The AlloSphere is a research facility in a theatre-like pavilion in a spherical shape, of opaque material, used to project computer-generated imagery and sounds.
[2] The AlloSphere is housed at UCSB California NanoSystems Institute[3] building, "CNSI," or Elings Hall, a 62,000-square-foot (5,800 m2) facility that opened in 2007.
[5] The AlloSphere includes a three-story cube that has been insulated extensively with sound-absorbing material, making it one of the largest echo-less chambers in the world.
[6] The loudspeaker real-time sound synthesis cluster (140 individual speaker elements plus sub-woofers) is suspended behind the aluminum screen resulting in 3-D audio.
Computation clusters include simulation, sensor-array processing, real-time video processing for motion-capture and visual computing, render-farm/real-time ray-tracing and radiosity cluster, and content and prototyping environments.