# Astronomers rejected our Milky Way: making Smithsonian Starstruck in VR - Show: 2D Is Against My Religion (2DIAMR), host Michal Gula - Guests: Tomáš Barnáš, Co-founder of LumiSway and Overhead4D; producer of Smithsonian Starstruck, Overhead4D; Elliott Mizroch, Director, Smithsonian Starstruck - Published: 2 Oct 2026 · 1 h 19 min · Podcast · recorded LIVE - Topics: XR, Photogrammetry, 3D Visualization, Reality Capture - Web page: https://www.2diamr.com/watch/smithsonian-starstruck-vr-tomas-barnas/ - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEOkauHvmJo - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Nn8ZSzsVLXdDo0OCtjc8O - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/astronomers-rejected-our-milky-way-making-smithsonian/id1878399775?i=1000792855962 ## Summary Producer Tomáš Barnáš walks through Smithsonian Starstruck, a roughly 40-minute free-roam VR documentary about the birth, life and death of stars, built from photogrammetry, satellite data, CAD files and Smithsonian point clouds. Director Elliott Mizroch joins to explain the two-year project with Smithsonian astrophysicists and how it got into Venice; Tomáš then covers venues, headset tracking and standalone vs. streamed VR. ## Key ideas - Per Tomáš, the telescope sites were rebuilt at 1:1 scale from photogrammetry combined with satellite data, and the objects you can touch, like Hubble and James Webb, are in real scale. - Astronomers rejected the first night sky because that Milky Way could not be seen from the telescope's location; an MMT staff member finally confirmed the visuals but found them too bright. - In Elliott's view, the scientists' deeper detail belonged in AR overlays around the viewer, so the story keeps its flow without sacrificing the science. - Per Tomáš, venues of 300–500 m² run 100–120 headsets, up to about 1,000 visitors a day; Venice fitted it into about 80 m² and over 1,000 visitors in two weeks. - Per Tomáš, Wi-Fi channels cap PC-streamed VR at 16 headsets per room, which is why Starstruck runs on standalone headsets with heavy optimisation. ## Questions answered ### What is Smithsonian Starstruck VR? Per Tomáš Barnáš, Starstruck is a roughly 40-minute VR experience – an interactive documentary – with 12 stops, guided by a flying astronaut, built on research from Smithsonian astrophysicists about the life of stars. (discussed at 1:31) ### Where can you see the Smithsonian Starstruck VR experience? At the time of recording, Tomáš Barnáš said it ran in around 10 places, including Melbourne, Chicago, Washington DC, San Antonio and Denver, with Santiago de Chile opening next and the London Science Museum among the museum venues. (discussed at 70:37) ### How do free-roam VR headsets stay tracked in a large venue? Per Tomáš Barnáš, high-contrast patterns on the floor and walls give the standalone headsets corners and edges to track, which prevents drift; some venues also use ArUco markers, similar to AprilTags, to help the experience load faster. (discussed at 60:18) ### How was the black hole in Starstruck made scientifically accurate? Elliott Mizroch says black-hole expert Laura Brenneman allowed only the Interstellar black hole as a Hollywood reference; Tomáš Barnáš adds that the team turned its dramatic fog into a flat disc and did not let visitors step inside, since no one knows what is there. (discussed at 34:50) ### How much space does a museum need for a free-roam VR experience? Per Tomáš Barnáš, the original target was museums with over one million visitors a year and 300–500 m² of space, but after Venice ran on about 80 m² – installed in four days – smaller setups are open for discussion. (discussed at 73:10) ## Quotes > “We're telling the story of the birth, life, and death of stars through the lens of the world's most powerful telescopes.” – Elliott Mizroch (37:48) > “It sounded like a great creative idea that I had, and I was really proud of myself, and then I handed it to Tomas, and it turned into three months of back and forth work.” – Elliott Mizroch (27:22) > “If you want to stream full experience, the maximum headsets you can have in one room is 16.” – Tomáš Barnáš (66:45) ## Chapters - 00:00:00 How do you scan space? - 00:01:33 What Smithsonian Starstruck is - 00:02:52 MMT telescope from photogrammetry and satellite data - 00:04:08 Getting the night sky scientifically right - 00:09:40 Astronomer sign-off and exaggerating for VR displays - 00:12:24 Big Bang and the galaxy room at relative scale - 00:15:45 Galaxy interactions, Milky Way and the Sun's path - 00:20:17 Hubble at 1:1 scale and Pillars of Creation point clouds - 00:25:37 Director Elliott Mizroch on Smithsonian-grade science - 00:30:45 Story vs science: the AR overlay compromise - 00:34:08 Interstellar's black hole as the only reference - 00:35:52 Two years, stars as the main character - 00:38:53 How a Smithsonian VR project starts - 00:42:13 Getting into Venice Immersive with a work-in-progress demo - 00:46:07 Diamond planet, Chandra and Betelgeuse's supernova - 00:53:00 James Webb at 1:1 scale and a black hole you can test - 00:57:12 Giant Magellan Telescope and the ending - 00:59:54 Venue tech: tracking patterns, ArUco markers, onboarding - 01:04:00 Collisions and the VR field-of-view problem - 01:06:00 Standalone vs PC-streamed VR: the 16-headset limit - 01:10:33 Where to see Starstruck and Fever's business model - 01:14:25 Traveling kits for events and museums - 01:18:45 Wrap-up ## Transcript _Automatic transcription (ElevenLabs Scribe), lightly edited; times follow the audio._ **Michal Gula** (0:00): May- maybe we can right away, start a, a video of what was happening actually in, in Venice, because you were there with the, with the VR film. So you are, well-known from reality capturing, but this is quite far away from just reality capturing and especially this- **Tomáš Barnáš** (0:18): No, we scan the space **Michal Gula** (0:18): No, no, no. Especially this, like, how the F would you scan this? **Tomáš Barnáš** (0:23): Like, for example, the areas like you saw just now, for the telescopes which are on the ground, we had a lot of photogrammetry data, we had 3D scans data, we had 3D scans also from the telescopes, like from Hubble and so on. And interesting, point would be also that we worked with, Smithsonian and Harvard people, so people which are studying space. And we were actually getting even point clouds from Pillars of Creation or point clouds which they were able to generate. So even though we couldn't fly there and do the scanning, we were able to, work with the data which we actually use normally for our scanning. So- yeah, it was still, still the same procedure, but slightly higher than normal. **Michal Gula** (1:09): I usually start my, my episodes with, with some, some discussion, and just easy going to the main point, but somehow I feel like, our audience today would like to see, the, the main hook right away. So do you think we could jump on a, on a Starstruck project? Because that's- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:28): We can- **Michal Gula** (1:28): I think people are here for. **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:31): Yeah, we can definitely start with that. Yeah. The Starstruck experience, it's actually a immersive experience about space. what does it mean? So it is like VR movie, which is 40 minutes, and, we are bringing you to various places in the space, but also on the ground, which are focused on, the space discovery and study. And, we have 12 different stops or station where we bring you. And what you can see right now, it's that, we have here one flying astronaut. That's our, like, stardust, guide. This guide is taking you through that space and explaining you the entire story. But this is not a fiction. It is like, I would call it, like, interactive documentary. So all what you see, it's kind of approved, of course, not flying ship, but, if we go further, everything what you see here was, part of the, research and study, of the astrophysicist from Smithsonian, which is, the, the US Museum, focused on, study of the space. And, we were lucky to have, astrophysicists which are really, like, for thousands of years or for decades, studying the space and giving us the, the introduction and, informations about space. And the entire story is starting, on MMT, which is the telescope, currently one of the biggest ones in Atacama Desert in US, which is studying space. **Michal Gula** (3:02): So wa- was, was at least this one scanned or... **Tomáš Barnáš** (3:05): Yes. Yes. Exactly. So here we are studying. It was not only, that this was from the photogrammetry data. Of course, it's cleaned, reconstructed because we are on the VR experience, which is headset only. So everything needs to be super optimized because we don't have enough of performance. But we are working here with the scan data, but not only about this place or this building. The entire surrounding, was done from photogrammetry. Plus, unfortunately here because of the dark conditions right now, but in VR you can see it, you have the entire skyline, and so we combine it with the satellite data as well. So here we have photogrammetry data combined with satellite data to recreate exactly one-to-one position, scale of the space, and also the views which are representing the real place in, in Atacama. So yes, this is our actually the, the, the core part of scanning, as we know it. So, you can see the, the first level. **Michal Gula** (4:08): How did y- if, if you are saying that, that the sky and stars are based on actual data, like- **Tomáš Barnáš** (4:15): Yeah **Michal Gula** (4:15): can you just tell me, like, how was the projection or modeling part? L- like, how did you actually- **Tomáš Barnáš** (4:22): Oh **Michal Gula** (4:22): placed all, everything that-... where it should be? **Tomáš Barnáš** (4:25): Oh, very good question. **Michal Gula** (4:26): AI generated, right? **Tomáš Barnáš** (4:28): Yes, exactly. So it was actually very interesting procedure because, we are in the field for over 10 years and, you are used to 3D scan things and then have accurate data and no one can question them because you 3D scan everything. So the bottom half of the image here, like it was, we are pretty sure with everything what we do. so it was pretty clear for us, like how the building looks like, how the, the, the ground, how the mountains and everything. And then we started to generate the, the sky. Of course, we have used, because those are well-known places, so we, we found the 360 images of these areas. We combine also with some AI support to, let's say enhance the quality, not to generate the, some-- We didn't do a generative AI to generate the sky, which is like enhanced