World Bank Science on a Sphere

Client: World Bank and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration

Project: Science on a Sphere

Challenge:
In the Autumn of 2003, Penobscot Bay Media was contacted by the World Bank and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to consult on a singularly unique, never been seen before exhibit to be constructed in the lobby of the World Bank in Washington, DC. Our work entailed prototyping several multimedia installations on a new technology developed by NOAA called “Science on a Sphere” (SOS).

SOS is the projection of GIS datasets onto a 72” diameter globe and then the animation of those datasets in real time for a 360 degree view of unfolding weather patterns, plate tectonics, and population data — any data set that can be visualized spherically. Pen Bay Media was tasked with incorporating SOS into a larger theatrical presentation using the myriad datasets that the World Bank already had about population trends, global economic trends, infant mortality, and AIDS infection rates.

There were two primary challenges during the World Bank effort. The first was conceptual — how do you tell an audience a coherent story in a 360 degree environment when at any moment only half of your audience is viewing the “screen” that you want them to see. Although this sounds like a modest impediment it became particularly difficult as both the globe “spins” and your audience can move as well. The second challenge was technical and the technical challenges were almost insurmountable.

Penobscot Bay Media's Solution:
A creative team was established along the usual “production” model. Directors assumed the challenge of storytelling in this most unusual environment. A Supervising Producer oversaw the efforts of the researchers and scriptwriters, while Associate Producers scoured the web and online libraries looking for images and motion pictures. Several graphic artists were employed to build the unusual layered composites required by the spherical projection. A 3D artist worked hand in hand with the graphic artists and director building pre-comps to visualize the final product in a computer graphics environment (CG) since it was not feasible to test our compositions on the SOS. There was only one of them in the world at the moment and it was 2000 miles west of our office so a “virtual” presentation had to be created.

Finally, an audio visual team was assembled to overcome innumerable “staging” challenges, such as, how do you present audio in a 360 degree theater when viewers on either side of the globe are watching different events. Answer: surround sound mixes. Using a ProTools TDM surround sound module, our audio engineer began building the surround mix while the AV techs consulted with the venue designers to ensure playback compatibility.

When the final scripts were approved by the World Bank, narration was recorded off-site via a phone patch and finished takes were transmitted as digital files to our offices. Our audio engineer built the finished tracks and prepared the final surround mix. A two track mixdown was provided to the 3D artist to establish timings. Once all the source images and footage was located, a very complicated and utterly unique on-line edit was performed at staggering frame sizes to accommodate the 2 x 1 aspect ratio needed for the images to wrap/warp properly on the globe. The video “program” was then fed to the 3D artist who wrapped the image sequence around the globe in CG. This confirmed that our math was correct and the program should project correctly. The 3D artist then created the very long, very large image sequences for ingest to the SOS render farm.

All final media (sound files, video, still images, project files) were archived to Sony AIT backup tape via Mezzo at every stage of the production process. Once the program was screened and the prototype was proven we purged the interim archives and re-archived just the finished project files. In the course of developing the prototype for the World Bank and NOAA, we discovered several key refinements that eliminated almost all of the previously specified hardware creating a costs savings of almost 300K per installation. The prototype was a stunning success of what was possible with the SOS software and presentation environment.

Major success: First ever deployment of SOS in a newly developed, streamlined, infinitely faster and more cost effective approach than initially specified.