeting was held in Stockholm last week. We were extremely happy to see so many attendees from so many different places on the globe, to share ideas and thoughts and getting to know new friends. Our attendees visited Tekniska Museet, Cosmonova and Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, saw presentations of coming Uniview features, attended workshops and lectures and enjoyed classic Swedish food as well as cosmic bowling. To give you a glimpse of what the three days offered, we would like to share a collection of photos from the event.
2010-04-06 - New patch for Uniview Theater 1.3 released
The latest patch for Uniview Theater 1.3 is now available to download on the Uniview Member Zone Download Area - log in and get the Uniview Theater Patch 1.3.4.7637 Setup package to benefit from the latest improvements.
On March 20th Yamanashi Prefectural Science Center in Kofu City, Japan was reopened with Uniview. This new exciting installation marks the first sales of Uniview in the Japanese market. Uniview is officially used in daily shows in the 20 meter dome that has a seating capacity of 180 seats.
Uniview is projected by two JVC 4K projectors (1PC for each projector). Furthermore the planetarium boasts a Megastar optical planetarium system with 15 milion stars, Quadratura, Stella Dome Pro and 4K non-compressed sequencial image movie playback system.
The system was integrated by Orihalcon Technologies.
Carter Emmart, director of astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and visionaire in the founding stages of the Uniview development, was invited to present at the well-renowned TED Talks in February 2010.
During his presentation he showed part of the Known Universe video clip from YouTube and other Uniview-based sequences. The presentation was widely acclaimed and among others Microsoft-founder Bill Gates mentioned it on Twitter calling it "simply jaw-dropping".
We are currently awaiting a video recording of the presentation and we will let you know as soon as TED releases one.
The Known Universe on YouTube currently has more than four million views.
2010-02-22 - Uniview in stereo at Johann Palisa Observatory
Johann Palisa Observatory and Planetarium in Ostrava, Czech Republic now features the first European in-dome stereo Uniview installation.
The Observatory and Planetarium of Johann Palisa was founded in 1980. Its sky theater presents astronomical and musical shows for schools as well as the general public. The Observatory and Planetarium was named after astronomer Johann Palisa (1848-1925), one of the earliest and most successful visual discoverer of asteroids.
The installation comprises of two high-resolution Barco projectors with a dual-computer Uniview cluster feeding the realtime stereo 3D imagery and Infitech hardware controlling the stereo aspects of the projection system.
Welcome to a new decade, possibly even more exciting than the previous one! The YouTube juggernaut keeps moving and The Known Universe video now has close to 3 million views. We would like to share some of the recent media coverage about this:
2009-12-21 - Uniview in universal YouTube phenomenon
You may already have seen it, the video that is one of the most Twittered and linked on the internet right now - a journey through the known universe created by American Museum of Natural History in New York using the Digital Universe database and the Uniview visualization software.
It is stunning to see the power of the internet, when people are moved by a visual experience and share it with others, momentum grows and like a seasonable snowball it grows - at the time of writing the video has more than 800.000 views and 2000 comments.
2009-12-09 - Uniview at President Obama's star party
In October, President Obama invited astronomers, teachers, school children and even astronauts to his garden for a star party of grand proportions. Represented on the lawn of the White House was an Elumenati Geodome running Uniview, showcasing the universe in three dimensions while visitors could gaze into the night sky using a variety of telescopes outside.
2009-11-20 - Carbon Based Lifeforms live at Cosmonova
Gothenburg based music duo Carbon Based Lifeforms and Cosmonova in Stockholm team up in a series of concerts on November 27th and 28th, where live electronic music will be performed in the dome accompanied by immersive visuals largely based on Uniview.
2009-11-05 - Article on Uniview in Minnesota schools
Together with our partner Elumenati we have a network of Uniview users in the state of Minnesota, US - a cluster of enthusiastic and forward-thinking planetarians, teachers and lecturers who were recently recognized for their efforts in an article in the Minnesota School Boards Association Journal magazine. We would like to invite everyone to read this article as it is conveniently posted on an online source.
We are very happy to announce that the much awaited Uniview Theater 1.3 is now available. For access and installation information, please refer to the Member Zone.
