During the past two years, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago has undergone a huge change with the addition of a 60,000 square foot Sky Pavilion. The "crown jewel" of this construction is the new Star Rider theater, from Evans and Sutherland. It is the first audience interactive, domed theater in the world! Here are our experiences when we previewed this theater on January 7th, 1999.

Imagine being at a theater, leaning back on a comfortable recliner and staring upward. As the program begins, the domed ceiling above you comes to life and you are immersed in a realistic night sky, much like many conventional "planetarium" experiences. The real magic begins when you start to travel through this "night sky" in a virtual tour of our solar system and beyond. Planets and spacecraft fly by in rich, textured 3-dimensional realism. The large scale of this theater, which engulfs your entire field of view, gives the perception that you are actually cruising through space. But the StarRider experience goes even further - it's interactive! Yes, you, along with nearly 200 other audience members, get to simultaneously travel beneath the seas on Jupiter's moon and through the canyons on the surface of Mars. I [Rick] have virtually flown to Mars before, (Comdex Report Fall 1992),but this was much more believable because of the large scale and its interactivity. This sense of "really being there" and "in control" made bumping into the canyon walls during a steep climb, on Mars, seem quite realistic. These unscripted moments made this a riveting experience.

Unfortunately, this galactic adventure was over too quickly. We did get the opportunity to "fly" this simulation, by ourselves, without any other audience members and it was quite realistic. It's no wonder that Evans and Sutherland makes many of the flight simulators for commercial aviation. Other people in the room, who were walking around, while we were flying, had no other visual references and commented that they felt uneasy - their minds had completely believed the experience as being real. What helps the StarRider theater set itself apart from other "infotainment" experiences, such as IMAX, is combining a large, seamless, high resolution screen (a 55 foot dome with 6 million pixels) along with interactivity. By having the audience and museum guide collaborate during each presentation to create a unique experience, StarRider is a great example of the convergence of theater, science and technology. It will be interesting to see how this new theater will be used in the future.

We experienced the dawn of an entirely new medium. It will take time to evolve more content and to understand the dynamics of audience interactivity, but we feel that StarRider holds great promise both as an educational tool and as a platform for other applications such as interactive movies and virtual "fly-throughs" of proposed buildings.

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