quality, for actually image stitching. But, the funny part was that then we wanted to highlight and showcase the Milky Way. So of course, we found a lot of sources about how Milky Way looked like, captured from the ground. So we retouched the image. We made like huge mixture, like maybe 20 images, different ones we have on the, on the sky, which is m- which are mastered together. And then we presented it, and the answer was like, "Oh, guys, but this is not possible that you see it from the, north, part of the, of, of the Earth, that you see this kind of Milky Way. This is definitely like sou- south part." And I was like How do I figure out? Like, I, I really like it's, it's a Milky Way. I don't like it's kind of the same. And then we just started to discuss about details, how you see like little things, how the stars are positioned that like people which are really studying it, and I mean, that's obvious for everybody. But everybody who's studying it, they know exactly if they see, for example, these dots, they know that these can be seen just from the, north area and not for the south. So it was very interesting learning curve for us to really like digitize the sky in a way they requested it. And then the second challenge was placing the constellation over those stars in the correct positions. And, we had like dozens of, web pages which are focused on showcasing how the constellation looks like, but they all are somehow projected in the flood plain. And then you're starting to put it on this like half sphere, which we have here, and we had like so many loops here and there to really fix it. So very interesting way, and I would wish we could just scan them how they are correctly placed. So it was a challenge. **Michal Gula** (7:20): But that, that's, that's interesting that y- you were, like challenged right away with the position of the, of the Milky Way. i- in this case it's because the majority of people, of course, have like no idea, right? But people that, are connected- **Tomáš Barnáš** (7:33): Sure **Michal Gula** (7:33): to the field and understand things, like can spot it right away. I think it, it goes the same way for you when, when you see some scanned project, for example, you like right away see where are mistakes and what's, what's not done wrong there. **Tomáš Barnáš** (7:49): Exactly. **Michal Gula** (7:49): And, and I, I just wanted to point out the, the Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famous physicist, and he always points out some, some mistakes in, in movies and his favorite is, the Titanic and, his, his saying about how, how they fucked up the, the sky actually in the, in the movie. **Tomáš Barnáš** (8:09): But, but then you see like, because most of our work before was done on the ground, so we are not that much focused on the sky, and we use sky for every project. But we're never focused on it that, "Ah, it- this star needs to be there." Or for example, on the end, we managed to do a Milky Way in a way as it should be, but then they said like, "Okay, but this one is very visible." Like, you can see this again just on the souther area that visible, but on the northern, part of the Earth, it's always like 50% of that, so barely visible. And then we just had to make agreement that like, "Okay, but even though it's not visible in reality like this, we need to pull it down, exaggerate it a little bit that it's more interesting and visible for people in VR." So even nuances like this, just how visible it is, was, was a challenge to discuss. **Michal Gula** (8:56): And, and was, wa- was there like in a, in a first briefing, like was there, like exact spot on the planet that this is happening on? Like why'd, why did j- they challenge you with the, with the north or south hemisphere if- **Tomáš Barnáš** (9:11): Because of this MMT, because of this telescope. **Michal Gula** (9:13): Ah, okay. So- **Tomáš Barnáš** (9:14): So it has like i- it- it's real location in Atacama Desert- **Michal Gula** (9:17): Okay **Tomáš Barnáš** (9:17): and they, they just... It's there, and as we are standing in front of it, we need to know where is the south, where is the orientation, w- how the Milky Way is positioned, and where are the constellations. So yes, it has exactly... On the end of the, the movie, we have another one from th- that's G- GMT, and that's in Chile, and that was the opposite. So we had to like match the, the Milky Way of that part as well. So we had this both sides. But maybe last point to that scene was that, when we had these many discussions and, we had like very great astrophysicist, Randall Smith, which was supporting us through the entire project, and, also Laura Brenneman, which is like astrophysicist behind the, black hole, but I will get there later. But what I wanted to say is like when they were like questioning like, "Okay, is it good, good, good enough or not?" Then they called up a person, and we had them on a call from MMT, and he's working there like 19 years. And they called him up on the call and showed him this video, and then they asked him like, "Can you see it that way? Because you are the one who knows it the best." **Michal Gula** (10:24): Yeah. **Tomáš Barnáš** (10:25): You know? And then we had just like a direct feedback on it, so it's pretty cool. **Michal Gula** (10:29): What was the feedback? **Tomáš Barnáš** (10:31): that, like that was on the final one and it was like, "Okay, the, the visuals are matching perfectly, but it's too bright." But then we just like-... balanced it like, okay, we keep it bright, but, the rest is correct, so. **Michal Gula** (10:43): Okay. **Tomáš Barnáš** (10:43): Yeah. **Michal Gula** (10:43): So, so it was, it was really a choice of, of, like, like the user experience, right? So that it's, it's very like entertaining and, and visible correctly. **Tomáš Barnáš** (10:52): I think it's the same in the, in the movie industry or in every project even, even if we do scanning and, and all of that. You always want to highlight some things and you want that people notice this. And if that's the part which should be appealing, mm, immediately or like appearing immediately, then, then you need to exaggerate, it a little bit. Yeah. **Michal Gula** (11:14): I, I think when I spoke to, to Juraj Hobe about speaking, skills, he, he said that, you should always when you are performing or, or just, just like speaking in front of people, you need to like push everything at least 20% up. **Tomáš Barnáš** (11:35): Yeah. **Michal Gula** (11:35): Because the, the whole, the whole like, auditorium and the whole environment, it's just keeping you low. So you always need to like exaggerate and, and this probably comes also, with this that, if there is something you want to point out then you need to like highlight it really well. **Tomáš Barnáš** (11:54): Of course. But also you have to count on the end device which is, the VR headset and the VR headsets has, still not that perfect, screen or lens as we are using on the monitors where you can have like OLED or 4K or whatever where everything is brighter. There it's more, everything more subtle. So even though maybe we he- see it here exaggerated but there it's more subtle and then you're getting more to the reality but like this part needs to be like, more expressive. **Michal Gula** (12:24): So, so this is like the beginning of the, of the movie, right? **Tomáš Barnáš** (12:27): This is- **Michal Gula** (12:28): Everything starts here? **Tomáš Barnáš** (12:29): This is the first scene. Yeah. We, we explain a little bit about, studying space and studying stars, and you could see their Galileo telescope, like, that it was always interesting for people to study and be interested about space. And from there, we just get, like, teleported into the space, and this is a Big Bang section. So it's kind of like how everything started, like, from a- a little dot of light which... And I would say, like, exploded, but they always corrected us, there was not an explosion. You know, there was kind of expansion, and it, like, the space was created from, from Big Bang, but they don't really... Like, astrophysicists don't call it explosion or it's not a bomb. And, so we actually, like, passed this very quickly because it's not a movie about, Big Bang, and we got into, we call it galaxy room. So it's a space where you have all types of, like, galaxies around you. we have, you can see this floor on the ground, so we always create a floor where you can walk. And here you have, like, a laser pointer in the hand, and you can be pointing out the galaxies. You can read some information about them. You can look around, them. Here I would also pause. **Michal Gula** (13:45): Is- **Tomáš Barnáš** (13:46): Yeah **Michal Gula** (13:46): s-sorry, sorry. Is,.. W-when I see these galaxies co-coming around- **Tomáš Barnáš** (13:49): Yeah **Michal Gula** (13:49): like, is everything, like, relatively in scale? **Tomáš Barnáš** (13:54): Yes. So th-this was another challenge because in scale means that you would see everything as a little dots, like those, where the distances are so extreme that it's hard to have them accurate. So what we have done, they have, the, the, the size compared to each other are correct, but of course they are bigger than you can see them, right now. So we created a scale and position, so they are on the, on the correct position, means this one... I will just tell it simply, like, this one is higher, this one is, you know, lower position. So we really got the information about, which one is, relatively positioned to another galaxy, whether it's left, right, top, up, down. But in the space, this doesn't exist, you know. You don't have right, left, top, bottom. You can just, like, rotate it anyhow. So we try to balance the position that we know the distances between certain galaxies. We try to keep the distance that if this one is, like, four million light years, and this one is three million light years, then we know that, you know, that it's like one f-one-fourth shorter distance. So in scale, we kind of got it in the correct position. And therefore, you also see them flying into the scene because we want people interact with them, they, they... We want people touch them. So we, we've created a, a moment that they start in the right positions, and then they fly in closer to you that you can touch them. But again, this is explaining the story because we had to make sure that people understand that these positions are not correct. So anything what was moved slightly off the, the original research and information we have about the space, we had to give the information properly. But- **Michal Gula** (15:45): So how, how they- **Tomáš Barnáš** (15:46): again, this