Jio Cinema wows cricket fans with Pixotope’s AR & virtual studios

When planning for the 2024 season of the TATA IPL, the biggest T20 cricket league in the world, official digital partner JioCinema wanted the latest augmented reality (AR) and virtual studio solution to support the live action from India.

Their search led them to Pixotope, as Andrew Tan, Vice-President, APAC, Pixotope, explained, “Both JioCinema and their service provider wTVision undertook an extensive evaluation process before choosing Pixotope and we are delighted that we were the right solution fit for JioCinema’s important requirements. 

“The implementation of our solution across AR to virtual studios to extended reality (XR) production by JioCinema further established our capabilities across all types of virtual production in the most mission critical scenarios.

“Our customers’ success, which in the case of the TATA IPL 2024, was a significantly immersive and lean-in experience with the help of virtual production, is very important to us.”

For the TATA IPL 2024, JioCinema required advanced storytelling tools to elevate their content to the next level. They sought a solution with a good chroma keyer that would integrate with Unreal Engine, deliver flawless green screen results, offer user-friendly software for last-minute adjustments, have a fast and efficient workflow, high-quality graphics and provide excellent technical support.

As part of the project, JioCinema acquired Pixotope’s AR/VS and XR solutions for their new purpose-built seven studio facility made up of five green screen studios and two studios equipped with LED walls. In total, the company purchased 36 Pixotope engines which they used for virtual production, virtual studios and set extensions.

This gave JioCinema the flexibility to import Unreal projects and execute productions incredibly efficiently and as a result, JioCinema successfully used Pixotope virtual production and AR/VS solutions in the green screen studios and their XR solution in the LED wall studios to enhance the virtual sets for the live broadcasts.

JioCinema had three main executions for which they used the Pixotope solutions. Firstly, pre-production setup, which involved the design and creation of virtual sets, and AR graphics as well as calibrating and configuring chroma keying for integration.

The second was live production integration to set up cameras and ensure proper chroma key and which used the in-house control application for real-time adjustments.

Finally, the streaming execution where they applied real-time graphics overlays and AR elements during live shows.