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Developers believe 6G will usher in photo-realistic holographic communication complemented by multisensory extensions - and experiments are already happening today.
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Real-time film scenes shot 280 miles apart, feeling a
crunching on field tackle in your living room and live holographic broadcasting
- scenarios that could come to pass in less than five years with the arrival of
the 6G wireless network.
Each of these concepts has recently been demonstrated using
existing technologies as a call to action for media companies to plan ahead.
“The potential is huge now test and create a proof of
concept,” says Jessica Driscoll, Director of Immersive Technology at government
funded innovation organisation Digital Catapult. “How do we start thinking
about AI-powered interactive storytelling, or what does more collaborative art
and music production look like? How will multi-sensory experiences enhance
storytelling?”
6G will theoretically deliver between 10 times to 100 times
faster speeds than 5G with data rates as high as one terabit per second,
latency measured in microseconds and an ability to integrate digital and
physical versions of the world.
“It’s not difficult to imagine how the football viewing
experience might benefit from advances in innovations such as extended reality
(XR) and haptics and which may, for the first time, make Match Day a truly
immersive experience,” says Valerie Allie, Senior Director, Video Solutions
Group, at tech licence developer InterDigital. “The advent of 6G will
accelerate significant XR advancements, so now is the time for the sports
leagues to think creatively over the next decade about how to offer immersivity
to their fan base.”
Initial work on 6G specifications will start with Release 20
of the 5G standard next year with Release 21 expected to be ratified by 2028,
in time for commercial 6G network launches in 2030, according
to mobile industry standards body ETSI.
That means the 2032 Brisbane Olympics could be the first
major event to enjoy the benefits of the next generation network.
“6G has advanced significantly from an industrial agenda
standpoint,” says Alain Mourad, Head of Wireless Labs Europe, InterDigital.
“There's already commitment worldwide and at standards bodies like 3GPP and
ITU.”
Next March, 3GPP (the body which develops mobile broadband
standards) will hold its first official workshop inviting members to share
their views on the agenda and scope.
“Once the first standards released around 2028 it will take
another couple of years before we start seeing some implementations of these
specifications and products,” Mourad confirms.
The ITU evaluates and standardises the 6G specifications
proposed by 3GPP as IMT-2030.
This extends existing services in 5G (IMT-2020) such as Immersive Communication
to include a set of new attributes bracketed under the headings Ubiquitous
Connectivity; AI and Communication; and Integrated Sensing and Communication.
Together, 6G networks will enable immersive, ubiquitous, and
sensory digital experiences on a massive scale. This will make it possible for
6G applications to “sense” their surroundings, and thereby turn the network
into “our sixth sense”, according to a report by
the consultancy Capgemini.
Towards 2030, telecoms giant Ericsson expects users to be
able to experience all day XR, where the XR device would be used as a main
device for all our communication, similar to today’s smartphone.
[subhead] Dual location
performance
The Advanced
Media Production (AMP) network, developed by Digital Catapult and motion
capture facility Target3D, is the UK’s first interconnected 5G enabled facility.
The government funded initiative links studios in London and Gateshead with labs
in Belfast, another in Gateshead and an Immersive 5G Lab in Newcastle city centre.
It offers compute power, motion capture cameras, volumetric capture systems and
5G connectivity for media and business to experiment with.
Such experiments include ‘dual site performance’ in which a
performer in one place has their actions replicated via holographic video in
another location or where two performers in separate locations combine to
deliver a performance in a virtual platform like Roblox.
“We are interested in pushing forward the potential of real
time holographic broadcasting,” says Driscoll.
“What’s interesting is the audience interaction that feeds back into
those virtual worlds. For example, if you've got two pop stars, one in the north
of England and one in the south, performing together in Fortnite then what's the
real-time audience experience and the feedback loop that goes back to the
performers? That's something that hasn't been cracked.
“As the performer, you can see people moving (virtually) in
the metaverse but you can't really discern individual gestures. There’s a lag
in the environment. It’s not seamless. But a completely low latency 6G environment
would enable real-time interactions. You could have real-time 360 audio.” She
continues, “When there’s no noticeable latency everyone can experience
something at the same time. You could have meaningful interactions and very
high quality volumetric video and sound that is also personalised. These are
things we have barely begun to explore.”
In July 2023, researchers from Abertay
University showcased how actors could shoot scenes together in real-time from
two different locations (Dundee and Manchester) using a 5G internet connection against
a consistent virtual environment. The clear practical incentive is to reduce
travel time and cut carbon costs.
“There is the appetite to be able to share talent across
different geographies but people’s mindset remains very traditional,” says
Driscoll. “Until sustainability becomes much higher up people's agenda, and we
insist on travelling to down the carbon footprint then real dual site or
multi-site performance won’t take off in the way that we thought it would.”
Electronic arts duo Gibson/Martelli
developed a dual-sited performance
using motion capture, virtual environments and live music with artists in AMP’s
north and south studios 250 miles apart linked by 10GB fibre connection
edge-compute capability and local 5G networks.
The goal was to develop a 'playbook' of ideas and techniques
to guide others exploring linked performances.
