continued - Great Lakes Planetarium Association

ARTICLES (continued) GLPA Newsletter Winter Solstice, 2010
TECHNOLOGIES AD HOC COMMITTEE (TAC)
Daniel R. Tell dtell@grmuseum.org
You might have noticed your newsletter is extra thick (or the file is extra large, depending on your mode of delivery)
this time around. Sorry, I’m afraid that’s my fault. It’s been decided to use this edition of the newsletter to introduce
everyone to the new Technologies ad hoc Committee (TAC) that was created at the fall conference.
Some of you at the conference attended our session, and most who attended also saw the presentation I gave at the
end of the business meeting. For those of you who didn’t, I’m going to use the space here to introduce what TAC is and
what we’re doing. Attached, you’ll also see the draft proposals on TAC projects that were submitted before the Executive
Committee before the conference. I haven’t done much revision on these documents yet, so some of the material within
them is out of date, and is waiting for this new committee to really get working full-steam.
TAC was formed out of the Fulldome Special Interest Group (FSIG) at the last conference. As I explained to the
Executive Committee though, the idea that fulldome video is a “special” interest isn’t necessarily the right way to look at
it. We’re moving into a future in which all theaters will be affected by fulldome video. That is not to say all domes will
convert to fulldome, but we are moving to a future in which all large theaters and major content producers will be working
exclusively in the medium, so even those who remain “classical” theaters are going to be affected by this transition, if
only in the availability of purchasable shows. Fulldome video isn’t a “special” interest, it concerns all of us.
Thus the committee decided to transform FSIG into TAC to allow GLPA, on an organizational level, to attempt to
represent the interests of all planetarians to vendors and content producers. Those at the fall conference know some of our
vendors, during their presentations, mentioned how much they’ve appreciated and benefited from feedback received from
us at our conferences and state meetings. It’s TAC’s goal to help improve this communication, streamline it, and make
sure that all of us have our concerns being voiced.
To start this mission, TAC is looking at a few projects to get us started:
1) Creation of a TIPS booklet for classical domes converting to fulldome. Anyone who’s gone through this
process knows there can be a lot of unexpected surprises along the way, and pooling our experiences in a
manner that’s easy to access will be of great help for those who are converting, or even going from one
fulldome system to another.
2) Standards & practices for fulldome video. Fulldome video is a new medium, and to ensure best interoperability
of prerecorded shows between facilities, and the ability for facilities with different fulldome systems
to collaborate, industry-wide standards and practices should be adopted. This will involve things like
standardizing dome master specifications (no, the dome master is not a standard already!), video and image
compression and 3D model importation. The scale and nature of these have yet to be determined, and
a few other organizations are working on this, but GLPA needs to make sure the wishes and desires of its
membership are being expressed during this process. Any serious attempt at this will have to be a tremendous
collaborative process with other organizations, the vendors themselves, and even the audio-visual
industry beyond just the planetarium field, but few projects could be more important to ensuring that we
remain the generous, collaborative field we’ve been for ages.
3) Along with that, better developing guidelines to help fulldome content producers better back-convert their
shows so they can be of use to classical domes, so they won’t be left without content in coming years.
4) And, similarly, creating clear expectations for what features we expect, need and want from fulldome
video systems, both to encourage existing vendors to best meet our needs, and assist new vendors entering
the marketplace (fulldome video has only increased the number of vendors).
5) And, from that, develop something of a system of “ratings” akin to the old Loch Ness/Sky-Skan/Joe Hopkins
ratings to better clarify the functions and capabilities of different systems to assist planetarians (and
our administrators) with best matching the systems available with our needs and desires.
All of these are important things, and this is going to be a continuous, perennial process for GLPA to make sure
we’re keeping things as up-to-date as possible, reflecting changes in technology and the greater A/V industry.
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