interact- **Michal Gula** (15:46): How they, how they can- **Tomáš Barnáš** (15:47): Yeah **Michal Gula** (15:48): how people can interact, with these galaxies? **Tomáš Barnáš** (15:51): So you have... once you have a laser pointer in the hand, so if the galaxies which are far away, you can trigger them. Some of them are just giving you the information. Some of them spins or disappear. So we have different things what can happen. You can generally touch them. Then, as this is kind of a documentary, it was always about informations. So you touch them, and you can read and learn more about these galaxies. And some of them are captured with different types of, sensors. So we have, like, a standard image, where you see the colors and everything. Then you have maybe, X-ray, which is showing you the galaxy in totally different colors and perspectives because you see different things. So you have, like, X-ray, you have, different types of light and, the normal lenses. So all of these you can discover during these interactions. **Michal Gula** (16:43): Do- **Tomáš Barnáš** (16:44): And then you're- **Michal Gula** (16:44): is there an option, l-like, like- **Tomáš Barnáš** (16:46): Yeah **Michal Gula** (16:46): to, to zoom in into that galaxy? **Tomáš Barnáš** (16:48): we had those things but- **Michal Gula** (16:49): Until some level, of course. **Tomáš Barnáš** (16:51): Yeah. We, we had that, but on the end we decided to remove it because we have pretty short time, and the zoom in factor is here on, our Milky Way. So we kept those about, like, informative, that you can learn about them, and you get on the end, and then you zoom into the, to the Milky Way. We are not zooming into every galaxy because we wanted to keep that for, for the Milky Way itself. And, then we have this fly in moment when it really brings you into the Milky Way and close to our, sun and the planets, and you see this corkscrew movement. And here you see the definition that the sun is flying actually 800,000 kilometers per hour, which is pretty impressive for me always when I see this and hear this. And in VR, you can just step in between, and you see, like, the circulating around the, the, the planets around yourself. And then we are mo-moving further. And, uh- **Michal Gula** (17:46): Did you... Sorry. **Tomáš Barnáš** (17:47): Yeah. **Michal Gula** (17:47): Did, did you have, did you have a discussion also with the, with the, scientists about the movement of the sun within the galaxy? **Tomáš Barnáš** (17:57): Yes. **Michal Gula** (17:57): Because I- **Tomáš Barnáš** (17:57): Yes **Michal Gula** (17:57): I think I, I've, I've seen some podcasts where they were saying that it's not actually going the straight way. **Tomáš Barnáš** (18:05): Yeah. So if you would see it, it's like everything is kind of, mm- **Michal Gula** (18:09): Spiraling **Tomáš Barnáš** (18:09): spiraling. Like y- like you see it here. So if you would see it from the top view, then sun is also not going into the perfect, on the perfect line. But the, even more impressive was for me to see this, this corkscrew. Like how- Crazy this looks, and then it's all in the movement in all the axes. And also that it's not like flat, horizontal, or vertical, but you see that it's the entire like diagonal thing. So yeah, kind of interesting, learning for us as well. And then we are getting to, to the sun where we had to simulate the sun surface. We're getting, again, like close-up images from the satellites to, to simulate. They're trying to simulate because everything is live there, so everything is moving. If you're in the, in the VR and you're close to the surface, it's very decent movement, but it's moving. And, then we have this pop-up informations because we got a lot of facts which we wanted to display for people, but it's always all around you that you don't, really have to keep the focus on it or you don't have to follow all of them. But if you are interested in this specific place, then you can learn always more, than the guide is, telling you. Then, this is, s- Parker Solar Probe, which is actually recording also the sound from the, sun. So even when it's flying around you here in VR, you can hear the sound recorded from the sun, and this is a solar flare which is showing. Then, that's the explosion of the sun, and that was the scale comparison. Then we were moving like from the sun, getting around Mercury and, and Venus to our Earth. So it's also kind of like a speed up movement, then we get closer to, to our Earth. And you can again read all types of information, how the Earth is tilted, how the rotation is, how big is the moon, and all, all types of, stuff. And, then actually this, our immersive journey is starting here because, we have the first telescope which we are using for transportation as well. that's a little bit of fiction, of course. You are not flying on the telescope standing on the sunshield, but here we can use that. so we have the telescope. This is Hubble Telescope, which is in real scale. Again, very interesting part that here we had like real data. Some of them were from scans, some of them were CAD, like for the, the construction plans. So we really worked with the data, which are representing this place correctly. And, then we have here another interactive element. So we have little model of the, telescope, which you can grab in hands. You can read about all the parts. You can look how it looks from every side. then we have here a button where you can rotate the sun, mm, sun panels because they are always turning towards the sun properly if they are collecting the, the energy, so you can see how they are moving. And then we have here another interaction with the buttons where we work with images. So when you press it, it shows you or you are taking a picture with the telescope more or less. So it's... You can see always the images which, people or like which, were discovered by these telescopes. And one of the f- most famous one is Pillars of Creation, captured by Hubble, and, and that brings you to another scene. So we actually recreated. And for, for this scene, we had like point clouds of, of, Pillars of Creation and various sources from, yeah, from Smithsonian. And this is 30- **Michal Gula** (22:01): So, so they were, they were laser scanned, yeah? **Tomáš Barnáš** (22:03): Yeah, they were laser scanning. They... From all around. Yeah. So, uh- **Michal Gula** (22:10): How, how did, how did you get the point cloud of it? **Tomáš Barnáš** (22:13): So they, they do... Actually they have a department which is focused on generating 3D models from the space, elements or like th- this is kind of like dust formations. so they have entire teams focused on creating those from, the images from telescopes, fro- from space, mixing them with like radios and, all types of data, mm, like infrared. And they combine the images from different sources and try to recreate the data, which I would call it maybe something like when you do a multi-spectral capture of the field, you know, like you can detect the, the plants, how they are watered or whether they have problems. So this is kind of a similar thing where they, they combine. But I don't know exactly all the details how they extract it technically because we got the data and, uh- we didn't process it in that way, so. But from discussion, it, it's somehow like that. And Pillars of Creation, that is this place where the stars are born. So it's like the f- dust formation which are collapsed into like with high pressure and then the, the star, comes to, to, to life or is born. And, you... We are getting like into this, this pillar. So that's this place which looks inside like a foggy cave. and, when you get to the end of that cave, we have here like a simulation, of the, the process, like how the dust is, like compressed, how the... how it's circulating, how it changes to different phases, of the creations. And, then we have like one stars here, and then some planets, and, asteroids and, and stones and rocks are also created there. And, you just see it like all around you. Then a planet is flying. So this is the born of like new planet, new stars, and, you get the entire, ex- expression and explanation about the process. **Michal Gula** (24:27): Al- Alan Krieg here is, is, uh-... saying that the, the, the basically 3D data could, could be, gotten from, like, a depth map, from a single perspective. what I have- **Tomáš Barnáš** (24:43): Yeah **Michal Gula** (24:43): seen again in some video is that, they also are getting kind of a 3D view, based on a, on a different, positions, of, of the, of these telescopes. They are ge- getting different pictures, and then they are somehow calculating the- **Tomáš Barnáš** (25:03): Yeah **Michal Gula** (25:03): the pro- probable distance and, and shape. **Tomáš Barnáš** (25:08): Yeah, can... They, like, we had also another video where they were showing how they do a projection, for example, for black holes and, and stuff like that. So there are a lot of sources which you can also find online about the way how, how they project it, but exactly the deep research, we don't know. But it's also not a process of, like, one to three days, like when we do a photogrammetry, you know? It's, it's a research of years which is projected into this. yeah. **Michal Gula** (25:37): I'm happy that actually the director of the, of the movie joined, us. So maybe for just a moment we will stop the presentation of the movie, and we have basically your main partner here in, in this movie, right? We have, uh- **Tomáš Barnáš** (25:56): Yes **Michal Gula** (25:56): Elliott Mizroch here. **Elliott Mizroch** (25:59): Elliot. **Michal Gula** (25:59): Hey, Elliot. **Elliott Mizroch** (25:59): Hi guys. Thanks for having me. **Michal Gula** (26:01): Welcome. **Elliott Mizroch** (26:02): How are you? **Michal Gula** (26:02): No, it is, it's, it's really great. Tomas, Tomas has been, showing us so far the, the movie. he's walking us through it and, and, explaining, like, how much of a work it was. I already introduced him as a director of the movie and,.. Or as a producer of the movie- **Tomáš Barnáš** (26:20): You **Michal Gula** (26:20): and, and you, Elliot, you are a director. So cou- could you tell us from your perspective, like, how difficult it was? **Elliott Mizroch** (26:28): Well, it's a great question. Well, I'm calling today from Madrid. I'm in the back room of one of our venues, and we just did a, a press launch here in Madrid, and we had a lot of people coming and everybody's loving it. And so I'm really excited to talk to you today. how difficult it was? it was very difficult. I mean, working with the Smithsonian, you know, they demand rigorous science. And so every