Gibson /Martelli plan to add in more elements, including
streaming of the mocap data to remote VR audiences and giving show control to
the dancers via mocap gloves and a machine learning toolkit that can
recognise specific gestures.
Digital Catapult runs its facilities for all sectors and
finds what it calls ‘creative spillover’ where tools, workflows, processes and
content from the creative industries like immersive audio, VFX or game engines
are applied in more industrial settings.
“We've had interest from the National Grid to create a
digital character and from the Royal Navy, to use virtual production techniques
to visualise data for submarine operators,” informs Driscoll.
Haptics in the loop
While immersive broadcasting may be in its infancy (and
stymied by existing connectivity limitations), sports producers could benefit
from 6G roll-out as soon as 2030.
“This next generation of telecoms infrastructure has the
potential to profoundly transform how fans engage with topflight sporting
events,” says Allie. “It may even usher
in a new era of immersive content that elevates the live match excitement of
audiences to a different level.”
It’s possible to imagine VR headsets delivering an immersive
experience and giving fans the perception that they are actually in the
stadium, no matter where they are in the world. Meanwhile, AR enhances the
real-world experience by overlaying digital information onto the physical
world.
“What we call ‘immersive video’ is video where the user’s
point of view can be adapted with sensation of depths and parallax,” explains
Allie. “Doing that relies on a capturing a huge amount of information to
generate 3D video in realtime and then to have some viable transmission at
scale that could be a deployed on wireless networks.”
Into this mix comes digital sensory experiences.
“Let’s say you are watching the normal 2D sports experience
and you receive some haptic feedback on your smartphone or a headset or
controller synchronised to the performance no the pitch. When a player touches
the ball, the user receives haptic feedback which brings you closer to the live
experience.”
This has been demonstrated by InterDigital using 5G
connectivity.
The idea is similar to the vibrations game players already
get through their console controller. Devices could produce sensations of
pressure, texture, or even heat to increase immersion in virtual scenarios. A
haptic glove might deliver different sensory responses to individual fingers,
the palm, and back of the hand to imitate a more natural tactile experience
such as holding an object or climbing a terrain.
“Consider eSports. A gamer plays their favourite sports car
race game and shares their gameplay with followers on Twitch. Today’s viewers
just get a 2D image of this gameplay. With our layers of immersive video and
haptic feedback the remote viewer will be immersed in 3D video and they will
feel the exact haptic feedback that the player felt during the gameplay. To do
that we carry haptic media signals as an additional track in the bitstream.”
InterDigital has built a platform to test and evaluate
immersive video experience from end-to-end with its work being fed into
development of MPEG-I.
“The first release of immersive video standards is already
available so you can develop and deploy some scenarios today,” Allie says.
AI and Communication
6G is expected to be a AI-native network, AI is embedded in
the networking equipment. This will enable the network to learn and manage
itself, be more autonomous, and make it cheaper to run.
What does this mean in practice? Driscoll explains, “For
example, if I'm broadcasting from the AMP studio into Glastonbury or another
city location the idea is that the network infrastructure should be
self-optimising and self-organising. It can cope with signal reflections off
buildings, weather patterns (rain negatively impacts mobile coverage) or if
there’s sudden congestion on the local network. It enables real-time multi-site
collaborations and also multi-user collaborations.”
Companies like Nvidia are counting on AI being able to
automatically optimise every point in the production process to achieve best
performance.
“AI optimisation will help to figure this out because at
some points you won't need a certain amount of capability or capacity or
throughput in one location, but you will need it in another. Currently that is
very difficult to do.”
Security and resilience
The complexity of working with digital media assets across
the 6G network is expected to stretch regulatory and privacy concerns.
An AI-driven metahuman
developed by Digital Catapult and Target3D for example used one person's
physical body, a second person’s movement data and a third person’s voice.
Securing individual IP to be compliant is one issue which 6G could make better or
worse.
“The issue of security and resilience has emerged as a lot stronger
in IMT-2030,” says Driscoll. “When we were discussing 5G immersive applications
there wasn’t such a strong dialogue about security because the applications
tended to be discreet, proof of concept, one-offs generally for marketing or
research. As we shift to 6G and the promise of mass mobile communication the
question is how do you make everything safe?”
Safety features are being built into the 6G standard for
chipsets, hardware protocols and software stack in the hope that security will
be more robust.
Once bitten
Promises were made to operators that investments in 5G would
deliver groundbreaking experiences like VR which they would be able to
monetise. Yet many have yet to see any return on that investment and VR/AR or
XR applications have failed to take off.
Current cellular technology is blamed as being too slow to
manage the high data rates and the level of latency required to stitch
augmented and virtual reality together in real time.
“6G’s latency and speed enhancements will answer these
issues,” says Philippe Guillotel, a scientist investigating machine learning
for video processing at InterDigital. “There will be the opportunity to offer
new experiences that create more value for audiences, but understanding how
people will use and interact with digital environments will be key to 6G’s
success.”
His colleague is more circumspect. “Operators are taking a
more pragmatic approach to investment because there are multiple technology
enables already in 5G that have not been deployed yet or because there is no
business case yet identified,” says Mourad. “But it doesn't mean that in the
next couple of years as 5G matures that these will stay on the shelf. We are
already seeing advanced use cases pick up with XR being one of them.”
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