Among other features, users will enjoy smoother
camera transitions, object tree improvements, a
simplified installation procedure, improved custom
event editing, faster startup times, reduced memory
footprint, graphics optimizations, atmospheres and
limb darkening on Saturn and Jupiter, clouds with
parallax movement and shadow casting on Earth,
scintillation, animated exoplanet markers and a
brand new Profile system with per-profile module
selection, bookmarks, custom events and object
settings.
The Digital Universe from American Museum of Natural History in New York, the backbone of astronomical data in Uniview, has been updated to the latest
version and the object tree has been optimized to
reflect the new structure. New datasets include Near
Stars, Star Orbits and Sloan Stars as well as
updates in many areas such as Exoplanets, 2MASS and
Open Clusters.
On top of the Digital Unviverse content Uniview Theater
1.3 also features Oort cloud and Kuiper belt
particle systems (developed in collaboration with
California Academy of Sciences and Denver Museum of
Nature & Science), a volumetric Milky Way galaxy
(developed in collaboration with Toshiyuki Takahei,
Riken, Tokyo), constellation figures, habitable
zones and more.
Furthermore, Uniview Theater 1.3 sees two major features
step out of beta stage and into the official
limelight - Octopus and Geoscope. Geoscope comes
with pre-configured high-resolution data sets for
Earth, Moon and Mars.
Additional tools includes a Heads-up-display
framework (developed in collaboration with Denver
Museum of Nature & Science) for displaying
information on the dome, and an Image placer tool
for placing arbitrary images on the night sky.
2009-09-23 - Uniview at Umevatoriet
We are happy to announce that Umevatoriet in Umeå, Sweden has chosen Uniview as the platform for astronomy and geosciences in their brand new fulldome environment. Umevatoriet will utilize the new Uniview Producer application to create shows for the Uniview Theater visualization engine.
Together with French partner company Antycip Simulation, Uniview has been installed alongside a fulldome solution using five projectiondesign projectors and a Mersive automatic projection calibration system.
Umevatoriet is based in the Umestan business park in Umeå in northern Sweden and was opened in spring 2006. It is a scientific meeting place for schools, associations, companies and the public, based on the fascination for space and the universe.
We are proud to announce our collaboration with Ars Electronica, an organisation that has been at the forefront of digital media and culture for the last 30 years. In 2009, the new Ars Electronica Center was finished, a spectacular architecture of glass and LED lights.
Deep Space, part of this new center, is a large-scale platform for interactive, stereoscopic and high resolution content. Applications are ranging from virtual heritage to extreme resolution images to digital storytelling to 3D video and now also to astronomic content.
During the International Year of Astronomy Ars Electronica decided to utilize the Deep Space exhibit to visualize space and the view of Earth from it - in it Uniview feeds an 8 projector large wall and floor 3D stereo projection system to give the visitors a unique tour of the universe.
For the annual Ars Electronica festival, held on 3rd to 8th of September 2009, Staffan Klashed, CEO of SCISS, will attend to do a presentation of Uniview in the Deep Space on Level 0 in the Ars Electronica Center.
2009-07-02 - Climate visualization at Almedalen Week
The Almedalen Week is an annual event taking place in the first week of July in and around Almedalen, a park in the city of Visby on the Swedish island Gotland. This year, an inflatable Elumenati GeoDome was present running Uniview to help politicians and other visitors learn more about the current state of our planet.
Spearheading this event was the Norrköping Visualization Center and the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research, who have initiated a co-operation with the Hamburg Planetarium and international climate researchers at a.o. KlimaCampus/Max Planck Institute on climate change and sustainable development. Using Uniview, the project aims at creating a platform for the visualization of climate change and to bring these visualizations to key members of society.
In arguably the most in-depth article ever written about Uniview, the Swedish magazine IDG TechWorld takes the reader on a journey through the technology that drives the new Cosmonova planetarium in Stockholm.
2009-04-14 - NASA utilizes Uniview for Hidden Universe
For three years Spitzer Science Center, part of NASA's Great Observatories Program, has delivered video podcasts revealing the secrets of the Hidden Universe by showing the latest finds from the Hubble, Spitzer, Compton and Chandra space telescopes. The Hidden Universe has proved very popular and continues to be one of the most downloaded HD video podcasts on Apple's iTunes.
