Spheres & Domes
MSG Sphere
[ PROLOGUE ] In late 2016, when a group from Madison Square Garden, known then as MSG Ventures, came to Obscura for a meet and greet. As a world renowned leader in 360 media, we had recently completed a highly successful 360 x 360 degree sphere installation in Dubai and were actively seeking investors to roll out a series of large scale spherical theaters. A global initiative targeting locations in San Francisco, New York, London, Dubai, and Hong Kong.
With MSG being a prominent entertainment venue owner /operator, we saw this meeting as a major opportunity. One which proved serendipitous once both parties' interests became known. The possibility of symbiosis was clear. We needed an investment partner and they needed an experienced spherical media & technology partner.
The Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corporation formally engaged Obscura Digital in 2017 to help them understand Immersive Spherical Media and how it works with human perception.
What began as our academic “white paper”, ultimately manifested into a full experiential platform design and content pipeline development to be known as MSG Sphere, a multi-billion dollar venue project, currently slated to launch in Las Vegas and London. As the recognized leader in large-scale immersive content, Obscura was soon acquired by MSG to bring this grand vision into reality.
To create a “Venue of the Future”, Obscura was tasked with setting criteria for all experiential technology while defining the user experience and architectural programming for its entertainment touchpoints.
Chief amongst these tasks was the redesign of the venue’s media plane. An incredibly daunting task due to a seating capacity criteria of 18,500.
Initially the Sphere’s media plane was intended to utilize projectors for their display technology. However upon completion of the projection design and a cost analysis, the display technology was changed to LEDs. A far more advantageous technology simply because LEDs offered true blacks and were not susceptible to being diminished by ambient stage lighting during staged performances.
Consequently, switching to LEDs allowed us the opportunity to revisit the form of the media plane itself and reshape it to better support spherical media and anamorphic projection. This then was followed by months of human factors testing, done in coordination with Populous. Highly iterative work that was fundamental to defining the Sphere theater’s seating, ensure optimum viewing angles, and rule out human sensitivity fatigue.
In the end, the media plane’s redesign necessitated the changing of the Sphere’s exterior volume and profile. Allowing us to create the exterior’s “Exosphere” LED display, what is now a prominent feature on the Las Vegas strip.
With Sphere’s media plane’s design directions on track, it then became paramount to architect a corresponding spherical media content production pipeline. One that would help facilitate and guide future Sphere content creators on its innovative experiential technology capabilities.
To do that, an intensive media strategy and a content program framework would be required that covered not only all of MSG entertainment’s historic content use cases such as traditional sports and concert programming, but new experiential and immersive cinema programming as well.
Once the Sphere’s content program framework was formalized, all supporting production tools, processes, methodologies, and best practices would then be developed through rigorous testing, refinement and documentation.
This collection of production techniques became the basis for an hybridized content production pipeline as it combined production practices from cinema and real-time 3D gaming. Providing performance specifications for all applicable production technologies from immersive image capture at input to delivery formats and playback specifications at output, as well as everything in between.
The content program framework also was essential to the establishing of the Sphere venue’s operational modalities and staging configurations. Organizing the technology layers within the venue into suitable performance modes that supported multi-use functionality. Eventually helping to define both the product descriptions for Sphere’s remaining experiential technology and the design directions for the supporting infrastructure, which were then coordinated with the Sphere construction design team.
With these design directions complete, our attention was then shifted to the creation of content for Sphere’s launch.
Prior to this, all content programming was purely placeholder proxies, used solely to expose and help articulate various intricacies involved in order to build the hybridized spherical media content production pipeline.
Now however, these content descriptions would evolve into a collection of archetypal short form and long form content productions, with developed storylines, treatments, camera shot lists, and budgets ready to be green lit. This meant collaborating with world-renowned producers, directors, and cinematographers from Hollywood, 3D game developers, and 5D experience theme park engineers. Remnants of this launch content program can be seen in some of Sphere’s productions today.
MSG Sphere, the largest capacity - most technically advanced - live venue in Las Vegas opened in 2023, with the legendary rock band U2 christening its stage with a fully immersive multi-show residency.
