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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

Meta: Someone please correct me. The outside of the Sphere is pretty damned awesome, with its interactive elements and novelty. I'd visit Vegas just to watch it, not that they'd make any money off me for that.

The inside looks like an IMAX theater combined with a few planetarium features (lazors?). And, well, I have a really nice IMAX theater only an hour away from me. Why would I pay a premium to see the one in Vegas?

EDIT: Thank you, everyone, for correcting me! Good to know.

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The inside of The Sphere is so much more impressive than the outside. The resolution/crispness of the “screen” isn’t talked about but it is a unique experience, unlike any venue or film I have ever been to. I went to U2 a few weeks ago and want to go again. The IMAX comparison is not even close, they are calling it 18k and if you can imagine an IMAX screen wrapping all the way over your head you are on the way. I have heard the U2 show is more impressive than the film, but I haven’t seen the film yet.

> if you can imagine an IMAX screen wrapping all the way over your head you are on the way.

Those actually do exist! [1] That picture isn't great, but if you search for "Imax Dome" there's some videos and stuff. I still remember watching a movie in one that was kinda like an early racing drone flying through a canyon and being awed as a kid.

They're projector based, rather than curved screens. The first one was built in the 1970s.

The Sphere probably still blows it out of the water specs wise, but more people than you'd think are familiar with the "surrounded by the image" phenomenon.

1: https://www.spitzinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Fleet-Do...

Wait, I thought the dome style was IMAX? What is a non-dome Imax theater like then?

Someone might be from San Diego!

The dome-style IMAX are actually apparently quite rare, the "normal" IMAX is just a really big (about three stories tall) screen, that is slightly curved usually.

I believe Six Flags over Georgia had an actual IMAX dome that I remember as a kid - a projector experience of short films such as flying airplanes, racing cars and such.

A big flat screen. Indianapolis had both curved (Children's Museum) and flat (Indiana State Museum) IMAX theaters for a while, but the Children's Museum got rid of theirs and put a dinosaur exhibit in the old dome.

IMAX digital is a full-FOV 4:3 4K display with 44 speakers.

The Sphere interior is a wrap-around 16K display with 168,000 interference-coordinated speakers.

It’s like IMAX squared :P

IMAX is already (approximately) squared. The sphere multiplies it 4 times pi.

I suppose if you add in the 3D effects you can say it's IMAX times 4pir/3

Obviously it is digital and Omnimax (not IMAX) is analog but how does the Sphere compare to Omnimax? Is it an even bigger field of view?

The most recent time I went to an Omnimax was to see Oppenheimer, but it actually wasn't that great since Oppenheimer was filmed in IMAX versus Omnimax.. the end result was a gigantic wrap around movie that had spherical distortion and made your neck hurt from turning it to see everything.

I assume it's a "really good" Omnimax, and like Omnimax you need content specifically created to take advantage of the dome aspect ratio.

So the IMAX company renamed "Omnimax" to "IMAX dome" in about the year 2000, but some of the theatres kept the old name.

Watching an analog flat screen IMAX movie on a dome seems like a horrible mess, but if you digitized it, pre-corrected the distortion and re-printed it to use not-all of the dome screen I guess it could work. Maybe you could achieve similar in the analogue domain with a special arrangement of lenses.

I expect you could take an IMAX dome film, digitize it and translate it to the Sphere quite easily.

I looked it up as 16k doesn’t sound that much when my 43 inch is 4K. However the sphere seems to impress universally, so it’s clearly not just the pixel count.

I think you’re missing the shear size of the thing (much larger than any IMAX—this is an 18,000 person venue vs ~500 for the largest IMAX), clarity of the interior dome (yes, it’s like IMAX), brightness of the interior dome (it’s a super bright LED screen and provides all lighting in the venue—not projection), and audio (hearing is believing—the “beam forming” tech has the presence of an arena show without the ear fatigue and can also feel intimate almost like an acoustic cafe show).

The screen to some extent will be dependent on content produced for it (some very cool optical illusions are possible with a spherical screen), but I hope the audio tech will make its way into most large music venues over the next few decades—it’s just that good.

And it's an 18,00 seat venue that only uses half the arena for seating. Picture taking a typical NBA arena and putting everyone on one side of the court without any additional crowding, they didn't shrink the seats down to 12 inches wide or anything.

It's not really IMAX -- it's more immersive.

I saw the Postcard from Planet Earth in there -- it isn't a full 360 screen, but it does go way up and down around you.

it's amazing. You've never seen anything like it before, and the sound is like nothing you've ever heard before.

People go to Vegas for other things. The question is if you would go there when you’re already in Vegas.

The Sphere has generated a lot of interest beyond people who are already visiting Vegas anyway, at least so far - for example, a colleague of mine in London visited Vegas last month just to go to the U2 show.

Look on youtube for some shots from inside, it's bigger and more immersive.

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