Now, for the first time, this video podcast utilizes Uniview to produce an accurate starry night sky and, according to writer and producer Dr. Robert Hurt, plans are already forming on how to use Uniview to add visual elements to future shows.
2009-04-03 - Parque Explora drives IDB assistants over Earth
The Interamerican Bank of Development IDB brings solutions to development challenges in 26 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, partnering with governments, companies and civil society organizations.
The 50th annual meeting was celebrated in Medellín, Colombia and brought more than 5000 assistants from around the world. High-level officials and personalities participated on this major event. Guests included former U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, Nobel Prize winner Robert Merton, Governor of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan and many more.
During the reception cocktail at Parque Explora, the main Science Center of the city of Medellín which opened his doors one year ago with more than 800000 visitors, a live session with the Uniview software took the assistants of the IDB on a journey in the celebration of the Earth Hour that took place in the main cities around the world.
Andres Felipe Roldan, director of Parque Explore, tells us: "At the moment of the Earth Hour when the lights of the main builings of the city were turned off, the most amazing images of Earth took place in the evening cocktail, as a journey that raised awareness among the public of the impact of humans on our planet."
2009-03-26 - Uniview at Russian Cosmonautics Museum
The State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics was established in 1967 with the support of Juri A. Gagarin, the first person to orbit the Earth in a spaceship. The planetarium - part of the museum, which located in the industrial city of Kaluga 190 kms south-west of Moscow - has now been upgraded to a Carl Zeiss SKYMASTER opto-mechanical planetarium and a SPACEGATE video projection system running Uniview.
Not only conserving and displaying aerospace exhibits on an area of more than 2000 sqm, the museum is also a well recognized research center and enlisted among cultural and educational institution of special social significance. The staff communicates the principles of astronomy, the Earth in space and the history of astronomy and space travel, and more than 100,000 visitors a year testify to their successful efforts.
Quoting the museums own presentation articles, "people coming to the planetarium do not only learn about the Earth and the Universe but also get emotionally charged".
2009-03-16 - Bays Mountain Park reopens with Uniview
The brand new Bays Mountain Park planetarium in Kingsport, Tenessee has just reopened its 12 meter dome after installing a new Zeiss SKYMASTER ZKP 4 star projector and powerdome®SPACEGATE Quinto full-dome projection system including Uniview.
Adam Thanz, planetarium director at Bays Mountain Park, shares with us some of the coverage in the statewide media:
2009-02-09 - Uniview first on DCI compatible Dolby 3D system
Since reopening in September 2008, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park has long been praised for its innovative architecture and ingenious design.
Hearst Forum, the museum's 140-seat theatre, has now been fitted with a 3D system from the world-renowned company Dolby in association with media and technology consultants Visual Acuity.
The installation at the California Academy of Sciences is understood to be the world's first fully DCI-compliant cinema within a science institution. In addition to a Barco DP-2000 digital cinema projector the setup features the Uniview 3D visualization software. These latter components support lectures and presentations—critical to the museum's mission of bringing audiences closer to nature.
DCI is the "Digital Cinema Initiative", the secure format being used internationally to convert cinemas from film to digital presentation.
A major benefit of the system being digital is that other material can be presented to the audience – and this deployment is the first real example of a new content stream being available in a DCI format theater - a content stream based on the Uniview visualization platform.
Uniview is now, as the only planetarium visualization software on the market, running in a fully DCI compatible theater on a Dolby system.
2009-01-25 - Official opening of Ghana Planetarium
As the International Year of Astronomy 2009 has just started, we are happy and proud to report that Uniview and the Octopus networking capabilities made it possible to do a "domecast" as part of the grand opening of the Ghana Planetarium. Domecasting means connecting several domes together and letting one of them control the others domes, thereby giving a remote lecture with interactive capabilities on both sides.
David Weinrich, president of the IPS, reports further:
"It was so wonderful that so many of you were able to join us in Ghana for the opening of the first public planetarium in West Africa, and the first digital planetarium in sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps the whole continent. Many of the guests had never been in a planetarium in their lives and they were just blown away by what the Mediaglobe could do. Then when we did the domecast they certainly went supernova!"
"It was very special that people from three different continents could "gather" together as one family to celebrate this special occasion for the Ghana Planetarium. We laughed, and ooh and awed as introductions were made and Carter took us out to the edge of the universe."
