In the largest sphere on Earth, setting records for:
• 160,000 square feet of 16K-resolution surround screen
• 167,000 speakers for acoustic beamforming
• $2.3 billion to construct
Gen brought me for my birthday. Nostalgia: the very first concert tickets I ever purchased were for U2… 40 years ago! I somehow expected they would look the same today 🙂
From my video compilation, we gathered in a cement structure propping up a Pantheon dome overhead, replete with digital doves. The Edge brought the walls down with his opening riff to Zoo Station.
Even Better Than the Real Thing was self-referential, with a frenetic Vegas strip simulation dripping down from above; the images are Gen-AI renderings of Elvis, descending into the church of Vegas.
Then the Sphere became transparent, looking out onto Vegas as if there were no walls (but it was a sim; I could tell it had looping traffic). The buildings were deconstructed by construction cranes to the original desert-scape, and the encore felt like a sunrise set at Burning Man. Where the Streets Have No Name seemed apropos.
And the final song, Beautiful Day, was joyful, an ultra-realistic animation of native Nevada wildlife, like a tableau splashed across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A beautiful birth day indeed!
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