Las Vegas’ newest flagship concert venue, a $2.3 billion giant ball, played host to U2 in its first performance on September 29, and social media was quickly ablaze with clips from the event – especially from inside the sphere.
The 112-meter-high and 157-meter-wide space features a high-resolution LED screen that extends halfway down the auditorium, with an even larger screen surrounding the exterior. At 54,000 square meters, this is the largest display in the world, and absolutely incomparable to the best displays that you could buy for your home.
The Sphere in the Venetian is one of the most hi-tech venues in the world, serving its audience of up to 18,600 strong with high-speed Wi-Fi and haptic technology in every seat. This is joined by a spatial audio system based on Holoplot’s X1 speaker module, 1,600 of which are placed across the venue using beamforming and wavefield synthesis to create dazzling 4D effects.
The largest LED display in the world
But the 16K display inside, made by SACO Technologies – a specialist in LED video displays and lighting – was the real star. The interior display measures 15,000 square meters and has 1.2 million light modules, each divided into 48 LED diodes. Each copy can display 256 million different colors.
In addition to its newfound fame as a concert venue, the Sphere is also used in virtual production and post-production environments thanks to the Sphere Studios company.
The company works with filmmakers and other artists to create content for the Las Vegas atmosphere – including many of the images that were dazzling – and terrifying – throughout Las Vegas.
At one end of the spectrum, we’ve seen fantastic visualizations of the Earth, the Moon, and Mars, among other visualizations as compiled by BBC news. However, this has also veered into slightly more troubling territory, with a giant eyeballspotted at the show for example. According to clips on social media, this was described as “confused” by a nearby driver.