AR

The guidelines define metrics to effectively capture the impact of AR campaigns. Public comment are open until March 9.

The network will use 165 cameras this Sunday for its coverage of the game in Las Vegas as well as pregame, halftime and postgame shows, which CBS says is the most ever for a Super Bowl. They will be supported by 19 mobile production trucks. And CBS’s 1080p HDR production from Allegiant Stadium will also be used as the backbone of an alternative broadcast on the children’s network Nickelodeon, Super Bowl LVIII Live from Bikini Bottom, that will use enhanced graphics and augmented reality to incorporate characters from the popular SpongeBob SquarePants animated series into live game coverage. Plus, there are the “doink cams.”

A new ESPN facility in Bristol, Conn., has introduced dramatic new virtual set capabilities for the sports network, taking its production game to the next level. Pictured: Studio X, the SportsCenter set, showing the 45’ by 16’ LED “depth wall” that supports dynamic virtual production elements.

LED systems and visualization engines are coming ever more into the range of even small broadcasters as the underlying technology and the workflows around them continuously improve. Pictured: This video wall, made to look like a big window, shows what is going on outside, and as the water rises, the window gets a crack and floods the studio. The crack, water and the sandbags are Max Reality elements. (Source: The Weather Company)

At Apple’s last big developer conference, Bob Iger announced that Disney+ would be available on the tech company’s new virtual reality headset. It could be a fad — or the future of mass media.

After years of speculation, Apple CEO Tim Cook hailed the arrival of the sleek goggles — dubbed “Vision Pro” — at the the company’s annual developers conference held on a park-like campus in Cupertino, California, that Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs helped design. The device will be capable to toggling between virtual reality, or VR, and augmented reality, or AR, which projects digital imagery while users still see can see objects in the real world.

Attendance and exhibitors will still fall well below the pre-pandemic high-water mark, but station groups and vendors plan to hit the Sunday-Wednesday event with packed schedules and shopping lists.

For Fox’s 10^th Super Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., this Sunday, the broadcaster will integrate modular “flypacks” built for the FIFA World Cup along with new augmented reality graphics. Above, State Farm Stadium and the Fox pregame set (Christian Petersen/Getty Images).

Fox has created a modular 2110 system that ties into U.S. operations for its upcoming World Cup coverage. Both Fox and Telemundo, which has U.S. Spanish-language rights to the tournament, will see a series of firsts when the Cup launches in Qatar next week.

The fully remote production launches tonight with a new mobile fleet of 16 that’s producing the games in 1080p with High Dynamic Range with around 250 people onsite for each TNF game. (Courtesy of Prime Video)

Video walls continue to dominate studio design trends in the U.S. with ever-broader use framed by the “warmth” of natural materials and local personality. Abroad, newsrooms have been more embracing of the virtual reality sets of which domestic broadcasters are still wary. Above, FX Design Group designed and installed the KHON Honolulu set, which features large video walls.

Recent supply chain issues notwithstanding, newsrooms are embracing LED video walls for their dropping prices, ease of use and improved quality over older, LCD options. Above: WRDW Augusta, Ga., included a large video wall in its new facility, designed by FX, that it moved into earlier this year. (Source: WRDW)

Nate Johnson, director of weather operations for NBCUniversal Local, says the group’s NBC and Telemundo stations are using augmented reality to enhance weather reporting. Every tool counts, he emphasizes, since competition for talent is getting stiffer as Fox readies its own weather network. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

It’s not every day you watch someone stop a truck mid-air, in the middle of a tornado. Albert Martinez, Emmy-award winning chief meteorologist for Univision’s network news, may not be a superhero, but his knack for augmented reality (AR) helps his weather explainers fly off the screen. In addition to that flying truck, Martinez has withstood Category 5 hurricane winds, crashed a car off a bridge, submerged himself in nine feet of dirty flood water, and started a wildfire in the Univision studio. Martinez has his own theory about why his unconventional weather explainers are so popular with viewers.

Executives from CNN, The Weather Channel, Brainstorm and Planar will talk about how broadcasters are using augmented reality to enhance storytelling during a July 15 TVNewsCheck Working Lunch Webinar that will also explore how broadcasters are using virtual reality to create the next generation of news, weather and sports sets. Register here.

New camera angles and innovative AR graphics will mark Tampa’s Super Bowl LV with a sparser crowd allowing for novel camera positions and experimentation.

Augmented reality has had a prominent role in election coverage in the United States, but it was pared down a bit for this year’s 2020 general election, while internationally it was giant.

Broadcasters won’t be hampered by remote working conditions for election night 2020, and they have a bevy of new graphics and augmented reality tools to help them tell the story. Above, Broadcasters can make complex data easy for viewers to grasp through augmented reality objects generated by Brainstorm graphics using real-time data from different sources. A Punt, a regional channel in Spain, covered municipal elections, and this interactive map shows the winning party in each town, with detailed results for the seats won in each town are shown on the chart of the left side. The bars on the bottom show a rundown of all the cities, in alphabetical order, with the results in real time.

Fox will use more than 100 manned and robotic cameras to cover the game, including 24 “Super-Motion” cameras to support replays; 20 goal-line and end-line pylon cameras; wireless “Line to Gain” cameras that travel up and down the field in alignment with the first-down marker; and two different SkyCam systems which operate at different elevations. It will also use 72 field mics, as well as wireless player mics, to capture game audio. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Black News Channel is constructing a $26 million facility in Tallahassee, Fla., anchored by technology from Bitcentral, Vizrt and Sony. Its engineering chief, Kenny Elcock, explains how interoperability is key.

Snap Inc. on Tuesday said it will raise $1 billion in short-term debt and plans to invest in more media content, augmented reality features and may also buy other companies.