40 XTREME Esports & Mixed Reality
an esports tournament; where real world players were able to enter the game map and interact with their in-game characters. PROGRAM DESIGN Scott Miller, a technical producer working in partnership with Pixel Artworks, was instrumental in bringing the design of the mixed reality program together. The brief from HP was to “create an immersive experience that would look good to both the live and broadcast audiences,” he explains. “They wanted to do something in-camera with big LED video walls and mixed reality tricks.” Miller designed a bespoke pipeline toolset using Disguise, Notch and TouchDesigner technologies. Disguise’s super-speedy gx 2c and gx 1 media servers were used to power the real time mixed- reality content that had been made in Notch, with data coming in from the game to power the info graphics. The final output was then carried out in Disguise’s Extended Reality (xR) workflows and sent to the LED video walls that made up the game arena. The LED video walls worked to cleverly “transport” the shoutcasters into the game world, which could be rendered by the game engine to place them directly into the game map. “The game engine was controlled by six TouchDesigner machines, written with
custom code, to power the image rendering and manage the game data,” Miller notes. Mixed reality was furthermore used to allow players and interviewers to “step into” the game world and replay the highlights. Using a Steadicam and rendering the game engine into both the LED and virtual worlds, the players could see themselves in the game and talk about their best moves. “We worked closely with the game map designers to develop a pipeline that would make the real-world set, game data and content align with the digital equivalent. The outcome was a virtual arena that, to live and broadcast audiences, would seem as though a real person was in the game world,” Miller explains. Viewers tuning into the Twitch live stream from home were able to see the in-game footage, combined with the live commentary from the CS:GO shoutcasters. Plus, regular studio cutaways meant that fans were also able to see their idols celebrating their kills in the flesh. ALL THE FEEDS Streaming services company Flux Broadcast handled the technical infrastructure for the broadcast, working with Miller and Pixel Artworks to integrate mixed reality into the broadcast infrastructure – even housing the team at its headquarters in the lead-up to the event so their communication and planning was precise. Ross Mason, the company’s director, explains the brief, which was “to make the most immersive esports tournament ever”.
GOOD OMENS Mixed reality was used to allow players to ‘step into’
the game world and replay the highlights
THE GAME ENGINE WAS CONTROLLED BY SIX TOUCHDESIGNERMACHINES
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