Cosm—Wow!
I’ve been wanting to go to a Cosm venue since they first opened in 2024, and on my recent trip to LA for USITT, I finally got to see the Hollywood Park venue. And all I can say is: wow! I’ve been working in this business for 40 years, and Cosm is one of the most impressive applications of show technology I’ve ever seen. They describe it as an “Immersive Shared Reality Venue“, and—for once—the experience matches the hype. Basically, it’s a venue with a mostly spherical video screen, and seating capacities of around 1700 and up. It’s sort of similar to the Sphere in Vegas, but at a much more manageable (and human) scale—the seating capacity is about one tenth that of the Sphere. With this smaller (but still large) size, most people are a lot closer to the screen, and it actually feels intimate. And the integration between the screen and the venue is as well thought out (for a very different application) as I saw at the ABBA show (writeup here).
They program live sports, movies and pre-recorded live shows like Cique du Soleil. I’m not a sportsball guy, but I wanted to experience a live game there since this seems like a very viable business model and also for what this thing is really made. And despite the “shared reality” marketing buzzword, experiencing a live sports event with your friends is a lot different than watching at home. I went on Monday March 23 and saw the Golden State Warriors play basketball against the Dallas Mavericks. And it was amazing. Walking into a stadium, there’s an almost surreal feeling when you start getting a glimpse of the playing field. I had the same experience riding the escalator here, and when you get into the big room it really is impressive. They have three levels, and I sat off to the side of level 2. Click any photo to enlarge.
I got there before the game started, and they were playing music while all the warmups were going on. They cut between four cameras; one at center, one up in the stands, one under a basket, and another back in the vom on the side. The resolution is impressive and high enough that you can make out individual faces in the crowd. Once the game started, they cut in audio from the live broadcast, and being a geek, of course I was interested in the synchronization. As a sound guy it was a little jarring because you’re seeing people speak and it feels from the screen like you’re on the opposite side of an arena, but it’s pretty close in sync because even though you feel like you’re at a long distance, you’re much closer to the speakers (which were behind the screen and not visible). What’s interesting is that rather than this being jarring, to me this actually kind of heightened the experience. Here’s a geeky video to help demonstrate:
One of the things I do at any event in an arena is look all over the place, and I spent a bunch of time looking on the videos to see the live cameras, and I couldn’t find them because I didn’t realize how small they are. Apparently it’s their own “C360” camera:
“Immersive” has now been overused to the point of mostly being a meaningless marketing buzzword, but here it is truly apt. As a geek it’s pretty hard for me to get lost in any kind of technology-enhanced experience, but I came close here. And they even put video tiles on the ceiling and added their own virtual ceiling to match the venue, with its own fake line arrays and moving lights:
There are a few seats they sell as obstructed/partial view, and if you really work at it, you can find some places where the screen distortion is jarring
And on the bottom floor the experience is limited but still impressive:
But anywhere with a good view of the screen it’s amazing, especially on the centerline:
And of course I want to know more about the control system:
And while nothing can truly match the excitement of being at a live event like a basketball game live, this truly is orders of magnitude better than any other remote experience I’ve ever had. And unlike so much VR stuff, this experience is truly social instead of isolating, and it’s a lot more comfortable experience than being jammed into plastic arena seats, and the food and drink was pretty good.
Right now they have LA, Dallas and Atlanta open, and Detroit is coming soon. I’d say go see a show here, it’s impressive. I want to go back to see what they do with a movie (they are running the Matrix currently), and as decades-long F1 fan I could only imagine what it would be like to experience an F1 race live at one of these venues!