Alhurra TV chooses Zero Density virtual environments for its latest electoral format

The technology of Zero Density made possible the generation of virtual environments and the deployment of augmented and extended reality graphics for the coverage of the US legislative elections of Alhurra TV.

Managed by Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), the channel Alhurra TV and their digital platforms conducted a broadcast of more than 30 hours of coverage and analysis of the US legislative elections. To make its proposal more striking and complete, as well as to be able to present great amounts of data along with electoral results in real time, the chain's team decided to rely on advanced graphics.

Needing a robust and reliable virtual studio and AR workflow for live broadcast, the Alhurra team opted to use Alhurra solutions. Zero Density. Despite the tight schedule and challenges, after completing the lens calibration in two weeks, the team managed to go on air on November 8, as planned, and continued for three days while the United States elected its House of Representatives and Senate. Real-time graphics engines Zero Density They ran non-stop, without needing to be shut down or restarted.

The focus of the broadcast was the generation of a virtual environment with photorealistic capabilities. Using Reality Editor, a version of Unreal Engine With a built-in Zero Density relay toolset, the internal team designed a hyper-realistic virtual recreation of the Capitol in just three weeks. To do this, a 360-degree virtual recreation of the exterior and interior of the Capitol Rotunda was built, with two different lighting configurations to represent day and night. Since all of the Rotunda's graphics were created virtually, there was no need to travel a camera crew to the capital to film, saving Alhurra resources such as time and money. The only thing that was necessary was to have high resolution interior photos to use them as textures in the virtual decoration.

On the other hand, with the aim of going beyond the physical limits of the study, the team also used the Reality Engine flying camera to expand the limits of this virtual environment.

Augmented and extended reality in real time

Aside from the virtual environment, Alhurra TV took advantage of the technology of Zero Density to display in the broadcast a series of dynamic, data-driven augmented reality objects, such as 3D graphs, figures, maps and infographics, to break down states and key data, and visually convey the national vote live and in real time. These objects were placed in the center of the set, on the floor or around the presenters. Similarly, correspondents from 10 states interviewed voters about significant issues, connections that were displayed through augmented reality video walls.

As with all virtual studio graphics, all augmented reality graphics were designed and built in Reality Editor and they were strengthened with three RealityEngine Ampere with three Reality Engines, creating a powerful real-time broadcast composition system.

Finally, to ensure that the election data was automatically updated during the 30 hours, the internal developers of Alhurra integrated all graphic sources with the Zero Density control platform, RealityHub. Using the API Rest and the SDK OpenSource, the development team integrated the election data from a third-party source.