Cable Satellite International
Unlike 3D, VR is an entirely new medium. This opens a huge range of opportunities – and an equally large number of challenges.
p10-14 http://www.csimagazine.com/Digital_edition/September2016/CSIDigitaledition-September2016.pdf#page=10
VR is in its fledgling stage with an audience comprised of early adopters, unstandardised as a distribution format and with experimentation ranging from combating bandwidth challenges to production methodology. However, the industry emerging around VR content production is growing at an astonishing pace.
HTC earmarked $100 million to invest in content and a $10 billion VR Venture Capital Alliance with a group of 26 partners including Sequoia Capital intent on accelerating the VR ecosystem. Disney spearheaded a $65 million investment in 360-video camera business Jaunt VR, Sky has made VR content pilots from boxing to drama from its VR division and AOL acquired 360-video producer Ryot to reformat news coverage with AOL-owned properties including The Huffington Post and Engadget, to name just a few examples.
“Quality rather than quantity must be a critical consideration for the successful future of VR,” warns Carl Hibbert, associate director – Entertainment Content & Delivery, Futuresource Consulting. “Done badly, it runs the risk of putting consumers off the technology.”
It's a statement that was recently and repeatedly applied to stereo 3D, so much so that it became true. The signs are that VR is different.
“3D is a bolt-on to standard video, and doesn’t add much more perspective than your brain is capable of inferring,” is Ampere analyst Andrew White's take. “This, in combination with its high cost and shortcomings, doomed it to failure. VR doesn’t compete with standard video in the same way, since there’s no way to convert 360° video to 2D while retaining the original context. VR should be seen as an entirely new medium, running in parallel or as a companion to TV and movies, rather than as an evolution of them.”
By 2020 in Western Europe, Futuresource expects an installed base of close to 30m headsets (including both smartphone-based versions and dedicated premium units like Oculus Rift/HTC Vive). JPMorgan Securities reckon VR will be a $13.5bn industry by 2020, shipping 89.3 million units by then.
What's remarkable is just how accessible VR can be. Smartphones can act as a viewing platform for the ever growing number of headsets and, which, with content to fuel attraction should see adoption grow rapidly.
“The younger generation are particularly attracted by this new technology,” notes Sotiris Salamouris, CTO, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), which tested live VR from Rio. “VR is an intimate experience where you feel like you are at that event, front row.”
Samsung’s Gear VR should represent a more mainstream product with a broader base of customers than more premium hardware like the Vive and Rift but it too requires a flagship Samsung smartphone,” says White. “This means that VR is not yet a good way to reach more than a niche group of millennials. That said, this is a fast moving space, and the release of Google Daydream may change this in the near future.”
Google Daydream, coming in Q4, is an advanced operating system for Android intended to boost 360-video content creation and upload to YouTube's 360-platform. Google says that Daydream-ready phones, as well as a VR viewer and motion controller will be available this autumn.
Facebook has also launched a 360-video platform and is working on its own VR production system. Google is launching a cine-style camera to fuel content on IMAX branded experiences at a six venues launching this year.
Barely a day passes without announcement of a new VR initiative. LittlStar, which has the backing of Disney, wants to be the Netflix of VR and has accumulated a library of professional content from Discovery, Showtime, online gaming giant Wargaming.net and fashion brand DKNY.
Live event VR
While video games remains the big initial content draw for consumer VR – likely given a boost when Sony debuts Playstation VR in October - it is live events where content monetisation is already taking off.
“Sponsor lift is already happening,” confirms Dave Cole, co-founder of live streaming VR specialist NextVR. Automotive brand Lexus sponsored the VR user experience of The Open Golf which NextVR produced for Fox Sports.
“We will test both subscription and single view pay per view models this year, mostly for Live Nation properties,” says Cole. “2016 is a year of audience building. We are not going to put a paywall in the way of audience aggregation.”
NextVR content, including for Fox Sports, is only available over its own portal which is available on most Head Mounted Displays, but not Facebook or YouTube.
"We don't syndicate to other networks for both business and technical reasons," Cole explains. "We can't guarantee the compression efficacy or quality of our service on other platforms and certainly not on YouTube or Facebook. These platforms are gateway drugs to real VR video. We are building a platform with partners for consumers to come to and watch VR. We are highly incentivised to maintain content on our platform since that is how the company will be valued."
“Currently, there is a joint industry initiative to make the technology work and drive uptake by enticing customers to the platform with free content,” says Hibbert. “As soon as consumer payment becomes a core component, rights will become a major issue – whether that’s sports, concerts or other types of event.”
The OTT market is moving in the direction of VR with 67 per cent of OTT companies believing VR is “here to stay”, according to research by Level 3, Streaming Media and Unisphere.
