For Web browsers and headsets...

New 360° video trailers to preview!

At Loch Ness Productions, we're coming to the end of another successful year of licensing and marketing for fulldome shows. And we're pursuing exciting new efforts for 2017 — notably in the VR realm, and how fulldome producers might take advantage of this intriguing space.

Creating a Virtual Dome Space for Previews

By now, everyone is familiar with 360-degree spherical videos. You've played with them on Facebook and YouTube. Looking around the inside of a sphere (by dragging a cursor onscreen, or spinning in your chair on mobile) — it's rather like being inside a planetarium. We think spherical videos work better than conventional flat screens to illustrate how shows look in a fulldome theater.

So we've re-made all the online preview trailers in our distribution catalog in spherical video form, adding to the flat-screen and fisheye versions already posted. Surf over to any Previews page (like Season of Light) and check out the new 360-degree videos!

As you can see, we've made a "VR Dome Theater" — with a virtual seating platform to fill the bottom half of the sphere, while the dome show plays on the top half. When these videos are opened in the YouTube app on mobile or iOS devices, not only can they be viewed by pivoting in your chair, but you can also engage split-screen mode and watch them using VR headsets such as Google Cardboard.

These new trailers are just part of the service we're happy to provide as fulldome show distributors.

What's Next?

So, why not take the next step and put actual show content that space? It's just a longer render to go from making trailers to making full-length shows in spherical 360 video.

We've established VRDomeTheater.com as a new LNP domain, a site where we can offer fulldome shows for VR. We're starting with LNP's own shows first, and simple downloads, for playback on users' VR headsets. On-demand streaming will be more of a challenge, as 4K VR requires a lot of Internet bandwidth.

We're just starting out with this. We're in discussions with our producer partners to make their shows available as VR downloads too. Stay tuned!

Yes, VR is a complete reversal of what the medium of fulldome shows has been in the past. In goggles and headsets, the dome show experience goes from a group audience to a personal, individual one. Times change, and we're interested in exploring this new space to bring fulldome content to more viewers.

We look forward to serving you in more novel ways in the future!

Now even lower...

New simplified pricing for Bella Gaia

You'll find our "T-shirt size" pricing model in play for Kenji Williams' inspirational, educational musical experience.

Losing the Dark now available in Portuguese

That makes a total of 19 languages for the free-to-download show about light pollution we created for the International Dark-Sky Association in 2013.

You can download this latest translation, in fulldome and flat-screen versions!

(It's also available in Brazilian Portuguese .)

Now even lower...

New simplified pricing for Audio Visual Imagineering shows

You'll find our "T-shirt size" pricing model in play for both Legends of the Night Sky: Perseus & Andromeda and popular The Little Star That Could.

Bigger and better than ever...

Four discs added to the MUSIC BACK-PACK Library

New option: individual track downloads!

It's been a few years since we updated the MUSIC BACK-PACK Library. Well, okay, sixteen years, but hey, we've been working — making music. Shows, soundtracks... it's time to bring our catalog of production music fully into the 21st Century.

We've added four new discs, with nearly 5 more hours of music. There are now 16 volumes in the library; some 19 hours of great music, if you have them all. We offer a substantial discount for getting the entire library, and the per-disc price is now lower, too. As always, the license includes the synchronization rights you need to incorporate the music in your soundtrack projects.

In addition to CDs, producers now have another option. We're offering all this great music a la carte. Let's say you're on a limited budget, and can only afford a few tracks at a time. We've got you covered. Through our affiliation with CD Baby, you can download individual tracks and pay online.

Check out the new additions!

Now even lower...

New simplified pricing for Adler Planetarium shows

You'll find our "T-shirt size" pricing model in play for both One World, One Sky and TimeSpace.

Now available to license...

Incoming!

Asteroids, Comets, and the Hard-Hitting Stories of Our Cosmic Origins

Incoming!, the newest planetarium show from the California Academy of Sciences, explores the past, present, and future of our Solar System and the landmark discoveries scientists have made sending spacecraft to visit tiny worlds.

Cutting-edge visualizations bring real-time data from current NASA missions to life while taking audiences on a ride through the dynamic story of our cosmic origins. Along the way, audiences discover what these impacts from above can teach us ' and how scientific advances may allow us to find and track cosmic threats before they reach planet Earth.

