U2 was fantastic, and they really took advantage of the format but Postcards from Earth was awful. They didn’t correct a lot of the video so you’d have things like pillars and objects like trees that were curved. And the cheap tickets are at least $100.
The other problem was that the story, [Spoiler Alert] has an environmentalist theme but it was being told on the world’s largest LED screen in a giant air conditioned death star in the middle of the desert. I found this kind of ironic.
Environment is a theme, but not sure about environmentalism. I am pretty sure the message is “don’t sweat it, we can always get another one when we mess this one up”.
If you want a real surreal experience, I suggest visiting Carlsbad Caverns, or a similar enormous cave system. I suspect the awe the author felt was the same sensation as being in an enclosure larger than any building. Think about being in an aircraft hanger then multiple the size by ten. There simply aren't any human-built structures as large. The sky becomes rock and it's just different than any place you've ever been.
Carlsbad is big, but there are bigger indoor spaces out there. Carlsbad's "big room" is 625 ft wide, and 255 ft high at its highest point. That is big, but things like stadiums get bigger. Carlsbad is long too (4km) but as a cave length isn't really perceptible. NASA's vehicle assembly building is 720 ft by 520 ft and 530 ft high, roughly the same but much higher than Carlsbad.
Tropical Islands Resort is a tropical water park (Germany): 690 feet wide and 351 feet high.
I went to see the Dead there and it was fantastic. The sound was excellent and they used the beam-forming to have the vocals sound like they were coming from the stage below, while the instruments seemed non-directional. The haptic chairs were killer fun for Drums and Space. The Dead usually do about 10 minutes of improvisational percussion (Drums) and about 10 minutes of sonic exploration (Space). Watching Mickey Hart play the Sphere (seats, visuals reacting to his sounds, and of course the sound itself) was the coolest part.
The visuals were so engaging that I had to look away to avoid motion sickness once or twice. My brain got used to it quickly. Totally worth the trip and fantastic. One complaint was the lack of bathrooms.
Of course you (likely) didn't. But since Firefox is quite popular among people who care about privacy on the internet (a relevant part of the HN audience), I gave this information as a kind of public service announcement (PSA) that might be relevant for the HN readers.
I was there last week for the Dead and it was really quite good. Didn’t feel “huge”, the sound was good (didn’t need a huge sound system on stage) and the graphics ( which usually I find a distraction) were quite good.
I find Vegas pretty boring but this was worth the trip.
Been there yesterday, can confirm what the author wrote about immersion. Cathedral and opera scenes are something I have never experienced before, fully blown away. The storyline is garbage.
It's a shame that some folks passed their judgement on The Sphere before the project was done. The people who I know who've been were hugely impressed and said it was an engineering marvel. Others were quick to quote a video essay by a 17yo about how it's an idol to our dystopian indulgence.
If it were in Cambridge I could understand the objections to the aesthetics. But this is Vegas! The style guide is basically just "go ham".
The basic rule is... don't accelerate the camera, positionally or rotationally, basically ever. You can present constant velocity or rotation, but even then it's risky.
It takes a lot of discipline to not move the camera inappropriately in an environment like The Sphere. Hollywood people don't like to be told that the camera shouldn't pan, track, etc. But really, it shouldn't... unless you want a whole bunch of very uncomfortable, sad, sick people in the audience.
They basically take you out of the sphere viewing area and put you in a room created for that purpose ie a blacked out soundproofed room with 2 chairs in it.
source: my sis got overwhelmed by the sphere's antics and was escorted out to that room. it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere on their website.
sis said it was a very jank experience overall but it did calm her down.
The Dead Forever show includes a moment of rotation that got me a bit queasy. It was kept to a minimum, but would have been nice if they avoided the camera motion.
It genuinely took me 5 seconds to realise the first image was a photo from inside the Sphere, as opposed to the article being about spherical spaces in caves.
The Sphere is primarily for concerts. I refer to the movie currently running as their matinee show. Sure, it brings in some revenue but it isn't why they built the thing.