“We believe there is potential for creating premium experiences aorund live events for broadcasters and operators,” says Alain Nochimowski, EVP of Innovation, Viaccess-Orca.
It has packaged an end-to-end live VR solution and tested it with TF1 and Sky Italia. Components include Harmonic ProMedia Xpress transcoder and ProMedia X Origin media server integrated with VideoStitch’s Vahana 360-video stitching software. Viaccess-Orca provided its Connected Sentinel Player for DRM, playback and services for interactivity and analytics.
“Operators have a vested interest in terms of optimizing the image quality at the same time as reducing bandwidth lens to lens,” says Nochimowski, who notes that the TF1 trial filled a 15Mbps pipe. “For organisations which own rights there is clear interest in creating new monetizable experiences.”
Developer LiveLike, which offers a white label VR platform including acquisition solution and mobile app, says its data shows at least 50 per cent of users are willing to pay for a VR app.
“If we were to release a commercial live stream VR platform tomorrow just for the UK market I've no doubt we'd get over 10,000 subscribers,” reveals LiveLike, CEO, Andre Lorenceau.
He believes, though, that pay TV operators are will use VR as a “sweetener” to entice subscribers to other pay packages rather than as a separate revenue stream.
Production issues
Live streamed VR trials at sports events have tended to offer both a number of 360-video streams for users to toggle between at will, and an integrated or directed VR feed.
This was the case during the Euros where UEFA employed Nokia OZOs positioned behind the goals, on the centre line, in the tunnel and dressing room in a closed test managed by Deltatre. An app combined a 2D standard feed and VR 3D video bracketed in a virtual lounge so that users could choose to watch the normal directed coverage or dip into a immersive VR angle.
“Most broadcasters don't have an appropriate, ready-to-air platform for this technology so we are assessing how we might bring VR to market,” explained Deltatre's chief product & marketing officer, Carlo De Marchis.
NextVR's platform includes PVR functionality like pause and rewind and also features user choice of POV angles and curated feed. It supplied services to OBS in Rio to stream three 360-video views plus an integrated feed of events including fencing, diving and gymnastics. This followed a first Olympic test at the Lillehammer 2016 Winter Youth Games.
Arguably the biggest production challenge is stitching the camera views together. When stitching is performed manually on recorded content, it usually leads to several hours if not days of laborious processing. Cinema style VR creation reportedly costs $10,000 per finished minute including compositing and rotoscoping.
That's not feasible for broadcast which is why VR producers have tended to devise their own technique. “We take advantage of the fact that the cameras we use are not off the shelf but fully calibrated industrial units,” says Anthony Karydis, CEO, Mativision, a London-based company behind the VR live stream of the MTV Europe Awards, Muse and Sigur Ros concerts.
Delivering a reliable and constant stream to connected concurrent viewers is a problem facing all internet streamers which the data intensive nature of VR can exacerbate.
NextVR, for instance, captures 4K video from an 8-camera rig (its outside broadcast truck has capacity for ten of them) at 24,000 pixels horizontally and 6000 pixels vertically at 60fps. This totals 6 Terabytes a second of raw data, yet NextVR claims its average delivery to end users is just 4-8Mbps.
“A typical Netflix [HD] stream is 8Mbps and we can deliver full 360 broadcast quality stereo video at less than that,” claims Cole.
The firm achieves this, while circumnavigating the realtime stitching issue, with its compression algorithm, first devised to broadcast stereo 3D.
“Our stereo compression is based on a patented technology [Compound-Entropy Stereoscopic Encoder] and we combine that with view dependent streaming [also patented],” says Cole. “This allows us to send a low fidelity version of a full 360 environment and a high fidelity version based on where the user is looking at any one time. This technique greatly reduces the redundant information [outside of a person's field of view at any time] which means we can get the payload down.”
However, bandwidth limitation is one reason why most sports productions have employed a 180-degree field of view. “180-degrees defeats the purpose of VR video,” argues Ben Duffey, CEO and founder Greenfish Labs. His company has live VR-streamed college athletics for Pennsylvania Cable Network and the Pope from a 360-degree rig on his Pope-mobile from Poland in July. “Some [sports VR tests] are only using one or two cameras and the rest of the space is just masked,” Duffy says. “It's not true VR if you're not fully immersed.”
LiveLike's main application is a 180-degree field of view from a fish-eye lens attached to a conventional broadcast camera with a computer generated 'VIP lounge' rounding out the viewer's experience. It also offers full 360-video angles for viewers as part of the package.
“VR is a medium and 360 is one thing you can do with it in the way that TV is a medium and video is not the only thing you can do on your TV,” argues Lorenceau. “What we're doing is a mixed reality VR application.”
