Uniview - Scaling The Universe

House of Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:00:00 +0100

The "Haus der Astronomie" is a unique new-built center for Astronomy Education and Outreach based in Heidelberg, Germany. Last week, the center's galaxy-spiral shaped building, including a 12 meter planetarium, was inaugurated.

The focus of interest of the institution directed by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) is the promotion of scientists and researchers in the fields of physics and astronomy. In addition, the House of Astronomy will make research results available and intelligible to the general public. The 12-meter dome of the lecture room will accommodate around 100 spectators. SCISS partners Carl Zeiss has installed a full-dome powerdome ®VELVET projection system with five channels and we're proud to have Uniview being used and shown within this fantastic new venue.

Tokyo Baseball Arena Dome

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:00:00 +0100

Orihalcon Technologies, has just finished yet another inspiring project, this time within a 100 x 50 meter dome shaped baseball arena in Tokyo, Japan. Impressive movie playback for purposes of show and entertainment are now being projected onto the arena roof dome structure.

Orihalcon Technologies and SCISS has a long history of cooperation and work together, resulting in some amazing installations. We had a talk with their CEO Toshiyuki Takahei about their latest work.

Read the full article (PDF) here.

SCISS a Gasell 2011 company

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:00:00 +0100

SCISS has been announced by the Swedish business newspaper Dagens Industri as a GASELL 2011 company.

The award is a yearly nomination, listing the fastest growing companies in Sweden, with high selection criteria focusing on growing companies with a sound and yearly increasing economy.

We are honored and glad that our hard work are being noticed.

Magic number 100 - MSUM Planetarium

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:00:00 +0100

We are very pleased to announce that we have broken the magic number 100 of Uniview installations! We welcome MSUM Planetarium at Minnesota State University Moorhead to our Uniview users group. Installation will be made during this autumn with our partners Elumenati, and MSUM Planetarium will be part of the fantastic minnesota Planetarium Network of Uniview users.

We called up David Weinrich, coordinator of the planetarium and also the IPS President, to hear his view upon the upgrade and usage of their planetarium. He's speaking warmly about using his coming planetarium as a platform for forum and discussions on global and local issues, and that with the new possibilities of a digital theater, perhaps the term "planetarium" needs an alternative. "What should we call it today?", he asks. Read what he has to say in the linked PDF here under.

Read the full interview here.

Uniview User Group Meeting 2011 � Texas, USA

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:00:00 +0100

And so once again, our Uniview User Group Meeting was filled up with over 50 attendees, all braving the scorching Texan sun in the hot city of Killeen. It was a great pleasure hosting this for the first time in the US and we had a lot of interesting discussions and meetings. We also got a great in depth view on what some of our users create and show with Uniview, such as the exciting WorldViews Network, Worldviews.net, that lectures climate science with Uniview over remote dome casts. We also got to hear presentation from NOAA, DMNS, AMNH and more. And it all ended with some glimpses of what�s in the pipeline for Uniview further ahead�

Exciting things are being done by ya�ll users out there and we are so glad to see your work and network grow! Speaking of which, we are pleased to announce that we are now 99 Uniview installations! We�ll be working hard to break the magic number 100 soon, so stay tuned!

The user group was followed by the WAC conference, hosted by our friends at the Mayborn Planetarium in Killeen. We want to thank you all that we worked with, discussed with and all who stopped by our demo station for some Uniview flying. Hope to meet ya�ll again soon!

Uniview Users Group Anno 2011

Opening of Uniview at Ahhaa Science Center

Sun, 08 May 2011 12:00:00 +0100

I had the honor to visit the grand Opening at the Ahhaa Science Center in Tartu in Estonia last Friday. Having a soft spot for research in cosmology in general and large scale structures with voids and filaments in particular, I was glad see that there is a close collaboration between the Science Center and the local University � famous for its work into dark matter and breaking new ground in mapping these structures.

The Science Center has a great location in the center of the city, and now also prides itself with an innovative state of the art Planetarium. It is not just any ordinary planetarium though. Covering 270 vertical degrees, standing in the center on the transparent glass floor with the Earth swirling below gives a numinous feeling.

The dome has space for no more than 16 people simultaneously, but nonetheless packs five projectors and two Megastar starballs from Ohira Tech fully synchronized with Uniview.

After stresstesting the system by being open for the public for 72 hours straight, I can really recommend a visit to this Great Attractor of Estonia. I would also want to give a very special thanks to Toshiyuki Takahei from Orihalcon Technologies for his fantastic work on the integration!

Daniel Arnberg, SCISS

Immersive Film festival (IFF11)

Wed, 04 May 2011 12:00:00 +0100

The recent Immersive Film festival (IFF11), being held at the Centro Multimeios Espinho, Portugal was a great success with over 30 fulldome films participating - and SCISS was very happy to see them being played back through Uniview and projected with the temporarily installed FidelityGo fulldome system by our partners Global Immersion. Hard work payed off, delivering the content to a fully seated dome during 3 days.

Centro Multimeios Espinho hosted this festival for the second time, arranged with great determination and joy by the Navegar Foundation, António Pedrosa and his team. During the festival a competition was held on both short- and long fulldome films. Best of IFF-prize in the long film section was won by "We are astronomers" by NSC Creative, UK, and in the short film section for Best of IFF was "Continum" by Paul Grimmer, UK. We would like to congratulate the Swedish film "All we are" (Norrköping Visualization Center C, Sweden), who won the prize of Best Immersion - proudly sharing their joy over this excellent film being heavily rendered with Uniview visuals.

Skypoint - new partners of SCISS

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:00:00 +0100

SCISS is very happy to announce our newest hardware partners Skypoint Digital Planetariums, an Italian company specialized in distribution, sales and installation of astronomical instruments and planetariums.

We are also glad to team up together with Skypoint at this years Ecsite conference in Warsaw - we are looking forward!

Skypoint Digital Planetariums

Announcing the User Group 2011

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:00:00 +0100

We at SCISS would like to wish you a warm welcome to this year's Uniview usergroup meeting! It will take place at the Mayborn Planetarium in Killeen, Texas, on the 25-26th of July, with the WAC conference scheduled to start right after our usergroup!

We would love to hear your ideas on what topics are of the most interest to the community so we can arrange speakers and facilities accordingly. Let us know at usergroup@sciss.se.

We will publish schedule, hotel-offers etc on our new uCare site, so please keep an eye on it. If you already plan to attend, please let us know at usergroup@sciss.se!

Hope to see you all in Texas!

Uniview Usergroup 2010 Photo Gallery

Grant utilizes new Uniview technology

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:00:00 +0100

New technology is helping planetariums across the country provide more than a look out to space.

"The idea is to turn the view around and let people learn about the processes of the Earth, but also to talk about what's going on," said Ka Chun Yu, curator of space science at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. A $1.25 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will allow the museum and its partners to develop WorldViews Network, a network system that will help the sites broadcast live discussions to each other and to share digital systems.

The dome-casting is also being used in training discussions to help staff at planetariums learn to make the most of the big screen technology they already have.

Article in The Denver Post