"I want to thank SCISS for donating the Uniview software to Ghana and Eluminati for donating the computer on which it runs. You are the reason, that the domecast could even be contemplated for the grand opening."
2008-12-30 - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
We hope you have had a great Christmas holiday and that you are planning an enjoyable New Year's celebration for tomorrow. We look forward to seeing you all again in 2009, a year that might prove to be even more exciting than 2008 in the world of scientific visualization!
2008-12-01 - SCISS founding sponsor for IMERSA
SCISS is proud to announce we are one of the founding sponsors of the new industry group IMERSA - Immersive Media Entertainment, Research, Science & Arts.
2008-11-18 - SCISS gets Rookie of the Year company award
SCISS AB has been awarded the "Rookie of the Year" company award for 2008 in the region of Östergötland, Sweden. The award is presented by Östgöta Enskilda Bank in collaboration with Fjärde Storstadsregionen and the LEAD Business Incubator.
We are very proud to recieve this prize. The jury's motivation states that SCISS AB gets the prize "because the team has created a company that is world-leading in it's area with a business based in Norrköping, Stockholm and San Francisco. They are good role models and represent a healthy way of conducting business."
Read the full press release from Fjärde Storstadsregionen here.
Cosmonova, the largest digital planetarium in Scandinavia and part of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in the northwestern area of Stockholm, opens after a major upgrade that includes the Uniview platform as an integral part of the new digital planetarium.
The tilted 760 square meter dome features a six-channel Global Immersion Fidelity Bright fulldome projection system and has an interactive real-time Uniview cluster that allows them to tell new stories that were not possible with the earlier planetarium system.
At the ASTC 2008 conference in Philadelphia, Uniview was demonstrated in an Elumenati GeoDome in collaboration with NASA, NOAA, AMNH, MPS and The Elumenati.
During the course of the conference, we had many exciting moments such as a domecast session with Dr Jacob Ashong in Ghana, a remote lecture by Carter Emmart at AMNH, New York presenting to 500 people in Mehedin, Colombia, and David Herring from NOAA doing a climate science presentation using Uniview Geoscope.
Ryan Wyatt, director of the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences talked about the production process behind their opening show Fragile Planet as part of a paper session in the Fels Planetarium.
We are happy to share a photo album that tells the story about this conference in the best way we know - digital visualization.
Planetarium Hamburg introduces a brand new GeoScience cluster using Uniview, a major technology upgrade initiated and implemented within the framework of the Hamburg city climate protection project.
Focusing on the new Geoscope capabilities of Earth-based visualization, the new GeoScience cluster opens up many new areas of storytelling for Planetarium Hamburg, enabling them to widen the scope of an already versatile and exciting combination of astronomy, science, music, art and entertainment.
"The visualization abilities of Uniview Geoscope allow us to tell stories about our home planet, its climate and the human impact in ways not possible before. As a complement to our existing planetarium systems, Uniview provides unique features that give us an inspiring and creative toolkit, merging the worlds of online geo-browsing and the immersive dome environment. The Planetarium now combines the possibilities of a virtual telescope with a window on our own planet - a geoscope", says astronomer and director Thomas Kraupe.
"Uniview is what we like to call Planetarium 2.0 in a changing multimedia environment", says head of show production Tim Florian Horn.
The Bella Gaia performance consists of Kenji Williams performing electronic music and violin to visualizations of the Earth from space using Uniview. This combination of art and science, music and visuals, has proved strong and emotional at numerous occasions during the past year and was a success at the Opening Ceremony of the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) Conference in Glasgow UK last week.
"Just beautiful. It really felt like I was back in space", says Piers Sellers, NASA Astronaut, Spacewalker (STS-112 Atlantis, STS 121 Discovery).
If you are going to the ASTC conference in Philadelphia this week, do not miss Kenji's performance at the Franklin Theater on Saturday. Furthermore, he will be doing guest performances using live Uniview navigation in the joint venture NASA dome in the exhibit area (schedule to be confirmed).
2008-10-08 - Fragile Planet fulldome show based on Uniview
As the new California Academy of Sciences opens, it does so based on technology that combines the worlds of professional movie production, computer gaming and scientific databases using the Uniview platform.
