Immersive Tour sets a new benchmark in the industry for content production for consumers, professional content producers and amateur event organisers alike. It delivers a more inclusive and immersive experience but it is also affordable and therefore more accessible than anything that is currently available on the market today. In addition, being light-weight and cloud-based, its footprint is very limited. It is a more practical and environmentally-friendly way to produce live 360 video streams, compared to the usual 360 video setups from the broadcast industry.
Specifically, Immersive Tour delivers the following breakthroughs:
- The format combination of 360 degree video, plus AR, plus access to a ‘Virtual Room’ (allowing fans and guests to interact with the presenter) is unique in the industry today
- The lightweight and low-cost toolkit (for professionals and independent amateurs) makes it accessible to amateur event organisers who are currently locked-out of high-end technology like this
- The use of the smartphone as the main device for end-to-end production and event broadcast is unique today
We envisage that Immersive Tour will pioneer new usages and therefore revenue streams, leveraging the key attributes of 5G technology of low latency and high-thruput and drawing on cloud computing to enable high-end TV production from just a few smartphones.
Content producers would like to provide Live 360 Videos to their audiences but face huge technical challenges, complexity and costs. Traditional 360 equipment is heavy and costly to deploy. Thanks to progress in smartphone technology and with 5G’s high-thruput and low-latency we can now deliver this through the smartphone and a lightweight, portable setup including a compact battery powered 360 camera.
For the end user, Immersive Tour is a unique solution, offering viewers the possibility of being immersed into the heart of an event thanks to a unique triple experience:
- Immersive: thanks to augmented reality video, i.e. a 360 degree video feed with overlays such as 2D videos or still images
- Interactive and privileged: with access to a “virtual room”, allowing fans and guests to have live exchanges with the presenter, a personality/celebrity;
- Live without latency: thank to 5G with Orange’s expertise in connectivity, the show can be broadcast live on any platform
What makes Immersive Tour different is that it is not just a 360 experience, but a truly new video format, offering a triple experience to the viewer.
Thanks to 5G and the Immersive Tour app, viewing an event, whether it be the Vendée Globe, Roland Garros or the forthcoming Paris Olympic Games will be a fully inclusive and immersive experience wherever you are.
Furthermore, Live streaming events in 360° will be mainstream for all audiences, distributed through VR and social video platforms (Facebook Live, YouTube) meaning it will be accessible to all of the fan base.
ractive And with the opportunity to create ‘virtual rooms’, ‘on the fly’ where fans can interactwith the presenter, a personality or celebrity (in voice and chat) during the live broadcast, creating a new and inclusive and interactive experience.
The end-users experience will be further enhanced through augmented reality video, i.e. a 360 degree video feed with overlays such as 2D videos or still images that provide additional information such as stats, factoids or context.
5G’s low latency also means that the end user can follow the live action on any platform when on the move.
Immersive Tour is a genuinely new format; a new way of both producing and consuming content while applying a simple, SaaS-like business model. Indeed, the content producer only needs to pay a fee which depends on the time it will be on air.
The capture device can be either rented or bought. The use of the network is through a regular mobile subscription. At Orange, we are also opening 4G, and later 5G, VPN offers that will also be proposed to guarantee some service quality in crowded environments.
The low entry price, starting at $1,000 is x10 less expensive than a classic broadcast, meaning it is accessible to many event organisers. With this model, the audience is fully mobile and the smartphone becomes the primary screen for the consumption of content, allowing for more interaction and immersion.
The total views generated on our first 360° events (see below) using this solution were over 100,000. Our tour of the Roland Garros store alone has generated 18,000 views. Customer feedback has been very positive and helpful in crafting future releases.
We already successfully deployed Immersive Tour at a number of prestigious events in France:
- Tour de France
- Roland Garros
- Festival de Cannes
- Vendée Globe Challenge
- Vivatech
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