scene, everything, you know, nothing could be just a creative interpretation. We had to work with, Dr. Randall Smith and Dr. Laura Brenneman on everything, and we did. And I'm happy we did, 'cause it, it turned out great. You know, the movie's just filled with, you know, rich science because of it, but it was difficult. You know, we had to... Tomas will tell you, we have, one scene called the galaxy room, which is modeled on the Hubble Deep Field image, where the guests can walk around and touch thousands of galaxies. And they can basically stand inside of the Deep Field image. And it sounded like a great creative idea that I had-... and I was really proud of myself, and then I handed it to Tomas, and it turned into, like, three months of, back and forth work with-... you know, with the astrophysicists at, at Smithsonian. And, anyway, it was difficult, but, I'm, I'm happy in the end 'cause it, it came out great. **Michal Gula** (27:44): how long it was- **Tomáš Barnáš** (27:44): I would just add on there, like... So- sorry, Michael. I would just add on to this. Like, whatever topic we had, they were able to bring the, the main expert for that. And then you have, like, a person who's studying that thing, like, 20 years, and it, it's not like it's okay like this. They really want to, express their knowledge and how they- **Michal Gula** (28:03): They're, they are pushing you to, to the limits, yeah? **Tomáš Barnáš** (28:06): Yeah, but, but they just, like... It's a passion, pa- passionate thing. So it's, it was not in a bad way. It was like they really wanted to give the best out of them, and it was, like, extremely important. Like, every little thing, for the person who is studying it all li- whole life, it's like that's their thing, and when you show it to them, they want that it's accurate. So it was- was, was crazy, but it was cool. **Michal Gula** (28:28): Uh- **Elliott Mizroch** (28:28): The best compliment we got at the end of all this when we first showed it to the scientists was, you know, th- their feedback. It was really moving, actually, and they said, "You did a great job, and you brought, you brought our work to life." That we've spent decades, you know, looking at basically data in, in back rooms of black holes and galaxies, and Tomas and his team, you know, visualized that in 3D, and that was such a nice compliment to get, that, that we were able to accomplish that. **Michal Gula** (28:56): Th- this is really interesting because I, I suppose, like, all they do, is basically looking at, at numbers, at sheets, at some black and white or in spectrum color, like, pictures. But somehow they were able now to s- to see what they have been studying for years. They have... They suddenly are able to see in 3D in nice colors in perspective to, to other things, right? **Tomáš Barnáš** (29:23): Yeah. That's the part what Elliot wa- was just mentioning, that we exactly got the feedback that I'm doing this, like, my entire life, and many times it's just about points, informations, or, or just radio signals, and you, you don't really... they don't really create, like, these visuals. And the point there was like, "I, I'm doing it, and I can't show it to my family, and this is first time in my life when I can bring my family and show it to them. Like, 'Look, this is what I worked on for past 20 years.'" So it's amazing. **Michal Gula** (29:56): How many scientists did you have there? **Elliott Mizroch** (29:59): We had, well, two pr- principals, R- Randall Smith and Laura Brenneman, and we had Rutu, who helped us on the galaxy room scene that I was telling you about. And there were several others that were brought in as, like, specific subject matter experts, but that was our core team. And Ran- Randall did a great job. He was, like, an amazing guy to work with, 'cause he's, he's a generalist. And when we needed something, for example, for the Hubble Telescope or for the James Webb Telescope, he would contact the actual people that built that, you know? And so he would start an email chain with, the engineers of the James Webb Telescope and say, you know, "Send me your CAD files," or, "How does this look?" And it was a really fun experience. So there were probably, like, 50 people in total that touched it, but Randall did a great job at, you know, kind of dea- dealing with all of that. **Michal Gula** (30:46): y- you already mentioned that, each of them was trying to get, like, like, a perfection from, from the end product, but from their point of view. But of course we know that everything is about compromises, especially in VR films. In standalone headsets there is always, something that you need to, like, compromise and, and get rid of something. Who was the person that, was dealing with both sides, like, with, with the with, with the side of the producer, and on the other side with somebody who wants perfection, which is impossible? **Elliott Mizroch** (31:20): I w- I would say I did a lot of that work, and it, and it wasn't because we didn't want to adhere to all the deep science, but we're trying to tell a story at the end of the day. And so some of these subject matter experts, they wanna go really deep on things that don't maybe translate to a 38-minute immersive experience where you need to keep the flow and the momentum of the story. And so, for example, you know, on many of these instances where that would come up where the scientist would say, "Oh, no, but we need to explain, you know, what happens after a supernova, and the star can go in, you know, one of 10 different directions, and it can turn into a white dwarf or a, a r- you know, red giant or a, a black hole." And we would... We created this mechanism called the AR overlays, which are more information inside of the experience. And so we, we focused the story on the core visuals that we all thought would be, you know, the main through line of the story. But then if you look left and right or behind you, there's oftentimes text boxes or diagrams or things going deeper. And, and we've gotten the feedback from, you know, several astrophysicists, even the chief science officer of NASA, you know, who saw those and said, "Nice job." You know, all, all that's in there. But it's not in there in a way that makes it feel like a science lecture or derails the flow of the story. And, and that, that, that was a challenge, because this is new to everybody. I mean, nobody's worked in this medium or, or really had any background working in, in film or storytelling. And so those were the kind of compromises we made. But, they weren't, they weren't big compromises. We didn't sacrifice the rigorous science. It's all, it's all in there. **Michal Gula** (32:58): Do, do you think it was the advantage or disadvantage that, nothing like this w- was done before? **Elliott Mizroch** (33:06): I thought it was... It's an advantage, I, I think. I mean, I'd love to be the first to, like, to do new things. Tomas- **Tomáš Barnáš** (33:13): I would- **Elliott Mizroch** (33:13): 10- **Tomáš Barnáš** (33:14): I would also add here that, like, there are of course, like, various experiences about space, about, about... There are movies about space. But what was the unique part was that also for the astrophysicists from Smithsonian side, it was new for, also for them. So just that it doesn't sound like w- we are the first one who made the, the, space movie. But, it was very interesting also for them and the collaboration that we could learn about the, astrophysics and about the space that deep, let's say, within that one year. But they also could learn from us how this can be translated into, into visuals. And the learning curve on both sides was really driving the project forward. So I just think, like, the combination of then what we had, that it was new for them in VR, for us that, that deep, deep science, it was really driving the project forward and that was- **Michal Gula** (34:09): Of- **Tomáš Barnáš** (34:09): just amazing **Michal Gula** (34:09): course it's, it's important to emphasize that, that we are speaking still about the VR movie, because, like- **Tomáš Barnáš** (34:14): Yeah **Michal Gula** (34:14): movies about the, the universe, about black holes, everything else- **Tomáš Barnáš** (34:18): Yeah **Michal Gula** (34:18): there were many before with, like, extremely good, special effects. Like for example, in the movie Interstellar, I think that it was also, like, awarded for, for the best, VFX, interpretation of the black hole, I think, or so- something like... They were rendering, rendering it for, for weeks, I think, the, the- **Elliott Mizroch** (34:38): Yeah **Michal Gula** (34:38): 10 seconds scene **Tomáš Barnáš** (34:39): I think it was 300. I think they had it, like, 300 days. So it was, like- **Michal Gula** (34:43): Oh, okay **Tomáš Barnáš** (34:43): rendering almost a year, like, the entire scene of the, of the- **Michal Gula** (34:47): And it was only- **Tomáš Barnáš** (34:47): black hole **Michal Gula** (34:47): like, like, I, I think 10 seconds or so, right? **Tomáš Barnáš** (34:50): Yes. **Elliott Mizroch** (34:50): I can speak to this a little bit. So the Interstellar black hole is the best scientific visualization of a black hole, and that was the only thing that Laura, who's the one of the world's foremost experts on black holes said, "We can, we can, look at this as our reference." And we did. And so our black hole was, you know, largely based on that because they did such a good job. They had a astrophysicist named Kip Thorne who was working with Nolan on the project, and they did a really good job at, like, making an accurate black hole. And so that's the only, Hollywood thing that, you know, we were allowed to look at as, like, a reference and- **Michal Gula** (35:26): As a reference. And everything else you had to, like, figure out somehow, yeah? **Elliott Mizroch** (35:30): Yeah. We, we would start with there's a lot of reference images in, in 2D. I know that's a- against-... your religion. **Michal Gula** (35:37): Against my religion. **Elliott Mizroch** (35:38): But we, but we would, like, take a 2D image and we would talk about it and, and then we would basically work with the team on, you know, expanding it into 3D. And, and so we would build off of that and that's primarily how we built the movie. **Michal Gula** (35:53): w- we will later continue with Tomas, about the, about the scenes and about the, like- **Elliott Mizroch** (35:58): Yeah **Michal Gula** (35:58): technical things, but I'm still wondering, Elliot, like, how does it look like from, from your perspective? Because I think that it must have been, like, months of work before Tomas actually as a production part, started with his work