Fragile Planet tells the story about our planet, its amazing diversity and uniqueness to our species and the search for other places like it in the universe.
In using Uniview for Fragile Planet, the Academy has created not only the linear movie experience but also an interactive world in which they can tell variations of that same story using Uniview as a real-time tool.
"The remarkable turnaround time of rendering through Uniview helped us finish our production on an extremely tight time-line. The ability to support both offline and interactive visualization helps us achieve a variety of storytelling goals - bridging both video production and real-time computer graphics", says Director Ryan Wyatt.
We are very proud to announce our first South American installation of Uniview - the Bogota Planetarium in Colombia. The planetarium was first opened 40 years ago and is now one of the most modern planetariums in the world, thanks to the recent upgrade and conversion process where the venue has been equipped with a powerdome 4DOME system from Carl Zeiss, Germany.
We just returned from NVISION 2008 in San Jose, California, USA. This is the NVIDIA conference on emerging visual computing technologies and Uniview proved a natural part of it because of the overall astronomy conference theme.
The blogosphere was quick to pick up on the demonstration piloted by Carter Emmart from AMNH, New York and here are some of the comments:
"Hayden Planetarium's Carter Emmart smoothly drove his audience through the universe using SCISS AB's Uniview and a variety of astronomical data sets derived from government and university research programs. It was incredibly beautiful and jaw-dropping as we sped away from the Earth and Solar System at massively superluminal speeds. Stars became clusters, which became points of light in galaxies, which then became mere points of light themselves until we stood overlooking a rotating sphere that was texture mapped with the image of cosmic microwave background radiation - the last remnants of the big bang." EDN - Day of the Multicores
"Eileen Collins - This former astronaut talked about the visual displays and the importance simulators in this industry. One of the tools from NASA she was showing was SCISS Uniview. Which simulates stuff like the trajectory of the space station. Pretty amazing as is also can zoom into mars in a very Google Earth stylish manner, the moon and the earth ... following the trajectory of the ISS space station." guru3D - NVISION 08 Day 2 - It's the Buzz
Several astronauts were present at the conference; the world renowned Buzz Aldrin, part of the Apollo 11 mission and second man on the moon, was keynote speaker and found time to meet up with the SCISS team:
Staffan Klashed (CEO), Buzz Aldrin (Astronaut), Jonas Lindqvist (Business Developer)
Find out more about NVISION 2008, including NASCAR racers, Mythbusters, demoscene competitions, videogame development and much more, at the official website:
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):
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.
2008-06-11 - Uniview at NASA Ames Exploration Center
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.
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.
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:
2008-04-02 - SCISS at Immersive Vision 2008 in Plymouth
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).
2008-03-20 - Largest dome in the UK launches with Uniview
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:
2008-03-17 - Uniview and the Elumenati at SXSW in Wired
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."
2008-03-10 - Uniview in Kuwait National Planetarium
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.
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.
2008-02-11 - Universeum launches space week with Uniview
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.
2008-01-25 - Morrison Planetarium opts for site-wide license
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.
2007-11-28 - Anders Ynnerman IT Person of the Year 2007
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.
2007-11-12 - Zeiss workshop with Uniview and powerdome
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.
2007-11-07 - The Hemisfèric in Valencia selects Uniview
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.
2007-10-23 - Lakeview Museum in Peoria chooses Uniview
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.
2007-10-10 - California Academy partners with SCISS
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."
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.
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:
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.
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.
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".
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2006-11-17 - Uniview and the Symphonic Orchestra
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.
2006-03-30 - Eclipse Overload
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!
2006-03-14 - March 29 Eclipse Videos
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!
2006-03-14 - Carter Emmart awared Honorary Doctor's degree
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!
2006-01-17 - Uniview used for New Horizons visualization
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.
2005-09-17 - Uniview at Chabot Space & Science Center
"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.
2005-08-17 - Uniview at SIGGRAPH
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...
2005-08-16 - HALO Technology Preview
Click the image below to see a number of screen shots demonstrating our new HALO planet rendering engine.
2005-06-01 - Final Venture Cup
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.
2005-03-22 - Venture Cup Again
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.
2004-12-26 - SCISS won first leg of Venture Cup
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.
2004-12-09 - VINNU
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.
