How we brought new life to a 360° audiovisual experience.
Sound Dome Budapest
The Sound Dome
The Sound Dome at the Hungarian House of Music in Budapest is a one-of-a-kind immersive venue. With its 360-degree panoramic projection and ambisonic sound system featuring over 40 individual sources, it transforms films into full spatial experiences. As part of a major refurbishment and technical upgrade, our client Glowing Bulbs needed a custom control interface to manage daily show operations. That’s where we came in.
The challenge: intuitive control for a high-tech system
The upgrade included a new screen design, a new projector layout and a shift from 2K to 5.4K resolution powered by a PIXERA penta media server. The venue required a custom-built user interface to seamlessly control show flow and integrate with the venue’s ticketing system - all in real-time.
Our role: custom development inside PIXERA Control
We worked remotely from Germany, handling:
Consulting on the media server setup
Training the team on PIXERA, the backbone of the system
Rebuilding the client’s Figma UI design inside PIXERA control
Developing two fully custom modules to manage show data and execute controls
Ensuring the UI worked seamlessly on a tablet for hosts
Key features: smart, simple, powerful
The interface had to be more than just buttons on a screen - it needed to provide critical real-time data and control over all aspects of a show.
Live information display:
Current show name, play time, total play time and remaining time
Next show name, countdown and total play time
Light system status and a clock
Operator actions:
Play, pause, stop
Adjust and mute audio
Control lighting states
Enter manual override mode for direct operator control
Behind the scenes: making it work
The venue’s ticketing system generated JSON data, which we processed inside PIXERA Control to synchronize.
Technical breakdown:
Fetching & processing data: The scheduling system exported a JSON file containing all show slots. We wrote a module to open, read, and convert this data - handling timing conversions between unix timestamps and several timelines in PIXERA with different frame rates.
Error-proof action buttons: While the core controls used PIXERA's API, we added custom logic to prevent errors, ensuring smooth and reliable operation.
Final result: a dome ready for the future
The upgraded Sound Dome now runs flawlessly in 5.4K, with an intuitive UI making show control effortless. A complex system made simple - exactly how it should be.
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