Move over, Las Vegas. Vancouver has its own taste of The Sphere

Vancouver has its own Sphere — kind of.

Thanks to the magic of technology, Vancouver’s H.R. MacMillan Space Centre has morphed into The Dome, an immersive projection room along the lines of the multi-billion-dollar Las Vegas attraction — albeit on a much smaller scale.

Renovations to the aging planetarium include six high-powered digital projectors from Canadian manufacturer Christie Digital Systems, a new projection system and dramatically upgraded sound system.

A number of productions are currently showing at The Dome.

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon — 50th Anniversary has proved to be the most popular of the five presentations that launched the venue in August of last year. Other shows include Blue Whales: Return of the Giants with Andy Serkis; Pedro Pascal: Encounters in the Milky Way; and Shailene Woodley’s Ocean Dreams, among others.

In late October, The Dome introduced its newest show, Metamorphosis. A contemporary dance piece, it uses the venue’s new immersive visual technology to follow a figure from an underwater world into the theatre itself.

The transformation of the aging facility is the work of Tobias Chen and his company, Volumetric Camera Systems. The Vancouver-based business specializes in immersive media production.

The inspiration for the upgrade came after Volumetric helped create visuals for electronic music artist Anyma’s The End of Genesys production at the Las Vegas Sphere, the multi-billion-dollar attraction that regularly hosts live music events. Specifically, Chen’s team created the visuals for the concert’s finale.

Seeing the finished work on the Sphere’s enormous LED screen was a revelation.

“I’ve been working in this space, immersive media, for close to two decades now,” Chen said. “I’ve given people a lot of demos where I put a VR headset on them, and I’d show them an experience, and they’d be pretty impressed. But I’ve never seen a reaction like someone in the Sphere seeing that screen turn on and seeing those mind-boggling visuals for the first time.”

Determined to create something similar in Vancouver, he began discussions with H.R. MacMillan to refurbish the 58-year-old planetarium.

While Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon — 50th Anniversary came complete from the English classic rock group’s official team, Volumetric was able to put its own stamp on the production. The company added a song, Comfortably Numb, and created a laser show to accompany it.

For Metamorphosis, Volumetric handled everything in-house, Chen said, “including original music composition, choreography, and underwater filming, working alongside an award-winning crew that worked on The Last of Us.”