Projector Domes

Due to costs and the need for software adaptation and special lenses I personally won't be going for a dome solution even though it seems to be a very promising idea. A dome is a projector screen shaped to a bowl allowing a projector fitted with an appropriate lens to project the picture with a larger field of view, more depth and peripheral visuals.

For those of you interested in such a solution, there are a few products available on the market... Howerver, they are not cheap!

ImmersiveDisplay have different version of domes called ImmersaPod and ImmersaDome. These cost over $20'000 but the price also includes the projector, projector-lens and software. Below is a sample video of Live For Speed being played on the ImmersdaDome. Note that it is very difficult to show how it actually looks in real life by filming a solution such as this.



Also worth mentioning is that a single camera in a simulator such as the one used in Live For Speed in the clip above is not enough to get enough visual information to project onto the dome. You need the software to support 4 independent camera angles that are then stitched together by the software to be projected onto the dome. If you simply increase the FOV from one camera you get distortion and lose too much detail.

Another dome product is the VisionStation by Elumens very similar in design and pricing.
Category: Hardware [cat_hw]