Pixotope’s new XR Edition to open up extended reality for everyone

Pixotope has announced its XR Edition for extended reality productions, which will make its debut at IBC2022 on stand 7.D08 at the RAI in Amsterdam from September 9-12. Developed in response to the growing trend of LED volume use in virtual production and the need for hardware optimisation, Pixotope’s XR Edition includes a range of tools to simplify setup and operation by reducing the technical complexities and associated resource costs of XR workflows and environments.

Pixotope is knocking down a major barrier to virtual production adoption with XR Edition by addressing the fundamental challenges that have historically made it difficult to leverage XR outside of major blockbuster productions. Its purpose-built tools address common operator pain points while removing the need for proprietary hardware, effectively bringing users an off-the-shelf XR solution.

“In the past, XR productions have been limited to select teams with highly specialized technical resources,” said Pixotope Chief Revenue Officer David Dowling. “With our XR Edition, Pixotope has developed an easy-to-use solution that enables wider adoption with tools specifically designed to address pain points like colour matching, LED meshing and alignment, camera switching, hardware consolidation, and system resilience. As a result, XR is no longer limited to a small group of specialists, it’s a viable option for productions of all sizes.”

Beyond workflow simplification and innovation, XR Edition brings virtual production a step forward in sustainability efforts thanks to the ways it optimizes hardware usage. Key functions that achieve this are XR Edition’s multi-wall support, which features one input and three outputs to render one virtual scene, enabling users to drive several large LED volumes from a single server/workstation; and in-software camera switching to synchronise AR elements and LED walls without a hardware-based switcher.

Key benefits and features in the XR Edition include: 

• Streamlined, simplified set-up 
• Unique colour match functionality for AR<->XR workflows
  This unique colour matching tool enables users to quickly and easily match the colours of in-camera visual effects (ICVFX) and those appearing through the LED volume for seamless AR/XR workflows and effects. This is particularly useful when augmented reality (AR) is used alongside XR for set extension or when adding virtual elements to a scene as colour reproduction is affected by both the camera and LED volume, making it difficult to accurately colour match.
• LED mesh import and automatic alignment
  By combining procedural geometry creation tools and tracking technology, users will be provided with an automated method for converting CAD and geometry representations of LED volumes to virtual LED projection surfaces. These will be further refined using computer vision to ensure perfect registrations for XR and AR set extension, which will significantly reduce setup time.
• Reduced and optimised hardware usage
• Multi-input switching in software for changing perspectives
  When using more than one camera in an XR setup, the images on your LED volume and your AR rendering need to synchronously change perspective when switching between cameras in a single frame. With in-software switching, Pixotope ensures this operation is accurate and hassle-free without the need for additional hardware.
• Multi-wall support to optimise hardware use
  With multi-wall support, Pixotope can drive several LED walls from a single server/workstation. This not only reduces the amount of hardware needed, and therefore cost, but also mitigates many common issues such as output synchronization and sharing of assets over multiple machines.
• Resilient, robust, and reliable
• Health and diagnostics monitoring for failover and system resilience
  When it comes to live virtual production, failure is not an option. With Pixotope, the clear and comprehensive health and diagnostics monitoring enables users to proactively address any issues that might arise and quickly troubleshoot and, in the case of a system failure, seamlessly failover to a backup machine.