The Weather Channel To Use MR To Showcase The Power Of Tornadoes

The Weather Channel have revealed plans to showcase the lasted in mixed reality (MR) technology but creating their own tornado. Broadcasters have been taking advantage of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology for sometime now. The Weather Channel is hoping to use this technology to deliver viewers an immersive and realistic experience that will demonstrate the power of a tornado.

This demonstration of technology will take place on 20th June, 2018 where The Weather Channel will create a hyper-realistic tornado and show it heading directly for The Weather Channel HQ building in Atlanta, showing the full devastation it causes to everything in its path.

During the early morning hours of 6am, 7am and 8am, on-camera meteorologist Jim Cantore will walk viewers through the genesis of the storm and explain how to keep them and their families safe during the severe events. The immersive MR experience is being used to allow The Weather Channel experts to take views inside the storm like never before to educate and inform – which is particularly important as the hurricane season approaches.

To create this truly spectacular experience The Weather Channel has partnered with The Future Group to help ignite a revolution of weather presentation. The strategy employ the power of advanced, real-time graphic rendering and visual effects with Frontier powered by Unreal Engine to build a end result. Thanks to the capabilities of the technology and the Unreal Engine, viewers will be treated to the most realistic digital recreation of a tornado that will rival the real thing.

Alongside being a means to educate and inform viewers of the dangerous nature force, and how to best prepare and react to one, it will also demonstrate how The Weather Channel are working to pioneer new methods of broadcast presentation, featuring real-time immersive storytelling. The Weather Channel plans to use immersive MR technology in 70% of their programming by the year 2020.

As immersive media is used more and more within broadcasting to help bring storytelling to new levels for viewers around the world. VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest so you can keep up to date with the immersive industry.

The Weather Channel Will Be Making Weather More Immersive

In an attempt to really show the impact of various weather conditions, particularly those at the extreme ends, The Weather Channel’s parent company are teaming with The Future Group to present broadcasts in mixed reality (MR).

The technology being used in the broadcasts is using Unreal Engine, one of the most popular engines for videogame VR and MR experiences, and an engine which has begin to see use outside of videogames in industry.

The aim of the use of MR is to improve public understanding of the effects of extreme weather conditions and how it can impact people’s daily lives. The Future Group have worked extensively on immersive and interactive projects, including big-name brands such as Star Wars.

The Weather Channel has previously experimented with augmented reality (AR) in its broadcasts, particularly for sports coverage, using a 3D model of a sports field and explaining how weather can affect the event.

“Our immersive mixed reality (IMR) presentations will combine 360 HD video and augmented and virtual reality elements that are driven by real-time data and our expert on-air talent to transport our audience into the heart of the weather,” said the Vice President of Design for The Weather Group, Michael Potts. “Using The Future Group’s Frontier powered by Unreal Engine for weather broadcasting has never been done before. We are excited to continue our investment in the latest technologies that are not just cutting-edge, but on the bleeding edge of design and science.”

The Weather Channel has said that it is always looking for new ways to convey important safety and warning messages to viewers. By using Unreal engine and MR technology, the Weather Channel hopes it can continue to push the boundaries for immersive presentation by showing things like tornadoes or storm surges in detail.

For further news on new and innovative uses of mixed reality technology, keep checking back with VRFocus.

The Future Group Utilises Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to Create Mixed Reality TV and Gaming

Norwegian company, The Future Group, a developer of interactive mixed reality (IMR), has announced a licensing agreement with Epic Games to use its Unreal Engine 4 middleware for film-quality 3D rendered scenes on TV broadcasts.

The Future Group has built unique enhancements specific to broadcast TV on top of Unreal Engine, providing the ability to merge people and objects in real-time into virtual worlds.

The Future Group - Interactive Mixed Reality

Having recently emerged for stealth, The Future Group’s new product is Frontier, a 3D visual effects platform being used by FremantleMedia in their upcoming IMR game show for worldwide primetime TV, Lost in Time. Using Frontier powered by Unreal Engine, TV production companies can create live photorealistic effects and virtual sets that are integrated with anything or anyone from the real world to create IMR-enhanced shows, mobile games and more.

“The Future Group is delivering one of the most advanced uses of Unreal Engine in broadcast to date with Lost in Time,” said Kim Libreri, CTO, Epic Games in a statement. “The visual quality is absolutely stunning and we look forward to seeing the Frontier platform open new doors in interactive episodic entertainment.”

“Working with Unreal Engine allows us to use the performance standard-bearer in game engines as the foundation of Frontier,” said Jens Petter Høili, co-founder and Chairman of The Future Group. “Epic has been nothing but supportive of The Future Group in our efforts, and we are very excited to have found that Unreal is capable of amazing real-time Hollywood effects, even in an HD broadcast environment and workflow. We are using Unreal to create blockbuster IMR effects, and enabling it through our broadcast platform Frontier.”

The company was co-founded by Bård Anders Kasin, a Technical Director at Warner Brothers, who was on the team responsible for the visual effects in the The Matrix Trilogy and acclaimed Nordic entrepreneur Jens Petter Høili. With Future Group-developed enhancements, Frontier provides highly-realistic scenery through state-of-the-art features such as particle systems, dynamic textures, live reflections, shadows and collision detection, all at a quality level for broadcast HD resolutions and beyond.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of The Future Group and Epic Games, reporting back with further updates.