Helping the ±«Óãtv to explore the role that extended reality may have in future services, what value it can offer to audiences, and whether it is viable.
Project from 2019 - present
What we are doing
Tools are now widely available for creating virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), collectively defined as extended reality (XR), and these often include spatial audio capabilities. At the moment, however, these tools are focussed towards game developers, or else provide only simple omnidirectional video playback.
We are helping the ±«Óãtv to explore the role that XR may have in future services, what value it can offer to audiences, and whether it is viable to provide this. In particular, we’re trying to develop audio capabilities that are more immersive, interactive, and intelligent, and use these to give our production teams new and easy-to-use creative tools. When working with new technologies like XR, it’s vital that we make our output as widely available as possible while maintaining high quality.
In recent years we’ve helped the ±«Óãtv to create some award-winning VR experiences that put immersive audio to the fore, including and . We’re now focussing on production tools for the latest XR systems, to allow capture and rendering of live performances where the listener can freely move around. We’ve also been exploring the exciting potential of audio-led augmented reality on smart headsets. We’re investigating how machine understanding of the listener’s sound environment can allow personalised context-aware storytelling.
Why it matters
There is a lot of attention and investment in this area at the moment, and it has the potential to dramatically change the way we interact with digital media and the world around us. We think that it’s important for the ±«Óãtv to explore the role of public service media in this future, to bring added value to our audiences.
Currently, much of the leading work in XR comes from game development studios, but broadcasters are not game developers—we have different skills and goals. Through our work, we hope to enable our creative teams to use XR technology to tell their stories in interesting new ways.
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- ±«Óãtv R&D - 360° Video and Virtual Reality
- ±«Óãtv R&D - Binaural Sound
- ±«Óãtv R&D - Audio Augmented Reality - Developing 'Please Confirm You are not a Robot'
- ±«Óãtv R&D - Recommendations for Designing Audio Augmented Reality Experiences
- ±«Óãtv R&D - Designing and Developing Ideas for Audio AR Sunglasses
- ±«Óãtv R&D - Virtual Reality Sound in The Turning Forest
- ±«Óãtv R&D - Nothing to be Written: WW1 in an Immersive VR Soundscape
- ±«Óãtv Academy - Sound Bites - An Immersive Masterclass
- ±«Óãtv R&D - Sounds Amazing 2020: Our virtual audio conference
- ±«Óãtv R&D - 8 Tips for Producing VR Projects
- ±«Óãtv R&D - Factual Storytelling in 360 Video
