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Advances in video game technology from game publishers like Epic Games and Unity Technologies are driving increased adoption of augmented reality graphics and virtual sets among broadcasters, as the latest gaming engines afford real-time rendering and far more realistic AR graphics and virtual environments than previously achievable.
This level of improvement makes the use of AR and virtual sets viable on an everyday basis, according to broadcast experts who gathered last week for the TVNewsCheck webinar, AR/VR State of the Art, moderated by this reporter.
Mike Chesterfield
The Weather Channel started experimenting with AR and virtual sets as a storytelling tool about six years ago, using them to supplement the large flat panel displays and video walls in its Atlanta studios to describe and explain weather events. But the network quickly faced difficulties.
“We recognized almost immediately that what we were doing at the time, which was using a traditional broadcast graphics engine, was not going to be sustainable,” said Mike Chesterfield, senior director of weather presentation for The Weather Channel (TWC). “It was just too hard of a process, mainly due to the rendering that it took to get these things done. The biggest improvement, and really the key to where we are at today, was the emergence of real-time graphics engines.”
TWC uses Epic’s Unreal gaming engine, whose real-time capabilities remove a “major blocker” in the production process, said Chesterfield, and has developed “bridge” applications that link Unreal to traditional
