24 AV FOCUS Virtual Reality
TOUCH AND GO One exhibit involved VR headsets and
haptic devices, allowing for a sense of touch and immersive vision
IMMERSIVE DESIGNING The exhibition was built by immersive design expert, Room One. It was a complex undertaking, requiring communication between robotic and haptic devices, which users (wearing Oculus Rift VR headsets) can use to interact with remote physical objects in real time. The force feedback haptic devices enable delicate manipulation of the remote-controlled robot arm and allow restorers and students to observe and physically feel the sculptures being worked on. This is combined with a 360º 4K video stream transmitted to the virtual reality headsets. The virtual reality technology was provided by Focal Point VR, who have a wealth of experience in livestreaming VR and 360 content for sport, music,
art, education and culture. The company contributed a 360° video camera rig, live stitching and a streaming solution for the 5G trial zone installation. The team deployed a three-camera VR rig, composed of Blackmagic Micro Studio 4K cameras, explains Paul James, head of production at Focal Point VR. “We used Blackmagic cameras because, at the time we put this together, there were very few cameras out there that used single-cable SDI for 4K,” he says. “We have multiple cameras, so we don’t want quad-SDI coming out of each – that’s just a pain. And the form-factor works. They are very small and we can fit them close together. They are well-ventilated, don’t overheat and they run forever. We did some testing with other camera technologies, but they seemed to get to a certain temperature and then just stop working.” The camera outputs were live stitched and sent to the Focal Point VR Player, which was running on Oculus Rift headsets. Focal Point’s stitching solution employs Blackmagic 6G-SDI ingest cards in addition to the Focal Point VR live streaming software. BETTER CONNECTIVITY Despite the theme of the exhibit, 5G was not capable of providing 100% of the installation connectivity. Focal Point VR needed a robust connectivity solution to transport the ultra-low latency, very bandwidth-intensive live VR. After looking at a number of protocols, including
WebRTC, the company went with NewTek’s Network Device Interface (NDI) technology. NDI is a royalty-free software standard that enables video-compatible products to communicate, deliver and receive broadcast-quality video over IP networks. NDI is a way to get very high bit rates and resolutions without having to lay cable everywhere. Running over a GigE network, the lens-to-headset display latency was less than 200 microseconds, which technologies in the past,” explains James, “and knew there was an issue with latency, so that is why we went with NDI… But we have just done exactly the same thing – minus the robot – using 5G for real at an event held by Huawei.” Live museum and installation projects continue to play a major part in Focal Point’s work. Recently, the company has been working with Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK on proof of concept for a project, which will be rolled out as a full version in a museum. It has also been working with the University of York on a VR/AR project. “Most of the interest at the moment is coming from university and museum people,” says James. “At the moment they’re in the UK, but we’re not stuck with the UK only – that’s just where we happen to be working right now.” If 5G makes good on its promise, Focal Point VR will be able to work everywhere from anywhere. outperformed the original brief. “We had used other streaming
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