Inside the Vegas Sphere: Dawn of a New Media Format 🌐

We're here at the one and only Las Vegas Sphere and we're going to get a behind the scenes look at how this 2.3 billion dollar performance venue is able to create a VR-like experience without the goggles. We're also going to show you the brand new camera system they invented to make that happen and we're going to give you a teaser of what you can expect when you visit. Let's check it out. The Sphere experience, or should I say experience, begins before you even get inside. On the outside of Sphere is the world's largest LED screen called the Exosphere. This 580,000 square foot curved screen is made up of 1.2 million small LED clusters, each made up of 48 individual LED lights, at least according to this robot I met inside. Now we have a dance party together humans. Tell Aura, tell humans. That is Aura and if it looks familiar that might be due to the fact that it's an updated version of another robot we saw back at CES in 2022. I am the third generation and designed with additional proprietary technologies developed by the MSG Sphere robotics team. There are about five Aura robots throughout the atrium, that's the waiting area slash art exhibit visitors can explore while waiting for their show to start. Visitors are free to interact with the robots and the robots will answer guest questions using quote a combination of technology and humans according to Sphere's VP of show systems technology Alex Luthwaite. While we were in town for CES the atrium's display was centered around future tech, featuring stations where you could have a 3D scan of yourself made, various art installations, and a demo of the Sphere's audio technology. In the demo the specially designed speakers behind this robot played some music. Pools of light were cast onto the floor and depending on which pool of light you were standing in you could hear different audio, whether it's different instruments within the same song or the same dialogue spoken in different languages. I had a similar demo when I visited the Sphere's smaller scale test site in Burbank, however the Sphere's audio innovations don't stop there. Let's say you're having a dialogue scene and you want something to feel like it's really close or you're doing something like a horror movie you can make that sound feel like it's it's behind you. The atrium's exhibits will change as new shows come into the Sphere and Alex says they will be thematically integrated with the show that's playing. After about an hour inside the atrium we finally got to enter the theater for a screening of the first film produced for the Sphere, Darren Aronofsky's Postcard from Earth. Almost immediately upon entering the theater the change in acoustics is noticeable. While the atrium is echoey with a lot of background noise the theater just seems to absorb any superfluous sound. The wraparound 16k screen inside is 160,000 square feet, larger than two and a half football fields. Because it stretches all the way around your peripheral vision when the film cuts to a new location it makes you feel transported. The flip side of that is that certain types of camera moves can be a bit disorienting. This can be used to thrilling effect in moderation as done in Postcard from Earth or it can cause a nauseating effect like some of the test footage I saw when I visited the mini dome in Burbank. We shot on a roller coaster, full roller coaster moves and about 30% of the people can't do it. The theater inside the Sphere is also packed with wind cannons and vibrations and other sensory features that really help enhance the feeling of immersion. The screen is so huge it almost feels ridiculous pulling out your smartphone to take a picture because you'll only ever capture a small piece of it. That's why filming for the Sphere requires a camera so special they had to invent their own. Meet Big Sky, the first of its kind camera for spherical cinema. Featuring a custom 18k image sensor almost seven times larger than a full frame camera sensor and the largest ever designed for commercial use, Big Sky was invented in part to solve the problem of stitching. You see most 360 degree video you see today is shot on a camera array meaning multiple cameras whose images are captured simultaneously and then stitched together in post. The Sphere team began by filming test videos in this way but ultimately realized that they would need something totally new to match their totally new screen. An extraordinary camera also means extraordinary media storage and preview devices. Big Sky can capture video at a rate of up to 60 gigabytes per second meaning the 128 gigabyte card inside my camera could be almost totally filled up by just two seconds of Big Sky recording. This is what Big Sky writes its video files to. A 32 terabyte monster card that can hold 17 minutes of footage. Previewing Big Sky images also presented a unique challenge since it can't exactly fit on a normal monitor. One of our tools is a VR headset and the camera can be on a technocrane doing a move you can put on the headset you can preview you can see all the seats in the venue so you can get a sense of scale you can move around the different seats so you can see what it's like you can understand framing and you can really kind of feel how it's going to work out for a shot. For me this was the most interesting detail I learned from my visit to the Sphere because it helped me get some idea into where all this technology might be headed. With all the time talent and investment that goes into producing these Sphere shows and movies I'd been wondering what was the afterlife of these experiences after they left the Sphere. Now I'm thinking it's very possible that films and shows made to have a limited run at the Sphere might eventually end up getting a home release on VR or AR devices similar to the movie model of a theatrical run followed by a home release to DVD and streaming and just like movies there really is no substitute for seeing it in a theater. When I'm in here and I look at the audience 17,000 people in here you can't recreate that experience in VR. At the end of the day my visit to the Sphere has me thinking a lot about when films were first invented you have a new medium new forms of artistic expression and experience and I'm really excited to see how the Sphere grows and matures as this technology advances. What do you think of the Sphere? Would you like to visit someday? Let us know down in the comments.