On-Air Effects

The On-Air Effects project oversees the application of our core image-based tracking and graphics technology for specific applications in broadcast and visual media production. One of the most exciting applications of some of the technology we’ve developed has been taking place over at the Natural History Museum.

The Museum’s new Darwin Centre houses the Attenborough Studio, a multimedia theatre where staff have been working with the BBC’s Natural History Unit to produce a half-hour show that incorporates augmented reality technology. Each person in the audience is given a handheld unit that looks like a small laptop with a camera fitted at the back. When looking at the theatre through the screen the audience are suddenly presented with sights including dinosaurs roaming among them.

The technology that creates this augmented reality is derived from Free-D, a camera tracking system we developed around a decade ago. We adapted this system to work with hand-held cameras by using tiny infrared ‘target’ LEDs that allow the location of each unit in the theatre to be tracked. Having derived the position and orientation of each camera, software then renders the dinosaurs on screen in the correct location relative to each and every viewer.

Another variant of our camera tracking technology has been applied to create a “virtual steadicam” using a combination of a fisheye lens and specialised image stabilisation. In other developments, we’ve also been applying camera tracking technology we developed in the VSAR project to sports graphics. The technology ‘learns’ features of a scene such as corners and areas of rich detail, and can then identify and track these features in a live camera feed, allowing it to work out exactly where the camera is pointing. This information can be used to overlay virtual graphics such as world record lines. Licensed to Red Bee Media for use in the Piero graphics system, it was first used in July 2009 for long and triple jumps at the Aviva London Grand Prix.