I think the choice of the movie was poor. People don't go to the Strip to see some dystopia thing. MSG needed to pick something actually entertaining.
At least they did not stick with the original name of "MSG Sphere" for the venue.
"Postcard from earth" gave me strange scientology vibes towards the end. I walked out because everyone around me was talking and using their cameras to record the entire thing. I would not go back to that venue.
Saw Dead from the floor, which is very close to the screen. There was some distortion, but it was still pretty immersive and worked reasonably well for the surround shots/sequences, though I did have to swivel and look around behind me. One of the nice things about a sphere, of course, is that there’s always a fairly undistorted view across from you. The Wikipedia article has a shot from a very low+side seat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_%28venue%29#Opening
The sound system + sphere geometry is also interesting for similar reasons, you get good sound no matter where you sit. I even brought ear plugs because concerts are always too loud, but didn’t need them in the Sphere show, they seemed to use their ability to achieve uniform coverage to set the volume at loud enoug but non-ear-destroying levels. (The WP article also talks about the sound system.)
FWIW I saw U2 there in decent but not great seats, and I thought it was amazing. There is a scene where they "deconstruct Las Vegas", so at the end you're just left with a vista of the Nevada desert, and it was so realistic and bright that I felt like I was outside.
Author here: Postcard from Earth only allows people to sit in more central seats, whereas music performances let people sit and stand much closer to the edges. In other words, it’s probably not that bad if you’re in the worst seat, though definitely not as good.
While the sphere is more modern, and features the very hyped exterior LED screen, the concept of a sphere with a cinema screen wrapped inside it is quite old.
I got good memories of this as a kid, and if you are in the area, it's definitely a must-do in the city. Especially since it's attached to one of the most fun science museums you'll get to visit with a lot of interactive bits.
I do want to get into the sphere to experience what 3 decades of progress have given us.
> my guess is that most viewers are 20m from the screen
The point being made in context here is valid, about depth perception and immersion, but picking nits, to me this guess doesn’t feel right at all in terms of describing the viewing experience. The main viewing area is center front, opposite from the “good” seats in the middle, and there’s nothing within 20m of it, or even 50m I’d speculate. The good seats are probably 80m away, and most of the rest are further. No matter where you sit, the undistorted view is across from you, you tend to look away from the very closest part of the screen. So people on the sides might be close to their side of the screen, but are primarily looking at the stuff across from them and in the center front. The parts that are within 20m are designed to be periphery no matter where you are. Except for the floor, where I might have been within 20m, but I was looking at the band 20m away, and only looking at the screen for stuff much further.
Author here: I was being overly conservative with the 20m, yes. Assuming the cutaway view in the post is to scale (it's from an architectural firm), it shows the inner screen dome is quite a lot smaller than the exterior structure – perhaps 70-80m tall; so 40-50m might be more accurate.
Oh your statement might be correct, that the average distance to closest point on the screen probably is about 20m, and guaranteed to be less than 1 radius (more like 0.5 radius perhaps.) If the cutaway is accurate, and it probably is, the interior is smaller than it feels like. So I may be underestimating how far away 20m is. I felt further than 20m away standing on the floor, but I probably wasn’t. But, what I’m really saying, is that the direction to the closest point and the average viewing direction are only similar for the best center seats, and they’re as much as orthogonal for the bad seats, the further away from the center you sit. The average view is probably greater than 1 radius, you’re generally looking across the center of the sphere. I am picking a bit, but this is also an important part of why there are no terrible seats, the viewing experience is more uniform because the view across does not correlate with your distance from the nearest point. I think this relates to why it feels immersive and works.
Dead & Co. at the Sphere was an unforgettable life experience. So much creativity in what they did with the visuals to honor the history of the band, its San Francisco roots, and the canvas the Sphere gave them. I'm going back in August!
I went opening night and was a bit disappointed with many of the visuals. Apparently not all of the rendering was done so I missed some of the better ones. I'm also going back in August to see the show again, hopefully with improved scenes.