or, or with the work of, of his team. So how long did it take? Like, w- when was the first idea that, "Oh, we should do something with, with the universe"? **Elliott Mizroch** (36:23): In total it was about a two-year, mission. and about half of that was pre-pla- you know, pre-production and half production. And, you know, my concerns going into it were, like, you, you mentioned that there are other VR space movies. We have Spheres and we have, Space Explorers from Felix & Paul. And so we wanted to make something distinctly different, you know, 'cause the, I look up to those, those two filmmakers. We wanted to do something unique here. And so just picking the story in the beginning was complex because space is the biggest possible story. You know, where do you, where do you begin? You know, there's so many stories you can tell. And we, in the conversations with Randall and Laura, we discovered that stars are the kind of main character of space. Planets and things like that are just, you know, th- they're like little pebbles. They're byproducts of stars. When stars are born, and stars die, and stars go up and down, like, this is the momentum of the universe. And so we picked stars as the main character, and then, so then we landed on this as, like, a, a through line, as a theme. The birth, life, and death of stars. And then I became fascinated with the telescopes because somebody said to me early on that, "Do you realize these telescopes are time machines? They are actually looking back in time." You know, some of these telescopes can see the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, and that just blew my mind. And so as I was researching the telescopes, we decided to make that our vehicle. So we're, we're telling the story of the birth, life, and death of stars through the lens of the world's most powerful telescopes. And then from there, we had a pretty good structure and- **Michal Gula** (37:58): Are, are you, are you anyhow, emphasizing this fact during the, the movie? **Elliott Mizroch** (38:03): Which fact? **Michal Gula** (38:04): That it, that it, that it's basically like a time travel because the, the, the pictures what we are seeing from distant galaxies and, and stars, it's coming from, from million or billion y- years ago, right? So. **Elliott Mizroch** (38:16): Yeah. We, we did not, and we thought w- in the beginning I was going to, but that is a very heavy concept to explain to somebody in a, in a 30-minute experience. And so we, we intentionally did not, because it, it's just quite complex, and we wanted this experience to be for everybody. And so w- we didn't get into, space time and, like- the heavy physics concepts, but it, it- **Michal Gula** (38:41): Mm **Elliott Mizroch** (38:41): it's quite interesting. I, I- **Michal Gula** (38:43): Yeah **Elliott Mizroch** (38:43): hope people, like, go deeper. You know, when they, if they like the James Webb they're standing on, I hope they Google it and start to learn a bit about that where, what you're talking about. **Michal Gula** (38:53): I, I don't wanna, like, go deep into, like, a business model and everything else, but I, I'm, I'm wondering, like, h- how, if you come with such a, a huge project, let's say, it's a huge project, who do you talk to f- like, fir- first person, who do you talk to? Like, how does the, the background of, of the creation of the project look like? **Elliott Mizroch** (39:15): So this, this was a project with the Smithsonian, and, you know, I grew up in Washington, D.C., so I worked- **Michal Gula** (39:22): Can, can you please just, just again explain who is Smithsonian or what is Smithsonian? **Elliott Mizroch** (39:27): So Smithsonian is a 180-year-old museum institution based out of Washington, D.C. It's the United States government's investment into the dissemination of education, and they, they do that in many different ways. They have some of the most famous museums in the world in Washington, D.C. They have thousands of affiliate museums all over the country, and they run all sorts of educational programs and, higher education programs. They've, you know, affiliations like the one we worked with. SAO is based out of Harvard, and it's not a museum. It's very much like, an active research institution. the team we were working with is actively involved in, you know, operating, Hubble and James Webb and, you know, discovering exoplanets. They actually discovered an exoplanet last week. They discovered radio signals from an exoplanet last week, which was, like, a huge news out of the space community. So the Smithsonian is basically, like, this huge umbrella institution funded by the US government, and, their w- they had their 180th anniversary a few weeks ago, and so it's, it's, it's, it's amazing. I don't know if, it, for Europeans, maybe it's like the Louvre or the British Museum, but bigger because it has... It's not just one museum. It has a whole network of, museums. So that's who the Smithsonian is. So when we started working with them, we weren't, gonna do space right away. It could've been anything because they have so many different museums. And so we looked into natural history. We looked into several different things, but Tomas and I were like, "Let's do space," because I think in 3D and VR, this, this is gonna be really cool, and I'm happy we did. but yeah, we, we, we- **Tomáš Barnáš** (41:08): And also interesting for people, right? Like, it's a, it's a endless topic. Like, everybody you ask, everybody loves space. **Elliott Mizroch** (41:16): Totally. Yeah. It was... I'm really happy we chose it. There's other good subjects, but this one was, was perfect. And so from there, we, we sort of matched, the Smithsonian, Denise Elliott, who was our, the program lead from the Smithsonian, she matched us with Randall and his team at SAO out of Harvard, and then we just began the process of what are we gonna do here, you know? Like, let's, let's,... We were just learning about space. It was very cool, you know? We just, we, we mentioned some of the limitations we have in VR, but moreover, we were just talking about what's the coolest story in space. And we developed this, this great relationship with them, but we, we had these things called Randall's cocktail party facts about space. So we were like, "If you were at a cocktail party right now, like, what would you tell your friends? What, what would be one of the cool things you would share?" And by the end of this, we had, like, hundreds of them, and, and those were kind of what sh- what shaped our early scripts for Starstruck. **Michal Gula** (42:14): you were able to got into a Venice, film festival. How did that happen? **Elliott Mizroch** (42:21): So we were right, you know, the production was, like, just barely finishing before the application for the, the festival was due. We called Liz and Michelle, the two directors of the festival, and we told them how special this thing we're working on is, and it's not quite done yet, but we really wanna show it at your festival. And we begged them to let us- Bring like a, a work in progress version of it to them in Italy. And so Tomas and I flew to Italy, and we got on a water taxi with a, a seated demo, and we showed it to them, and they loved it, and they let us in, you know? So that, that's how it happened. **Michal Gula** (42:59): how was the experience? Because I think it took like two or three weeks, altogether. **Tomáš Barnáš** (43:05): Two weeks and one week preparations. It was like- **Michal Gula** (43:07): Okay **Tomáš Barnáš** (43:07): some of, like some of- **Michal Gula** (43:08): And, and you basically- **Tomáš Barnáš** (43:10): Yeah, go **Michal Gula** (43:10): you basically had to like, like, copy the big site where you can s- have like 100 or, or so, goggles and, and people at, at the same time. And you had to like replicate it and put it in, in a small booth, right? Or, or a small, much smaller space. **Tomáš Barnáš** (43:30): So I, I will just quick, give a quick intro to that because we didn't really get there. We were speaking about the immersive experience, but we didn't, didn't say the main concept. So the main concept about it is that we have the venues about 300 square meters, 3 to 500 square meters, where we have 100 or 120 headsets. So simultaneously we are able to, play this experience for easily up to 120 people per hour. So if we would stretch it across a day, like you can count almost 1,000 people per day in the venue. but, then, that, that's the, the main concept. But for Venice, we... Of course it's a festival and you have limited space, so we got a space of I think around 80 square meters. And, there was a question from them like, "Are you able to fit it in?" So another challenge was like story was done, but then we had to, redesign some things to make it work. And, yeah, we managed to, to prepare it for a limited amount of people, entering this. But limited amount of people was like 120 people per day. So we had there like over 1,000 people across these two weeks, which was... I can, I think I can say that it was the, the biggest amount of people, or the highest amount of people, which visited one of the experiences because the other, experiences in Venice were slightly more limited. So it was quite a good challenge, and I think like we were very successful with that. **Michal Gula** (45:00): Elliot, since, since you are a director and, and, the big portion of your business I'm, I'm guessing is also business development and, and, future, creation and ideation, I'm sure you already have some new project in, in, in mind. **Elliott Mizroch** (45:19): Yeah. We, we do. We do. I mean, I'd like to keep working with the Smithsonian, 'cause it was such a great relationship with them. Honestly, we didn't know what we were gonna get into, and I'm sure they didn't either, but we all just worked so well together. It was a really, really great team, which is very rare in the world to find, you know? And so when you find something like that, I think you stick with it. And there's no shortage of, of subjects that the Smithsonian has. So we're, we're, we're working on something with them. **Michal Gula** (45:46): I, I'm sure you, you're not able to, to speak about it, so just tell, tell us whether it's going to be dry or wet experience. **Elliott Mizroch** (45:53): Maybe a little of both. **Michal Gula** (45:55): Little of both. **Tomáš Barnáš** (45:59): Yeah. **Michal Gula** (45:59): Perfect, Elliot. Thank you very much, Elliot, for, for joining us, and we will continue with Tomas with the, with the experience. Thank you. Great, Tomas, so let's continue with the, with the movie. You can share the screen again. **Tomáš Barnáš** (46:12): Yeah. So, it