Among the many "firsts" associated with the partnership of Rice University and the Houston Museum of Natural Science
(with associated partner companies), from which Discovery Dome has arisen - are the following:

• First NSF funded teacher program in Astronomy and Earth Science (1988)
• First internet-accessible automatically updating museum kiosk (1995)
• First fully digital planetarium in the US (Dec 1998) (third in the world)
• First fulldome Earth science show (1999)
• First fulldome Space Physics (heliosphere) show (2000)
• First fully digital portable immersive theatre (2003)
  [note: Digitalis also began in 2003 but had stars only to start with. We had stars and movies from the beginning, thanks to Elumenati and Sky-Skan]
• First fulldome show DVD flown in space (STS-123, 2008)
• First fisheye lens flown in space (ISS, 2009, still up and shooting!)
• With Avela : First airlock dome; First dual-mirror projection system; First durable first-surface spherical mirror
  
  More details available here
   

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Discovery Dome appears in BBC Horizon programme:
Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong?
See the 6.3 MB video clip here

• Zula Patrol ~ Down To Earth Trailer - 90sec, 95MB
• Zula Patrol ~ Under The Weather Trailer - 60sec, 64MB
• IYA2009 Trailer - 2min, official IYA2009 promotional trailer, 57MB
• Splat! - 2min, winner of DomeFest 2007 Domie Award, 88MB
   

Research:

• Teaching Earth Science in an Inexpensive Portable Immersive Environment (ESTC, 2005)
  
  
• Digital Full-Domes: The Future of Virtual Astronomy Education
  (Planetarian, Sep 2005, first article)
  
  
• Special series of articles about the fulldome revolution appearing in the September 2005 issues of Planetarian, the magazine of the International Planetarium Society

Fulldome Resources:

• Introductions to the fulldome medium can be found here and here
• Tutorials on how to create fulldome content appear here
• The free official fulldome community and mailing list is located here
• Invaluable resources about the fulldome medium can be found here
• Introductions to fisheye lens photography can be found here, here and here
• A generously detailed and useful fulldome content creation blog here
• You can even dome-enable your real-time OpenGL applications here
• Detailed comparison of ALL fulldome projector systems can be seen here

World's largest video dome