> Add in monocular cues of depth perception like motion parallax and lighting, and you get a startling level of presence, especially if viewers can’t move.
Sounds like they're talking about the same thing. :)
> The one exception arrived when the film cut to the interior of a cave. Up until this point, every shot had been outdoors or underwater. They looked good but didn’t really showcase the Sphere’s strengths as a wraparound display, since it’s easier to fool depth perception with a clear blue sky versus a detailed interior. But gazing up at the walls and ceiling of the cave, I genuinely felt like I was there.
>
> Frankly, if someone told me they’d had this experience at the Sphere, I’d have dismissed them as insufficiently discerning, no matter the size or resolution of the screen. And yet here we are: I was convinced.
Yeah, this sounds exactly like 'presence' for a seated VR experience. And I suppose for the same reason: no matter where you look, there the Sphere or VRHMD is.
It's a great experience. The movie Postcards from Earth is very immersive and I enjoyed that. The storyline is a pretty standard degrowther story so not innovative but it depicts it beautifully. It's definitely a striking theatre and a very enjoyable venue. It has a sort of futuristic Tomorrowland feel, which I enjoyed.
I'm surprised people aren't bringing up the "original" Sphere. Vegas had an Omnimax dome 45 years ago! I have fond memories of it as a kid. The entire theater was comprised of speakers on which spherical movies were projected. It's a shame it never got more traction.
There's an operating Omnimax dome at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal. I don't know how it compares to The Sphere but if you're close by it's worth the trip in my opinion.
Is it a matter of pretention or rather them rebranding to open the doors to having more than one "Sphere(tm)"?
IIRC the idea for a Sphere(tm) was dropped for London, but keeping "The" in the title, to their credit, does give them impression it is the "one and only".
Proper branding is to skip the capital letters, the name is all lowercase. "sphere(tm)". Owner is a trust fund kid who has no discernible skills and still manages to mismanage everything he's been handed on a silver platter. Pretentious should have been his middle name.
I feel compelled to defend Las Vegas as a permanent resident: all things considered, we're doing pretty good. Water gets reclaimed and treated before being pumped back into Lake Mead. Massive solar power adoption. Desert living is perfectly fine so long as you're not using all your water rights to do something dumb like growing alfalfa.
(All the air travel for tourism is another story, climate-wise, but that would apply regardless of whether it took place in the desert or anywhere else :P)
> Given panoramas’ use as propaganda for war and colonialism, I don’t want to valorise the past or the present. It’s not hard to imagine incredible uses for the Sphere’s technology. But like the places it best simulates, the Sphere’s ultimate service may be as a refuge from the heat of the world.
Yeah that's an obnoxious take. Having a film about human climate impact in an air-conditioned desert venue is ironic and worth calling out. But not everything ought to be viewed through the lens of "colonialism = evil". It's a big screen.
Sooo much whining about the heat outside. God forbid he should have to walk outside knowing its a desert.
Its the dry heat, so its really not that bad. The only thing that makes it bad is perception when rapidly changing from artificially cooled air conditioning. With this in mind I also found it perplexing he kept mentioning climate change, probably because he couldn't take the heat. If you get used to the climate you have substantially less need of environmental control factors like air conditioning, your appetite decreases to compensate for the heat, and instead your thirst for water (not sugary garbage) greatly increases. Those factors result in physiological changes that alters a person's perception to their natural environment, but whatever.
I have lived in Kuwait for several years and its tied with Death Valley, California as the hottest place where people live at around 129.3F. (The actual hottest place on the surface of this planet is the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia.) Yes, I promise, you can get used to 110F degree weather and be just fine for hours so long as you continually hydrate and protect your eyes and skin from excess sun exposure.
The other problem was that the story, [Spoiler Alert] has an environmentalist theme but it was being told on the world’s largest LED screen in a giant air conditioned death star in the middle of the desert. I found this kind of ironic.
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