was great actually the connection because, you got a little bit more overview of the entire, story behind and the way there... I also saw the, the question in comments, like how did this happen and, who was behind it. So you, you got more information about it. And here we can get just to another like half of the rest or the second half of the experience, where speaking about this like birth, of stars and planets, we are also getting you to an exoplanet. And this can feel a little bit like a science fiction, but it actually isn't because there are many a planets, in the, in the space which are, looking in kind of a, direction like this. But the point is that this is the star next to this planet. It's, the, the, the star is just as big as our sun, but the problem of this planet it's that it's very close to its star. And, so we are explaining here the situation and, it's called the Goldilocks zone, where the Earth got. So that's actually like a perfect position compared, or compared to, to other planets with the distance to its star. So it means to our sun, that we are not too close, we are not too far. Anything further or closer wouldn't allow us to live on the planet as, as we do right now. And here the story tells you about the planet, which is made of diamonds because there is high temperature, high pressure. So actually the entire planet is covered with diamonds, but there is no chance someone can go and collect them because of the temperature. And you can't find there anything like wood or water, that means it's impossible to live there. So even though in, let's say, the mathematics, translating diamonds into money would be the richest planet in the world, but, there is no chance that I can **Michal Gula** (48:19): On- only in our world. **Tomáš Barnáš** (48:21): Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. **Michal Gula** (48:22): Because logically- **Tomáš Barnáš** (48:23): So- **Michal Gula** (48:23): where, where there is endless amount of diamonds, then they have- **Tomáš Barnáš** (48:26): Yeah **Michal Gula** (48:27): like no value. **Tomáš Barnáš** (48:28): Then they, they, they have no value. So, yeah, you just see it, again expressed, explained how it, works, what are distances, and then we get further away from the planet to see how the planet actually dies. So, this is the Copernicus star and the planet Janssen. And- The planet is always getting closer to its star until it gets consumed by the star. We, again, don't say that it's exploded or crashed or something. It's really, like, consumed by the star, and that's end of that planet. so we're just observing this fact, how it happens, how it burns, and how it hits the, the star, and then the star, like, expands and grows. and in this moment, we are getting to another part of our, journey into space, and we're seeing Chandra Telescope. You are getting this cocktail facts where you see the consumption of those telescopes. That it's actually the power, power use, it's two kilowatts. So it's kind of a refrigerator, uh-... consumption. So they really don't, don't consume any, any energy, and they are, like, in the space, this one since 1999. You know? So these are the things which, okay, you can read them in the book, but maybe you don't really pay attention to it. But if you see it here, it's different. And you have the same options of the interaction. So you play with it. You see it from every side. You can press button and see the images. So we call it, like, take a picture. So you are taking pictures, and you see what the telescopes actually captured. You see the costs, that it was, like, 1.6 billion to build it. yeah. So interesting things. And then we are getting further to, to another, mm, star. This is Betelgeuse. And again, very interesting point is that, the Betelgeuse, it's, actually a star which we can see from the Earth. So it's, it's that huge and that bright that you can see it always. And it's part of the Orion constellation, and it's the one which is more, like, red-orange. So also, like, interesting point. **Michal Gula** (50:49): How, how is it possible it's, it's not round? It's not round. **Tomáš Barnáš** (50:53): Yeah, because... Yeah, so not everything in the space is just round. So many stars, because it's, it's kind of, like, a combination of, the, the gas and, the, the, the stardust around. And this star is also, like, you will see it, like, going to explode into a supernova. So it's the way how they, how they are, like, then changing form, and they are really, like, alive. But you don't really see it, so it's, it's just that lumpy. And, then you see the cross-section of it, what is inside, with explanation of everything. And, then we show how actually star explodes, and we explain the process. So for example, like, the first explosion, it has, like, three steps. The first explosion, which you just saw, was, like, is taking in reality time around three weeks. The second one, this bigger one, they told us about three to four months. And this last, which is called supernova, supernova aftermath, is there for millions of light-years. So this kind of, like, never... Well, I can't say it never disappears, but, like, in the scale of, like, three weeks, three months, and, millions of light-years, it's... Again, we talk about scale. We talk about size. We talk about time. But it's unimaginable because if I tell you millions of light-years, even w- we can't really feel it, like, how long is it. So you're standing here and observing that. then you're able to walk closer, see about materials, from what it's, consisted. And, the end of the supernova is this neutron star. And yeah, after this, just, like, very little, kind of dot stays there in the space and then later disappears. after all of this, we're getting another, our time machine, as Elliot mentioned. so that's James Webb. You are getting also closer to it. Again, it's in correct scale. Again, it's from the ex- real data. So you can feel that when you're standing underneath how big it is. **Michal Gula** (53:20): When you say, when you say it's in correct sta- scale- **Tomáš Barnáš** (53:23): Scale **Michal Gula** (53:23): it means wh- when you are watching it in the VR, you are perceiving, like, exact, uh- **Tomáš Barnáš** (53:30): Yes **Michal Gula** (53:30): dimensions, right? **Tomáš Barnáš** (53:30): It's, like, one-to-one for you. **Michal Gula** (53:32): Okay. **Tomáš Barnáš** (53:32): Exactly. Exactly. We can't say that the supernova was in the right scale because it's that far and that huge- **Michal Gula** (53:39): Of course **Tomáš Barnáš** (53:39): that you... It's just, like, a picture for you. But those things which you can touch are in one-to-one scale, so, yeah. Like, when you walk under these, mirrors or close to them, you really feel how big it is. And, that brings us to, to a black hole, and that was very interesting part of the, the project because we had on board also Laura Brenneman, as Elliot mentioned. And she is really studying this her entire life, and it was a huge pleasure to work with her. And we're speaking about, like, the speeds, the particles, the stuff what is there, how, how do you see it around, what, what is actually, like, happening. We, as we love 3D and doing stuff in 3D, we always had here, like, big flying fog. You had, like, fog everywhere, that it's, like, dramatic. And, and she just said, like, "No, it's really like a, like a disc." It's that huge that you have a feeling that it's, like, a flat disc. You can't really see that fog in big 3D or flying through you. It's, it's in, in one surface. So again, learning a lot, seeing all these explanation, of the black holes. And still being on the telescope. So this was the part where if you're doing a movie, you are focused on 2D camera looking just in front of you. But we actually had to play with the scene of 360, and wherever you look, something interesting should happen, or at least there should be something to grab your attention. And, yeah, this is the star, flying towards the black hole, and its gravitation just, like, rips it, like, pulls it in and rips it apart, which does this, like, a chimney, explosion of the, of the fog, which that's the energy from the, from the star, which explodes the- **Michal Gula** (55:34): It's, it's like soul leaving the body after death. **Tomáš Barnáš** (55:37): Yeah. Yes. Yes. It's, it's literally like that. And, yeah, you just see again another way of, like, how the stars are, let's call it dying. And then you're getting closer to the black hole. So we are really getting into the edge of black hole. And the first idea what all of us got, and we had many discussions, is like, "Hey, let's put a hand into it," or, like, "You can step into it." And, and we just got a feedback like, this is something what we can't do and can't show because no one really knows what's behind it or what is happening. Because it's just there is no way you can discover it right now. I don't know if there would be, anything in the future what allows us to discover, but right now nothing. So we're just standing here, and you are able to have a laser pointer in your hand, and you shoot a laser, and you see actually, like, how it's bending. So what the, this, gravitation, m- does with the, with the laser, so with the light. It's bending light, and also how it's changing the color. And also when they saw this in VR and could test it by themselves, they were extremely happy because we got different kind of calculation ways how, how you can really do it and how the light should bend. But again, no one really was there, so we just listened the, like, mathematical calculation and tried to, like, translate it into visuals. And here we are getting to the end. Again, to the scanning part where we we have a bit of, satellite data translate into, into the scans also with some drone images close to this area. But this telescope or this, yeah, this telescope is not built yet. It's not finished. So it's in progress. They are counting with, finishing this project in 2030, and it will be the biggest, telescope right now, in the world. So one of the mirrors, it also explains, it's seven times bigger than the, the, the MMT telescope you saw before. So it allows us to see, like, way more, like, bigger pictures, zoom and way further because it's not just about seeing sharper the stars we see right now. But actually, they say, like, the, the biggest discoveries came, in the moment when they pointed the telescope in the way, in the, in the spot where it's just black, you know. Because when, when you are pointing to the black area where nothing is, overexposing the image, you might see far and you might find something. But it's hard to choose where, right? Like, choose