The Future Group, creators of live photo-realistic virtual production system Pixotope®, today unveils its latest Version 1.3 software featuring a wide range of advances that significantly improve how virtual environments interact with real-world elements.

Pixotope enables the production of mixed-reality (MR) content by bringing together physical components such as presenters, actors, props and free-moving cameras, with virtually created assets such as scenes, graphics, animated characters, or any other computer-generated elements. Pixotope forms the central production hub when creating mixed-reality content for broadcast and live events, with Version 1.3 offering new object tracking, powerful lighting integration, enhanced colour management and more.

Polygon Labs, an innovative studio pushing the boundaries of interactive data applications and visual branding, is today announcing the launch of its centralized web-based weather data management and curation solution, Ipsum Weather. This announcement follows the recent release of Ipsum 2.0, the company’s data aggregation and visualization platform for broadcast news, sports, weather and branding.

Ipsum Weather, a data aggregation, management and playout scheduling solution for on-air weather presentations and sponsorship graphics, aggregates and curates weather data (point-data, satellite, radar, isobars, wind conditions, etc.) and weather alerts from a number of different providers. For gallery and studio weather graphics, the real-time weather data solution is fully integrated with Viz Trio and Viz Director for Viz Engine playout control, as well as newsroom templates in Viz Pilot. It can also provide database management and automated playlist control of master control weather graphics played out on Unreal Engine or Viz Engine.

Mo-Sys Engineering, a global leader in real time camera tracking and remote systems, is proud to announce a collaboration with Panasonic. The AW-UE150 and the Mo-Sys StarTracker module will empower AR and virtual studio graphics by together creating engaging content with natural depth and changing the perspective of the virtual background.

Previously planned to launch at NAB, the webinars will be co-hosted by Panasonic and Mo-Sys and will showcase the new Panasonic AW-UE150 - a 4K, wide-angle lens, PTZ head with absolute camera tracking for AR and virtual studio application. With Mo-Sys StarTracker, the venue or event is no longer restricted to a fixed camera position and can be more creative using the PTZ head on a jib, crane or a dolly for unlimited camera motion.

Polygon Labs, an innovative creative studio pushing the boundaries of interactive data applications and visual branding, has today launched two work at home service initiatives, Creative Hub and Training Lab.

A cost-effective, multi-disciplined, on-demand broadcast design and developer subscription-based service, Creative Hub allows news publishers and broadcasters to book any size project for virtual studios, augmented reality, branding, real-time graphics packages, interactive story-telling graphics, video walls, multi-screen tickers, downstream channels, using a flexible utilization plan with no blackout dates. The subscriber simply purchases a number of creative service hours per month and uses them as and when desired.

Training Lab is the company’s new expert remote training service, which specialises in Vizrt real-time graphics, workflow solutions and products for channel branding, template creation, virtual production, data visualisation and interactive story-telling.

The Future Group, developer of live photo-realistic virtual production system Pixotope™, today announced that it provided the mixed reality platform for WePlay! Esports’ ‘Dota 2 Tug of War: Mad Moon’ tournament, which took place in Kiev, Ukraine, from 19-23 February. WePlay! Esports, which organises tournaments as well as providing online coverage, has the vision to blend competitive esports with entertainment in all-embracing coverage – “esportainment” is the word coined by Oleg Krot, CEO at WePlay! Esports.

To bring the audience into the esports action, WePlay! Esports decided to use augmented reality. “For us, augmented reality is a powerful tool to enhance the tournament theme, and add creativity and consistency to the broadcast,” said Aleksii Gutiantov, Head of AR Dept at WePlay! Esports. He turned to the proven Pixotope solution from The Future Group: “the best product on the market in my experience,” Gutiantov added.

Pixotope takes the remarkable rendering power of the Unreal Engine from Epic Games, and builds it into a complete virtual production hub. While offering a user interface simple enough for the pressures of live production, it provides along with the ability to make last minute changes while in live mode, all the power of an augmented reality system including camera tracking, motion capture and data-driven graphics.

The Future Group, provider of live photo-realistic virtual production system, Pixotope™, has revealed its key involvement in the stunning production and delivery of the NFL’s ground-breaking Super Bowl LIV, mixed reality pre-game presentation. The complex, seven-minute production combined live action from multiple moving cameras with augmented virtual stages and graphics. The 2020 Super Bowl was watched by an estimated domestic audience of 100 million people, plus international viewers.

