Extended Reality in the Virtual Environment

EVOKE Studios talks to TVB Europe about how they used our StarTracker “set and forget” solution at the AIM Awards 2020 to provide precise camera tracking and build complex extended reality environments.

EVOKE Studios is a new venture which brings together established designers and engineers to extend what is possible on stage. Their founder Vincent Steenhoek talks to TVB Europe about how the EVOKE team used the Mo-Sys StarTracker 'set and forget' camera tracking solution at this year’s AIM Awards, from the Association for Independent Music, on the 12th August 2020.

"Planning a project like the AIM Awards means we need to do considerable testing and plan with enough contingency. It also means that we need the supporting technology - like camera tracking - to just work. It has to be completely stable, no questions asked.

"That is why we used StarTracker from Mo-Sys. It is a 'set and forget' solution which uses dots on the ceiling that light up under ultra violet light; that's why they call it StarTracker; once the star pattern is captured, it is there forever.

"We made the AIM videos at the new Deep Space studios at Creative Technology in Crawley. They have StarTracker set up on a jib, with all the connections to the lens and grip. What StarTracker gives us is a constant stream of extremely precise camera locations in three dimensional space, along with camera rotation and – from lens sensors – zoom and aperture (for depth of field). We used its translation, rotation and lens data inside the graphics servers (from disguise) to drive virtual cameras in Notch.

"Our experience with StarTracker is that it gives us ultra-reliable, highly accurate positional data with no encoder drift to speak of, and ultra low latency so we can create virtual elements and match them to the scene captured live by the camera. As XR consists of a lot of moving parts and separate calibrations, it helps a lot if there are parts of the process that are a constant.

"For EVOKE as a creative studio and systems integrator, we are enabled to do what we do by companies like MoSys. In turn, building on technologies like StarTracker enables awards shows like the AIMs to be presented in broadcast quality virtual environments."

Read the article in full in the TVB Europe November/December issue below:

TVB Europe 78 November / December 2020

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