LED Screens in Domes: A Cost-Benefit Exploration

Projection has been the default for planetarium domes for decades: a bulb or laser throwing light onto a reflective surface. LED changes that relationship entirely. The dome itself becomes the display, pixel by pixel, and that single shift touches everything from brightness and contrast to what a venue can actually program on a Tuesday night. This Fulldome Forum, held February 12, 2026, brought together the people building these systems and the people running them day to day to talk through what LED domes really cost, what they make possible, and what a venue should check before committing to one.

You can watch the full session on YouTube.

The Manufacturer's Case: RSA Cosmos

Benjamin Cabut, managing director of RSA Cosmos (part of the Konica Minolta Group), laid out the technical argument for LED. Because LED panels emit light directly instead of reflecting it off a screen, they avoid the cross-bounce and color washing that comes with projection, and they run roughly 10 times brighter than a standard projection system. That brightness gap is the reason a straight price comparison is misleading: an LED dome costs about two to two and a half times more upfront than a comparable digital or hybrid system, but a projector rated to match LED brightness would already close most of that gap. Add in lifespan, LED panels last an estimated 25 to 30 years against 7 to 10 years for a projector bulb or laser, and a venue running projection is likely paying to replace its entire projection system two or three times over the same period LED would need zero replacements.

Cabut was also blunt about quality variation. Cheap LED panels show visible seams between panels and inconsistent color at the zenith, problems that matter far more for astronomy content, where a smooth low-luminosity gradient across the Milky Way is the whole point, than for video. His advice for any venue writing an RFP: talk to a vendor with real planetarium installation experience, not just a general LED supplier, and get specific about dome shape (LED domes don't have to be a pure hemisphere), resolution, and color gamut before price ever comes up. RSA Cosmos has installed 15-meter domes in Japan (2021-2022), a 20-meter dome in Suzhou, China, a 15-meter 8K dome for the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, and had a 20-meter 8K Singapore Science Center dome and a 20-meter 10K Amsterdam Artis planetarium in development at the time of this session.

Figure 1: Benjamin Cabut's opening slide for RSA Cosmos, part of the Konica Minolta Group.

Figure 2: RSA Cosmos and Konica Minolta Planetarium's place within the broader Konica Minolta group.

Figure 3: Cabut's cost breakdown: LED domes run roughly 2 to 2.5 times the price of a comparable digital or hybrid system, but at up to 10 times the brightness.

Figure 4: Projector lifespan (7-10 years) versus LED dome lifespan (at least 25 years), the basis for Cabut's two-to-three-replacements argument.

The Operator's Case: Cosm

Kirk Johnson, chief operations officer at Cosm, traced the company's lineage back to Evans & Sutherland, founded in Salt Lake City by David Evans and Ivan Sutherland, credited with helping invent computer graphics and later building Digistar, the first digital planetarium projector, in the early 1980s. Cosm announced its first LED dome product in 2017 and opened its first customer-facing dome at a Cosm venue in Los Angeles in July 2024. Its first science and education installation replaced the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History's IMAX screen with a 23-meter 8K LED dome; its first European dome opened at the Prague Planetarium; and an 18-meter 8K dome opened at the Arizona Science Center's Dorrance Dome. Cosm's own venues, in Los Angeles, Dallas, and soon Atlanta, Detroit, and Cleveland, run 26.6-meter 12K domes built for sports and entertainment audiences, alongside CX systems installed for science centers and giant screen venues, plus new installs underway at the University of Nevada Reno and, notably, a 20-meter 8K dome planned for Asunción, Paraguay, which would be the first LED dome in South America.

Figure 5: Kirk Johnson opens with a shot of visitors under a Cosm LED dome's starfield.

Figure 6: Cosm's installation history, from its first announced LED dome work in 2017 through planned 2027 openings including Cosm Cleveland and South America's first LED dome in Paraguay.

Johnson's framing for ROI: look past the sticker price to the full 20-to-25-year lifespan, since projector bulbs typically drop to half brightness within 20,000 to 25,000 hours of use and need repeated replacement. But he was equally direct that the number one thing a venue should do before writing a purchase order is go see an LED dome in person, since there's a real quality gap between serious manufacturers and cheaper imitations that photos and sales pitches won't reveal. He also pointed to what quality unlocks commercially: better content draws corporate rentals, concerts, and one-off events that a standard planetarium slate can't, which is revenue a venue wouldn't otherwise see.

