With each production we learn a little more about the trends in the industry. One thing that has made itself clear is that tilted domes require consideration when picking the sweet spot for viewing fulldome video. You want the bulk of your content to show up in or around this sweet spot. If something is produced for a flat dome, the sweet spot would be about 45 degrees up from the spring line, and the horizon just visible around 5 degrees. This works nicely to create a natural feeling as viewers sit back and experience the content in a flat dome.
However, if you take that same content and place it in a tilted dome the audience feels as though they’re perpetually looking down a hill, and creates a kind of mental confusion that breaks the immersion.
In order to resolve this problem, we shift everything up about 15-20 degrees. This creates a natural feeling for most tilted domes, and doesn’t disrupt the viewing experience of flat dome viewers when they sit back in tilted chairs.
To help us keep this in mind we created an overlay to use while viewing our animatics to make sure we don’t stray too far from the ideal sweet spot and framing of content.
