Sony backs Cosm's headset-free immersive domes
A Hollywood studio just put $100 million behind a bet that immersive entertainment doesn't need a headset.
A Hollywood studio just put $100 million behind a bet that immersive entertainment doesn't need a headset.
Cosm builds dome venues around a technology it calls Shared Reality: an 87-foot-diameter, 12K-plus-resolution curved LED screen wrapping around a live audience, showing sport, film and concerts with nobody wearing a device. Four domes are open now - Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta and Detroit, which opened September 10 - with a fifth and largest yet under construction in Cleveland for a 2027 opening.
Sony Pictures Entertainment became the lead investor in Cosm's latest funding round in June, taking a minority stake and a board seat for its CEO. This summer the model got tested at real scale: Fox Sports and FIFA routed 40 matches of the World Cup through the three original domes, each one holding close to 1,200 people watching the same feed together.
A decade of immersive hardware has mostly meant one person, one headset. Cosm is building the opposite: a room full of strangers sharing a screen large enough to fill their field of view, funded by a studio that makes the content to put on it.