a spot where you want to just, just discover something. **Michal Gula** (58:35): So may- maybe- **Tomáš Barnáš** (58:35): So- **Michal Gula** (58:35): in a few years- **Tomáš Barnáš** (58:36): Yeah **Michal Gula** (58:36): you will, you will have to do, like, the update of imagery and in your- **Tomáš Barnáš** (58:41): Hope- hope- **Michal Gula** (58:42): VR experience. **Tomáš Barnáš** (58:42): Hopefully. Hopefully, hopefully. And, and this is actually also a call to action, on the end of this movie where, where they say, like, "Okay, so this is going to be built in 2030, and if you are interested in astrophysics and stars, maybe you are the one who can also apply for a job there because they will be searching people." So it's kind of like a nice, nice call to action. And, the end of the experience is that we bring you, again away from the Earth and see, like, epic view, of the Earth sur- surface during the night. Then we switch it to a day, daylight. You see solar eclipse, so when the sol- sun, goes behind the moon. And, yeah, there is like a, like a little shine around for, for a very short moment. And, yeah, then you just have, like, one and a half minutes to enjoy the epic view from the space to Earth, which, yeah, astronauts might be able to see, but most of us not really. And, yeah, that's the end. That's the end of the movie. **Michal Gula** (59:55): So we, we basically saw the experience of, of what people can see when they are, in the, the venue of, of the- these VR movies. So let's speak, right now about, about s- that exact, place and, and environment. How does it look like, and, and how, what technicalities you had to fight during this? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:00:18): So this was the, the small venue. Yeah. So this was our booth where we were able to bring, maximum 12 people at a time. And, you're walking in a space which, where you can see the, some kind of patterns. Patterns on the ground, patterns on the wall. those are, the patterns which are helping the headset to track the right position, so to avoid so-called drifting in the VR experience, and it helps us to make it stable and positioned in the right spot. So this is- **Michal Gula** (1:00:49): Is it, is it to- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:00:49): Yeah **Michal Gula** (1:00:50): is it to just give the, the goggles, features on the walls or does it translate like, like a QR code or something like that? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:00:59): No, this one is not, these ones are not like QR codes. They are pure, contrast points. So you are actually getting the, the corners, the edges, which are just stabilizing the entire, experience. There are another ones, they're called ArUco markers, and, in some of the venues we use them when they have, problem with launching, so it's taking longer to load the experience. Then you are able to bring something like a QR codes which are helping to, let's say, kick off the experience faster into... not into right spot, but just to load the content properly. So- **Michal Gula** (1:01:36): So s- something like AprilTags or, or something like that? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:01:39): Yeah, like AprilTags. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, and then it's, just, yeah, as, as we, as we see it right now, this is our standard setup, so we have as high contrast as possible. Compared to Venice, like this was a little bit more, like, artistic, so we pushed down the, the contrast, but we tried to make it more visually appealing as, the judges were also, like, judging the content and the entire experience and the setup. So we tried to do it, like, very nice. But it was still, like, functionally very well done. But, this is just, like, if you have very large areas and you count with 100 people at a time, you have to imagine that there can be, like, 50 people standing in front of you, and you don't see any, any wall maybe. So then we are, like, focused on maybe two square meters below your, or around yourself, to, to get that technical features which we need to be stable. So therefore, here we try to push it up to, to more technically correct setup. And then you see it, like, with these we always have... So how to imagine it, it's that you are entering the venue. We have, like, onboarding tablets where you log in, you write your name. not that we need it for some informations later, but it's really, like, if you go with your group of friends, you will see their names above their heads in the experience. So other- otherwise you see just avatars, but if there is a name, you know exactly who is who. And so you log in, you choose the language. For this Starstruck movie, we have right now probably 10 or 11 languages to choose. And, you just select everything, then you get a headset, and you are good to go. You're just, like, walking 40 minutes. you see the walls in digital space. You see other avatars so you don't bump into them. And, yeah, this is actually the, the way how it works. And maybe just, like, the, for the best understanding is, like, you put a headset on, we bring you into the space. So this is another experience, but I had just this movie here to, to show you. So that was about Machu Picchu, was a previous one. But this is how you see other, people from your group. You see your hands. You can interact. So yeah, this is how you feel when you are there inside of this VR experience. **Michal Gula** (1:04:00): has anybody reported the, the bumped, bump of the head, on the column? Because I saw s- many columns in the- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:04:11): Your, your two kids. You know, there is, like, there is explanation. **Michal Gula** (1:04:16): But they, they destroyed your barriers. **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:04:18): The- the- there is a guidance on the beginning, like, don't run, don't jump, and don't, like, bump into each other because you see the people. And we are doing testing in, our testing venue, so it was, like, a sports hall where we just bring barriers to have the, the patterns. And we've tested it, and, Michael had there his two sons, and first thing they have done was just, like, running full speed wherever. They didn't care about space. It was just, like, like, flying around. They, they hit each other. They bump through the, through the walls. They survived. Headset survived. So it's pretty safe. **Michal Gula** (1:04:56): they were trying to, to, find limits of of the setup. **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:05:00): Yeah, crash test it. **Michal Gula** (1:05:02): Yeah. **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:05:02): they, they, they did it well. So, yeah, normally the, the thing is, like, it has its limits. So, you know, like, if you're running fast, the problem is not that you don't see the other per- person, but the VR headset has a limited field of,.. or, like, the, the, yeah, let's call it field of view, that you are used to see, like, a side. Even though you're looking in front, you always know that someone is next to you. So the weird thing is that when you put a headset, it's like I always compare it to, like, racing horses. They have, like, these, eye shields to just look in front, that they are not disturbed by the surrounding. And this is what is happening in VR, that you are just, like, blocked, and then you want to do a step right, but you don't look there because you have a feeling like no one is there. But there is a, like, for you, it's a wall. Person is standing next to you. So then you can bump there. So you actually need to change your thinking and first look and then move. **Michal Gula** (1:06:00): I could see from the videos that you are using, standalone headsets. what was the, the technical ideation and the decision behind it? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:06:10): So, even though we have a feeling that today it's possible everything, we still have limitations. So if you want to have a streamed experience like streamed, VR from the PC that you use the, GPU performance and make all the visuals way better or, or you can use something what doesn't allow you the standalone headset, you need the PC and, and then you need a, a Wi-Fi channel. And funny-wise, I was extremely surprised by that, but we are limited amount of Wi-Fi channels, so that means if you want to stream full experience, the maximum headsets you can have in one room is 16. So you need 16 super powerful PCs and 16 headsets at the time in the venue to be able to stream in higher quality. But you have still limitation that this is actually like fully pegged Wi-Fi, so you need to Wi-Fi, like, channels. So you need to create kind of a Faraday cage where you reduce all the impacts from Wi-Fis outside or from any kind of signals which could be disturbing that. You need, like, super powerful PCs, so let's talk... Or super powerful, but if you want, like, mm, gaming GPU, you can count that you need 3,000 for a good GPU and then the rest of the PC. So maybe you have, like, $5,000 PCs on top the headset and everything. So the CapEx is extremely high. Mm, there's a lot of, like, technical stuff. Like you, you are building a strong server, big, big server which is overheating. You need to air condition it correctly. So there are a lot of, like, technical problems which are created- **Michal Gula** (1:07:50): Would the, would the user, would the user experience at the end, like graphics and, and like fidelity of the, of the experience, would it be much better using- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:08:00): Mm **Michal Gula** (1:08:01): cables and PCs? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:08:02): They are supposed to be better, so but you need to also do it like this, you know? Like if you, for example, if you would do s- so headset-only VR, like we are doing, and then we would go into a streamed VR, we could leverage it extremely. Because you can use the optimization part there where it's needed, and then you would use the benefit of the, the streaming. Because for example, the, the ray tracing, which is known in gaming as a standard, like you have cars, you have reflections, all of that, we just think it's act- automatic everywhere. But this is actually RTX cards, so they are, they are allowing the ray tracing. So reflections, blooms, blurs, whatever. And then you come to a headset only, which is like Android app, like your phone, and you don't have that. So and then you want to make a nice shining s- star or sun, but you can't make it blue because it doesn't exist there. So you have to fake everything. So actually in this way, we could really leverage it and do, like, very beautiful things. But the bad part of it is, like, if you start just with streaming and you forget about optimization, then you fulfill it with heavy models, with super heavy materials. You can end up by very similar experience on the end. Maybe you will have, like, nicer hair of, on the people or maybe nicer bloom, but overall you can overload it with unnecessary things. your production would be maybe five times faster than, than ours for because of the optimization, but maybe the result wouldn't be different. So you still need to know how to do it to, to make it, to use the performance. **Michal Gula** (1:09:43): Maybe at the end it wouldn't be, be faster because, the, the fact that you don't have to spend time and money on, on optimization would make you, add new things into the scenes and- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:09:56): It... Yes and no because the, the point is that, for, for computer graphics and for, for example, Unreal Engine, both Unreal Engine and Unity, they're well optimized for the, for the PC production. So there are a lot of blueprints, a lot of... Of course you could extend it to the same timeline and, and use the time for other things. But if I would say, like, you want to achieve very similar thing as, as we do with the headset only, you would be able to be much faster because you don't have to spend time on the optimization steps. But of course, like, if you have the time, you would use it for developing other stuff, yes. **Michal Gula** (1:10:33): Where can people see, this movie? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:10:37): So, right now it's open in around 10 places, plus minus. So depending on where you are, but, we have one in Melbourne which is, let's say the, the, the east direction. Then, in US there is just last week we opened Chicago. Washington DC is opened. I think still San Antonio, Denver, and next week we are opening in Chile, in Santiago de Chile. So that's the place actually where the GMT, the last telescope is. So it will be very interesting because people from there are really passionate about it. And then we have also in Europe, various places. but, as we have two experiences, I'm not exactly sure which is launched where. So, so we have in Vienna, there, there are things in, in Paris, and then we have UK, it's in London and Manchester. But there are multiple on the timeline which are going to be opened- sooner or later. So yeah. **Michal Gula** (1:11:44): Are, are, are you doing all the venues or do you have, like, clients that tell you, like, "Oh, we want your, movie. Come to us and we will pay you tons of money." **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:11:54): So- **Michal Gula** (1:11:55): Or how, how does it work? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:11:56): So this is part of actually Fever business model because they are the ones who are, like, developing the concept of the, I would call it, like, the VR museum, theaters, so or cinemas. And, they are, like, they pick the cities where it should make sense to open it, and then also scouting venues. And, but right now, as the Starstruck was developed not as just like experience, for fun, but also with some education factor and also science behind, we are searching museums, and we are also in communication with a lot of museums where the content also make a lot of sense. Because people come to museum, and this is really like something where you can, get some education. So right now, mm, it's open in London Science Museum, but there are many other museums in discussions right now where we'll- **Michal Gula** (1:12:52): I, I have seen a- also in, in, in our attendees, during this live, I have seen, multiple people from, from different museums. can you give us like a, like a basic idea of how big the museum needs to be to, to- Be able even to, to try to get this project **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:13:10): S- so is it... Like, I would say, like, before Venice it was different, but after Venice where we tried also the smaller concept, it's probably a game changer also for us and for the museum. But, generally the target was, the museums with the, w- which have, like, over one million visitors per year. That's because there is, like, a percentage from people which go to VR. So, so that was kind of a target because we are always counting, or, like, Fever was counting with, five to, 300 to 500 square meters for the experience, which requires quite a big space. and you need that space, and then you need, like, 100 headsets and all of that. But, like, there's like... There are possibilities. So if there is, like, any museum which is interesting in having that and they don't have, like, one million, visitors per year, it's just very easy. Like, we can talk about it and, then we can see whether it's, suitable or not, or who takes the, the first investment. Means, like, who buys the headset and, and stuff like that, because content is there, you know? So this is just part of the deal and, anything can be discussed. **Michal Gula** (1:14:26): Have you already discussed, the possibility of, like, a pop-up venues somewhere during the festivals or, or something like that? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:14:35): So, the pop-up, yeah, we call it more like, like this, traveling kits. so this exists already, but it was not really made for festivals because you still need quite a lot of effort to, like, build it, bring it, move it. But, there are also venues, which are open, for example, for three to six months, and then we have, like, mm, like transportable walls, with the printed patterns, and you just bring them into space. You just position them, and we are able to launch the, the setup. The only thing needed there is, like, the, the access points with the internet that you can, correctly, guide people across the space. **Michal Gula** (1:15:20): So but, but this is something that, uh- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:15:22): Yes **Michal Gula** (1:15:22): already can be, can be, like, rented or, or, like- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:15:26): Y- **Michal Gula** (1:15:27): ordered from- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:15:27): Yes, this- **Michal Gula** (1:15:28): from you? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:15:28): Yes. Yes, yes. So it's more or less like if you say, like... Or, or there is a space where, it needs to be put for, three to six months, then it most probably goes as this, this travel kit. But there are different options because you can have just, like, printed panels which are stick to the wall or,... So there are, like, two, three concepts which are, suitable for all the spaces, I would say. **Michal Gula** (1:15:56): how big for... I know we, we discussed this during Intergeo, for example. Like, would it be s- possible to, to create, this experience within the Intergeo? And it's not a few months. It's only for three days. So, I just wanted to discuss, like, the, the, the business possibility here for anybody who is doing, big events. Like, how big the event needs to be or, or, how people should they expect to come so that it's feasible, you know, to, to even discuss this possibility- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:16:27): So- **Michal Gula** (1:16:27): to bring this experience **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:16:28): the, the point is that, like, sending this travel kit, which is there, somewhere across the ocean, 'cause, like, there are some in the US. Mm, the, w- we had also in Singapore was also the travel one that went to Melbourne. So there are places where we have these m- traveling kits. But if it would be a place, I don't know, like right now in Europe, we probably don't have a traveling kit. That means, like, if you want to open it in Europe, doesn't make sense to ship it from US. It's probably better to, produce some, m- temporary walls for, with the printouts. So the cost of printouts, put it somewhere, and you can run it. So then it's just a question about who cares about the costs. Whether- **Michal Gula** (1:17:12): Mm **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:17:13): like, if, if the, the person or the venue which, wants it for three days will say like, "Okay, I pay for everything. I want it there." And then there is, like, some, like, like, shared profit, shared revenue stuff can be always discussed. But I think, like, it's a lot of effort for three days. So I can't really imagine that it would be beneficial for someone. But probably, like, if you speak about three months, then it's already something what can be- **Michal Gula** (1:17:42): For some big events, this can be a part of experience. It doesn't necessarily- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:17:47): Yeah **Michal Gula** (1:17:48): need to be about, the, the business case, about earning money from this, but it can be something how to bring people, how to entertain them, how to, offer to the audience something that has, they have not seen before. Yeah, but this- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:18:05): I mean, this, this is something what we had in Venice, you know? So it's, it's always... It was for two weeks, but for three days it would be the same effort. So it's almost- **Michal Gula** (1:18:11): Yeah **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:18:11): just a calculation of what, whether it's beneficial for us, for the event, for, for, for someone. Because someone has to have the benefit. It doesn't have to be money benefit, but it needs to- **Michal Gula** (1:18:20): But gener- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:18:20): have a reason **Michal Gula** (1:18:21): generally spoken, this is possibility. **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:18:24): You- **Michal Gula** (1:18:24): So if, if s- **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:18:25): You- **Michal Gula** (1:18:25): somebody is thinking about this, they can easily just get in touch and, and you can discuss this, yeah? **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:18:30): Yeah. Just like for, for understanding, like, in Venice we had this 80 square meters. they put the foils on the walls and ground within two days. We installed it, the rest technical stuff within another two days. So in four days it was running. **Michal Gula** (1:18:46): Perfect, Tomas. thank you for, showing, the, Starstruck project. Thank you guys for r- watching this, for, for posting questions, and have a great day. **Tomáš Barnáš** (1:18:58): Yeah. Bye.