In 1999 Glassworks were asked to research and post-produce a
360 ° x 220 ° film for a spherical cinema being designed for VW in Wolfsburg, Germany. The first of it's kind; this theatre used four overlapping digital cinema systems hidden in the walls of the dome to create a high-resolution immersed environment.

Glassworks Special Projects were involved from the outset in the conception, shooting, playback and projection of the film. Shot on location in South Africa, Prague and Italy with Vista-Vision using Nikon 6mm and 8mm extreme fish-eye lenses, the film was then scanned to create a 6000 x 4000 pixel (16 bit) image for processing in SoftImage and Shake. 
The complex geometric distortions needed for the projectors and the overlapping soft edges were pre-rendered to the four Qubits DDR's each driving a Barco R12 digital projector. Additional material created in SoftImage 3D included underwater scenes with Dolphins and Goldfish (animated with Glassworks Flocking System) and an impossible crane / zoom shot of a Basilica where the camera drops 200 feet while zooming from 45 ° to 220 ° field of view.

Despite many technical problems involving playback and projection, the six-month project was delivered within 5 minutes of the deadline.In 2002, we re-visited the VW Dome Project to create nine new films.