Discover what impacts from above can teach us about the history of our planet, the solar system, and the universe!

Don't duck and cover! Run to the pages for info, previews and online ordering!

DomeXF video demo / tutorial posted

It's been on our to-do list for a long time. We've posted a YouTube video demonstrating how to use DomeXF, Sky-Skan's dome master plug-in for After Effects for Windows that we resell.

Available to license soon...

Incoming!

The new show from the California Academy of Sciences

We're happy to announce this latest release is coming out in the coming weeks.

We've just received a 30-second trailer for the show, and we've posted the flat-screen version for you to preview! The show's narrator is George Takei, as you'll hear in the trailer.

And we're happy to accept pre-release orders, too!

By customer request...

Two Small Pieces Of Glass: The Amazing Telescope

This show was created in 2009 for the International Year of Astronomy.

It was widely distributed for the cost of encoding and media. We're making it available that way too — see the LICENSE PRICES AND ORDERING page for details.

And we're taking it a step further, by making it available for short-term rentals: STREAM from FULLDOME OnDemand.

Three new showreels posted

With the upcoming IMERSA Summit next week as a catalyst, we've created updated sampler showreels. We'll be demoing them there... and thereafter.

Now we have three:

• LNP Blast! — the feature-length shows we've made ourselves

• LNP Collab Blast! — shows we've collaborated on with other producers

• LNP Distrib Blast! — all the rest

They're all available to preview online, using players on our YouTube channel, or Flash players here on our site if your institution's nanny filters block streaming videos.

They're also available for download, so you can play them on your fulldome system and see how they look on your dome. Bring in your administrators and give 'em a taste of which shows you want to order next!

Whether we supply music and soundtrack expertise, script editing or voice-over work, we're incredibly pleased to work with such talented colleagues on fulldome production and distribution.

Now even lower!

New pricing for Albedo Fulldome shows

We've received the latest price list from our producer colleagues in Barcelona, and there are now some great savings and deals we can offer.

Prices on their already affordable shows have been made even more attractive!

And we can provide quantity discounts — buy licenses of equal length for two or more Albedo Fulldome shows, and get a 20% discount on the total!

We created the English script adaptation, narration, and soundtracks for their "A - B - C" show titles: Astronomy: 3000 Years of Stargazing, Birth of the Solar System, and Chronicle of a Journey to Earth, and some script consultation and voice work for Moles.

Go forth and explore Albedo Fulldome's shows!

Welcome, Melbourne Planetarium!

New show: Starlight Now Available

Loch Ness Productions is pleased to announce the addition of the Melbourne Planetarium to the family of producers whose shows we represent. Their newest show Starlight, an out-of-this-world journey among the stars, is a personal story that teaches about stars, starlight, and cosmic exploration. Narrated by one of Australia's best-known and award-winning actors — Sigrid Thornton — the show is told from the viewpoint of Margaret, a woman who got her love of the sky from her father, and shares it with her children and grandchildren.

Starlight features stunning visualizations that take audiences from Earth to the stars, through nebulae and galaxies, and on trips through the hearts of stars and supernova explosions. It also presents Christiaan Huygens's first attempts to study starlight, and introduces the concept of spectroscopy — all as part of Margaret's personal story about exploring the sky.

This lovely and approachable show is perfect for school and family groups. Let your audiences see the sky through Margaret's eyes, and learn how starlight reveals the secrets of the cosmos.

NOTE: Our version of Starlight features Northern Hemisphere skies, including Ursa Major, its asterism the Big Dipper, and the North Star Polaris.

30th Anniversary CONCERT album — Geodesium, Serrie and Hayes!

Celestial Rhythms: NYC Live '85

And we start out the year with a look back, to a long time ago in a planetarium far far away...

In May 1985, three of the planetarium world's star synthesists came together for the first time to perform their works live under the dome of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. At the time, Mark C. Petersen (a.k.a. Geodesium), Jonn Serrie, and Barry Hayes were primarily studio musicians, creating soundtracks for planetarium shows. They had not played as an ensemble before, so it was a special event for all involved. The theater was sold out for two performances and this historic album release captures the music and the magic from their first-ever concert — as the Celestial Rhythms trio.

Relive an incredible evening, from a time when space music (and the compact disc) was new!

Order your keepsake album today!

Here's last year's news, if you haven't been here for a while and want to catch up.

Mark C. Petersen, webmaster