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SCIENCE ON A SPHERE
SCIENCE ON A SPHERE (SOS) is a digital video playback system that delivers high resolution images to a seamless, fully spherical screen in a theatrical space. SOS systems exist most frequently in science museums, universities, and research institutions, although new and novel uses for these systems in a variety of presentation spaces and contexts are starting to emerge.

How it Works  SOS uses many standard, off-the-shelf hardware and software components, but the overall architecture and integration of an SOS theater presents something new and inventive. A spherical screen covered in ordinary latex paint hangs suspended in the center of a projection space. The screen is inert; it neither moves nor has any electronic parts. Surrounding the screen are four video projectors, positioned at ninety degree increments around the screen. Each projector has a dedicated CPU, responsible for one quadrant of screen space. A fifth CPU manages the overall flow of data across the system. The custom written SOS software runs on RedHat Linux. http://sos.noaa.gov/download/how_sos_works_audio.mpg

Invention History SOS was invented by Dr. Sandy MacDonald, the director of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, CO and OAR Deputy Assistant Administrator for the NOAA Research Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes. Dr. MacDonald devised the original idea for Science On a Sphere in 1995 as part of other data visualization work he oversaw in what was the former NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory. A small but highly motivated and inventive team of NOAA staff led by chief designer David Himes wrote the SOS software and developed the SOS hardware and system architecture. This work enabled Dr. MacDonald's invention to move out from the laboratory and into performance spaces. General system architecture and configuration specifications are as follows. http://sos.noaa.gov/images/SOSFloorplan.pdf

Conventional Use For the user, SOS operates much the same way as a conventional media player works, with named assets and playlists organized in logically organized menu structures. Beneath the top level, presentational facade, a relatively basic scripting syntax underlies the structure of playlists, with various customizable elements able to be executed either by manual or automated controls. Data Sets The majority of SOS assets are so-called "data sets". Originally conceived as a video system for showing space based collections of Earth data, SOS has grown in its utility. The majority of data that traditionally appears on the SOS screens concerns the Earth, either from near-real-time data acquisition systems, or from processed remote sensing platforms. But recent interest and growth in different kinds of media have started to broaden that library.

SPHERICAL FILMMAKING
Earliest Animations   Early examples of SOS were little more than round slide shows, with fully wrapped data sets depicting planetary images. Options included either fully wrapped still images, or sequences of images depicting the passage of time, presented essentially as a digital flip book. These early SOS animations brought the Sphere to life, and it wasn't too many years after the initial demonstration of a full size prototype that some basic narration and audio tracks were applied to these sequences of frames.

NASA's Influence on NOAA's Invention   In the Fall of 2005 the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center ordered what would become the eighth SOS theater to be permanently installed. Michael Starobin, Goddard's senior media producer at the time, was sent to the NOAA ESRL that November to see the Sphere and begin the process of developing a presentation that would showcase NASA data and display the space agency's interests on the Sphere for the first time. Early drafts for what at that time was a still unnamed project intended to use NASA's deep resources of data and media experience to tell a story about the Space Agency's own fleet of Earth observing satellites. New Cinematic Vocabulary  Through the autumn of 2005 and into the winter of 2006, Starobin worked on collecting source material to craft this presentation. Faced with the challenge of producing a seamless product akin to traditional video programs, Starobin came up with the idea for presenting video content from source material that did NOT originate as inherently spherical data. Earliest goals were to blend one edge of a video or still photographic frame with the opposite edge in order to create a fully spherical image. Early, crude tests of these ideas showed promise. But those earliest tests rapidly developed into a preliminary, then more robust playbook of guidelines for successful spherical presentation. In the year and a half following his first release, Starobin named a number of those guidelines In public lectures and internal NASA documents. The following list includes several of the most fundamental. The Problem of Egg    It's extremely challenging to depict and "inside" and "outside" for an image presented full screen on a sphere. In a traditional rectangular presentation, viewers understand the common illusion of a three dimensional shape because of the way that parallel lines can be depicted as converging on some distant point. With shading, texture, lighting, and convergence, it's possible to show, for example, an illustration of the core of the Earth, or the yoke of an egg in a schematic cutaway. This is not immediately possible on the Sphere. Points of parallel convergence may exist over the horizon of a spherical screen, and thus remove from the viewer one of the key cues to inform people how to visually interpret an intended three dimensional shape. Shading, lighting, and other cues may also not convey the same effects as they do on a rectangular screen, due to the fact that elements of an image may be visually distorted or truncated by the screen's horizon. Successful "inside-outside" depictions can be achieved by adroitly placing reduced size objects near the equator of a Sphere, insuring that parallel lines do not diverge beyond the horizon. But while this may solve the immediate problem of conveying a sense of depth, it's really not a pure solution: in neither solves the problem of depicting depth for a full screen image, nor does it really use a spherical screen for it's own unique properties. By placing an image at the equator in a reduced size, the presentation essentially becomes an inset rectilinear image, side-stepping the real value of the screen.