"The bigger the field, the more difficult it will be to produce an engaging VR experience," suggests Karydis. "VR is good where there is action and interest all around. It will be of little use in events where the action is concentrated in a restricted area. The rest of the 'sphere' will be pointless."
Aside from production challenges, such as where to hide cables and how to direct a viewer's attention, there's the distribution conundrum issue of how to deliver the same content to different devices whether HMDs like Gear VR, Rift, Vive, 360-video sites like YouTube or the burgeoning number of of mobile apps. There are no VR standards.
"One of the biggest issues is finding an encoder that encodes 360-video and formats the streams correctly to be able to view it on multiple devices,” says Duffey. “Our tests are all about finding the optimum resolution and bitrate for distribution. We can create the feeds but it's no good if the end user can't see it.”
Some VR streamers have devised their own end to end platform to get around this.
“Developing our own players ensures total control right to the delivery stage,” explains Karydis. “Our players are very mature and rich in features; there is simply no comparison with anything else in the market today.”
Interactivity
VR may be provide the 'best seat in the house' but it be a fail for live sports if the experience of being there can't be shared. The ability to share VR socially is reportedly key to Facebook's R&D and is also seen as vital to other solutions.
It's the main selling point of LiveLike's application, for example. “We focus on the interactive element to give you impression that you are there with friends,” says Lorenceau. Later this year it will enhance its platform with a live sharing component which will feature an avatar as a physical embodiment of another VR user sitting on the couch watching the game with you.
“The avatar will be head and shoulders and eventually hands but it's not intended to be hyper-real,” says Lorenceau. “What's more important is localised audio. If you turn your head a friend will appear a couple of feet away and they can chat to you [via HMD mic] as if they were in front of you. Turn to watch the game and continue to chat and the audio will simulate their direction to your left.”
Similarly, Greenfish is working on ways to incorporate picture in picture within the virtual view plus live chat and more realistic audio. “We have a 8 mic audio set up which records spatial audio at a live event and software which translates that to different areas of the video so that as your head moves around the video the audio will relocate accordingly. You can't just have stereo sound – when you turn your head you need to be able to hear those sounds accurately.”
NextVR will announce a partnership with a social network [in September] and also has a plan, in beta, to integrate APIs from gaming platforms like the PS4 into its platform. “It makes more sense for users to create one avatar and have the ability to port it to our platform than to have start from scratch each time,” says Cole.
Applications in verticals
Outside of gaming and entertainment VR has a future in all manner of industries. Simulators have been used for flight training for many years and since 2007 helmets incorporating projected dual screen images a few inches from the user’s eyes have been used both for flight simulation and land combat training.
Deloitte notes that architects are using VR to create interactive visualizations of construction projects in place of 3D models, or fly-through video. This approach can enable clients to make changes before work starts, it says.
Emergency response workers have used VR to practice how to respond to faults with nuclear reactors. Hotels can provide VR guides to properties. For guests at a property, a VR headset could act as a virtual concierge, showing guests places they could visit, suggest Deloitte.
Applications in education including teaching via virtual classroom, and used to provide digitized campus tours to prospective students.
“Even in the simplest of forms, by making it possible to transport and immerse trainees and students in remote or non-existing environments, VR education will be huge,” says Karydis. “It will soon be possible to allow proper interaction so the learning process will be enhanced even further. It is a well documented that learning becomes more rewarding when there is engagement.”
Lewis Ward, research director of gaming at IDC, expects AR to be a far more lucrative ecosystem by 2020 than VR. “We believe there are more and stronger use cases for business adoption than there are for VR headsets,” he says, referencing Microsoft Hololens, a rumoured next version of Google Glass, and Epson's Movario. “AR is going to have a profound impact on the way we interact with technology and the way we work. In the meantime, we expect companies to begin experimenting with AR software on devices already in use: smartphones and tablets.”
VR in OR
There are multiple applications in healthcare, with training and education of staff and members of the public being among the most prevalent.
The Global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market is poised to grow at a CAGR of around 17.8% in the next 5 years to reach approximately $1.45 billion by 2020 [according to Research and Markets].
Among the applications are treatment of phobias, personal fitness and exercise and training on procedures, techniques, equipment and patient interactions. There's also surgery, potentially allowing a surgeon in Detroit to remotely assist in an operation in Bangalore, for example.
On 14 April, the first live broadcast by VR of a surgical operation was streamed from St Bart's central London hospital online via the website of Medical Realities, a company that uses VR, 3D, and 360-videos for medical training. The two 360-cameras were provided by Mativision. A one-minute delay was incorporated into the broadcast in case of any complications in the surgery, on a patient with colon cancer.
Mativision plans to enhance its experience for future surgeries by offering close-ups, patient diagnostics, and even video from inside the body.
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