International immersive experience designer and integrator, Global Immersion has completed the technology integration for the Grainger Sky Theater at the Adler Planetarium, Chicago, USA.

The company's premium immersive solution, Fidelity Black 8K™, has been fully installed at the theatre - now the highest resolution digital dome theatre in the world - and will open to the public in July. The Adler Planetarium was founded in 1930 as America's first planetarium. After closing for renovations in September 2010, the 80-year old Historic Sky Theater - now named the Grainger Sky Theater - has undergone a complete transformation and will serve as the centrepiece of the Adler Planetarium's new Deep Space Adventure.

The theatre's newly installed 71ft (21.6m) diameter dome features a twenty-channel hyper-array of Zorro® projectors from Rockwell Collins. The twenty projector configuration has produced an overall display resolution in excess of 8.3K. The resulting immersive experience is a completely black environment with incredible projected detail and color produced by high levels of contrast.

Powered by Global Immersion's Fidelity Play™ comprising forty-six Media Servers™, the Grainger Sky Theater is primed for both real-time and playback media and is capable of running at both 30 and 60 frames per second (fps) at 8K resolution. The Uniview™ real-time data and astronomy visualization platform from SCISS will be used for astronomy presentations.

Global Immersion also integrated a turnkey 15.2 audio solution and a fully integrated control system including programmed touch-screen interfaces and a state-of-the-art custom operator console. The Grainger Sky Theater will be opening to the public as part of the new Deep Space Adventure on 8 July 8th, 2011 and showing a new fulldome production from the Adler Planetarium.