The Problem of Chair  On a traditional movie screen, viewers understand the vocabulary of an object's proportional size relative to the screen. For example, an ordinary chair, depicted at a size that extends from one edge of a screen to another means either that we are looking at the chair in close-up or that the chair is immense relative to other objects we might see. No matter how large it appears in the frame, it retains all the properties of "chairness" that we understand; it is simply an ordinary object regardless of the size in which it is presented. On a spherical surface, a full screen depiction of chair loses all meaning. The top of the chair warps over the top of the sphere and touches the bottom of the same chair on the opposite side of the screen. The left side wraps around to the right; the image overall appears as if it were reflected in a fun house mirror. The Problem of Chair demands that for full screen depictions of objects that do not begin as already spherical objects--a basketball, for example, or a planet--careful context and placement are vital to present the subject matter. Since full screen depictions of ordinary, non-spherical objects will automatically appear distorted and thus lose their ordinary appearance as they warp around the screen, alternative solutions must be employed to present full sized images.

The Problem of Non-Existence   On a rectangular screen, the placement of an object on that screen changes its meaning and context. Size matters; placement relative to other objects matters; timing and color and movement matter. On a spherical surface, these characteristics all matter too. But an object that appears exclusively on one side of the sphere does not behave in the same way that an object behaves placed asymmetrically on a rectangular screen. Asymmetrical placement on the sphere means that object effectively does not exist for viewers watching the screen at enough of a spatial offset in a theater so that they cannot see the object. The Problem of Non-Existence suggests that presentation of objects must take into account the fact that visitors should be able to see a complete and total program anywhere in the theater. Localized video, animation, or graphical events that do not naturally get expressed in a spherical format (i.e. a depiction of a localized region relative to Earth's complete surface) demands that spherical filmmakers find alternative solutions to present their material.

The Law of Audience Responsibility    Simply put, it is not the responsibility of the audience to have to change seats to fully experience a spherical presentation. Audiences also should not have to make peace with missing aspects of a presentation, nor with issues of visual or narrative comprehension, simply because the screen shape of spherical presentations are challenging. Spherical filmmaking, for all of its unusual and daunting creative and technical challenges, should not get a "pass" in terms of holding audience attention, attention to detail, or diminished standards of quality. Audiences should expect that spherical presentations have "done the work" to be clear. Whether a given production is qualitatively valuable is not part of this law; what's essential is that no matter how tricky a spherical show may be, it is not the audience's responsibility to "make it work".

SPHERICAL FILMS
Footprints  In the beginning of 2006, a small but powerful team of NASA Goddard staff joined the project, including data visualizers from the Scientific Visualization Studio and master editor and digital artist Victoria Weeks. Through the winter and spring, Starobin and the team worked on refining those early techniques and fitting them into an original script and production plan. On May 4, 2006 the team unveiled FOOTPRINTS, the world's first fully realized spherical film. The project demonstrated a number of dramatic new techniques for visual conceptualization, including the idea of a seamless visual wrap.

OTHER FILMS            Since the release of FOOTPRINTS, several other movies have been made or are currently in production for SOS. A partial list includes:

Blue Planet -- Produced by the Science Museum of Minnesota and the American Museum of Natural History, this project examines the role of water in a variety of Earth processes.

Energy Planet -- This short film, commissioned by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is believed to be the first SOS project produced by a fully private production company. 

Energy Revolution -- The National Renewable Energy Laboratory commissioned a sequel to Energy Planet, with a focus on five core technologies that can have significant positive influence on the nation's growing energy needs.

Frozen -- Working with the most advanced satellite data available from NASA, FROZEN showcases those places on Earth where temperatures don’t generally rise above water’s freezing point.

Largest -- Jupiter is not only the most massive planet in the solar system, but it may be one of the most influential as well. in LARGEST, NASA takes a close look at Jupiter, and considers its scientific and poetic place in the solar system.

Return to the Moon -- To commemorate the 40th anniversary of first Moon landing and to celebrate NASA's newest vehicle to visit the moon--the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter--the Space Agency commissioned this short film.

SEE ALSO

NASA

NOAA's SOS WebSite

Your new article
Would you like some assistance? I'd be more than happy to improve the format. By the way, you can copy and paste your page's content to User:Bella1968/Science on a Sphere until you've finished creating it, then it can be moved to mainspace when you're finished  • S • C  • A • R  • C • E •   06:39, 3 August 2009 (UTC)