The Future Group provided six installations of its virtual production platform, Pixotope, along with essential technical expertise to liaise with all other aspects of the multi-faceted production.

As an opener to the Super Bowl LIV, NFL planned to reveal its “100 All Time Team”. They approached fan experience company– coincidently named, The Famous Group – to design and choreograph the pre-show content. The brief was to celebrate the history of the sport and the contribution of those 100 players and 10 coaches, using graphics, historical film and live shots of attendees. The Famous Group looked to achieve this through extensive use of mixed reality virtual elements, and selected Pixotope, with expertise from The Future Group, as their technological solution.

The complexities of such a project cannot be overstated. Multiple virtual assets such as stages and screens needed to be designed to exactly match the stadium environment to which they would be augmented. Cameras needed to be tracked in real time and have their lenses aligned so that the virtual elements would be generated at precisely the right angle to accurately match real-world positions. Lighting needed to be measured so that it could be simulated in the virtual world to ensure correct shadows and highlights.

In-stadium screens, which would show the augmented content to the crowd, had to be accurately marked out in the virtual scene so that they could be blocked out to avoid visual “feedback”. All this had to take place under precise time control to synchronise with the voice-over and contributing performers in the stadium.

Pixotope product specialist, David Stroud, was part of a team of experienced mixed reality technicians, helping to specify and install the required technology, and bring together all the constituent departments. The Future Group team were involved from the outset, initially collaborating using a shared virtual project to provide technical assistance for The Famous Group creatives. Then later, the team positioned themselves at the Hard Rock Stadium, Miami FL, where the main event would take place 11 days later.

David Stroud recalled, “Although the virtual scene had been set up “offline” from scans and measurements from the stadium, there are inevitably adjustments that can only be done on site. We used our Pixotope virtual production platform to receive images and tracking data from each of the cameras, one of which was a Skycam “wire-camera”, and augment onto those the virtual elements designed by The Famous Group. This allowed everyone to see the results in real time, making adjustments and improvements as we rehearsed the show in the days leading up to the Super Bowl.”

Stroud continued, “We helped the camera operators visualise how the preshow would come together, as understandably, they were more used to following the unscripted action of a football game than reacting to very specific time cues. Pixotope has the capability to continuously output the final result, even while editing the graphics – a great tool for directors following rapid changes and updates because it’s always live.

“We also worked closely with camera tracking specialists SMT, and in fact, we were able to improve our data exchanges to further perfect the virtual camera motion. And we worked with both the broadcaster (Fox) and the companies providing in-stadium displays to ensure the very highest visual quality possible.”

Andrew Isaacson, Executive VP Business Development for creative agency The Famous Group affirms, “Needless to say, the best creative ideas rely on solid technological platforms and expertise to deliver them. This could not be truer for a live event on the scale of The Super Bowl. We needed to know, without any shadow of a doubt, that what we planned would be delivered faultlessly, accurately and to the highest quality. This is why we chose Pixotope as our platform for delivering cutting edge mixed reality for the Super Bowl.

“Having used Pixotope on previous productions, we know that the system, and expertise from The Future Group, allow our creative ideas to be unleashed to the great benefit of our clients like the NFL. We look forward to working on many more productions with Pixotope.”

All hardware was provided by Quince Imaging and camera tracking was completed by SMT. The final mixed reality sequence can be viewed online, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqXBKweKQ9U

t the 2018 NAB Show, ChyronHego will present the first-ever fully software-based studio production to be broadcast live from a trade show floor. Showcasing the company’s range of live production software products, the ChyronHego Live Studio Show will run in a completely virtualized environment and will be broadcast in two parallel production workflows: as a traditional ground-based SDI production and running in a private data center powered by Cisco.

European collaborative project creates new creative opportunities for immersive user experiencesProject Dreamspace, a three-year European Commission-funded project seeks to explore new ways of integrating real and virtual environments, and is showcasing the results of its work as part of the IBC Future Zone. Central to the project is high precision camera tracking combined with real-time depth capture, provided by Ncam, together with virtual production tools from The Foundry.

Ncam, the innovative developer of camera tracking and virtual production technology, is demonstrating its remarkable power and practicality in a series of demonstrations at NAB2015. New features for broadcast tool Ncam Live and movie visualisation system Ncam Reality will be shown in live demonstrations on the FilmLight booth (SL6830), with the Red camera on the Vizrt booth (SL2417) and at Brainstorm (SL5517).