Powerdome

The Powerdome system at the FH Potsdam is the unique result af a collaboration between Carl Zeiss Jena, Fraunhofer FIRST and the Interface Design department of the FHP. It enables us to project real time media and interactive visualizations in a fulldome environment. The system gives us the opportunity to develop new and innovative interactive experiences in an immersive space.

The Powerdome is located at the Urania planetarium Potsdam. It enriches the Planetarium’s scope of astronomical presentations while offering technical capabilities far beyond imparting astronomical contents. On the part of the FH Potdam, the emphasis is on the interactive visualization of information and data, one of the major research areas of the Interaction Design Lab and the FH Potsdam in general.

With a dome projection system such as the Powerdome, both didactic-narrative and scientific-explorative aims can be pursued. In either case, the central concern is the visualization and imparting of complex knowledge.

To meet these special demands, the Fraunhofer FIRST and the FH Potsdam jointly upgraded the Powerdome ImageGenerator. The modified system makes it possible to access any visual format in real time and present it on the dome. It enables developing engineers and designers to develop a broad scope of visualizations for a scientific context. The high resolution of the Powerdome permits minutely detailed presentations, and the spatial structure of the dome projection provides immersion into the interactive data worlds.