Running One Day to Day: Fort Worth's Omni Theater

Nikki Diller, vice president of collections, interpretation, and programs at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, walked through what changed when the museum's Omni Theater, originally an IMAX screen that opened in 1983 and closed in 2020, reopened as a 23-meter 8K Cosm LED dome with 265 seats. The venue still runs a traditional projector-based planetarium (the Noble Planetarium) for school field trips and general admission, but the Omni now handles a much wider range of programming: live planetarium shows navigated in real time with an Xbox controller, Hollywood films played through a Blu-ray connection with third-party licensing through Swank or Criterion, and live concerts, including a premiere screening of the fulldome film Resolution, scored to the Polyphonic Spree's album of the same name, where the band performed live at the museum. The Omni has also hosted sound baths, trivia nights, karaoke, and a Taylor Swift-themed Galentine's Day event built from her music videos with custom background environments for each track.

Figure 7: Nikki Diller's overview of the Omni Theater's transformation from a 1983 IMAX screen into an 8K+ Cosm LED dome with 265 seats.

Figure 8: The Omni's full programming range, from live planetarium shows and Hollywood films to sound baths, trivia, and karaoke.

Jeremiah Dombach, the Omni Theater director, came into the role from a traditional film and commercial production background rather than the planetarium world, which he said turned out to be an asset for thinking about the space as a flexible content venue rather than only an astronomy theater. He described day-to-day maintenance as manageable: booting the system, running test content, and walking the theater to check panel connections, with most issues traceable to the signal chain (server cards, GPUs, display port cables) rather than anything more exotic. He's learned Digistar's newer 2025 release alongside tools like Unreal Engine, Resolume, and Nest Drop to build custom visual environments for live events.

Figure 9: Jeremiah Dombach's title slide for his tech-discussion segment on running the Omni Theater day to day.

Figure 10: The Omni Theater's full specs: a 23-meter, 165-degree dome tilted at 30 degrees, 8K x 8K resolution, up to 150 footlamberts of brightness, and a 32-speaker surround system.

The Prague Planetarium: A Case Study in Numbers

Martin Fuchs, creative director of the Prague Planetarium, has been at the institution since volunteering there as a teenager in 1991. Prague's roughly 60-year-old planetarium building is protected by law, which meant the team couldn't alter the structure to add catwalks around the new dome, so staff maintain the 22-meter, 8K, 280-seat LED dome by climbing ladders directly on the structure instead. The full renovation, including the LED system itself, cost $12 million and opened in June 2025. The results: 11,000 visitors on opening weekend, 100,000 within the first two months, an estimated half a million for the first year, and 1,500 shows sold out in a row since opening day.

Figure 11: Prague's 22-meter, 8K, 120fps, 280-seat LED dome, the $12 million renovation cost, and the attendance numbers Fuchs cited: 11,000 opening weekend, 100,000 in the first two months, and 500,000 estimated for the first year.

Figure 12: The Planetum Praha (Prague Planetarium) building, roughly 60 years old and protected by law, which shaped how the LED renovation was carried out.

Fuchs also weighed in on frame rate, a detail that matters more than it sounds: he considers 60fps the current standard for LED domes (30 feels too low), and while he's not generally a fan of 3D in planetariums, since it works against the sense of being able to look anywhere in a fully immersive space, he thinks LED is the first format where 3D actually works, because the extra brightness needed for stereo viewing (120fps split across two eyes) finally makes it viable.

The Bottom Line

Every panelist agreed on the core trade: LED domes cost more upfront but last three to four times longer than projection systems, get significantly brighter and higher-contrast images, and open up programming that would be difficult or impossible on a projector-based system, corporate rentals, concerts, mainstream film, and hybrid live-plus-recorded formats. The panel's shared advice for a venue considering the switch: define what you actually want the space to do before writing a spec sheet, then go see a real installation in person rather than trusting a sales deck.

Forum Speakers

• Benjamin Cabut — Managing Director, RSA Cosmos

• Kirk Johnson — Chief Operations Officer, Cosm

• Nikki Diller — VP of Collections, Interpretation, and Programs, Fort Worth Museum of Science and History

• Jeremiah Dombach — Omni Theater Director, Fort Worth Museum of Science and History

• Martin Fuchs — Creative Director, Prague Planetarium

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