Disguise receives £1.2m from UK and EU to develop immersive technology

The Max-R alliance has received a new budget injection from Innovate UK and the European Union, of which £1.2 million will go towards R&D of Disguise’s immersive technology.

Max-R, comprising Disguise, the BBC, ARRI, Improbable, Brainstorm, Foundry, FilmLight, Hasselt University, Pompeu Fabra University, CREW and FilmAkademie Baden-Wurtumberg, aims to streamline productions so that filmmakers, live event experts, broadcasters and others can use immersive technologies with lower licensing requirements and costs. The goal is to enable new creative possibilities for mid- to low-budget productions, helping to bring virtual production and extended reality technology within reach for projects such as short films, commercials and corporate presentations.

Within Max-R, Disguise is working on five developments: RSConnect, a new protocol that allows audio, visual media and metadata to be transferred from Designer to a third-party system to connect live events to metaverse platforms; Depth reprojection, so that shoots on virtual production sets can benefit from a more realistic 3D background, even when the camera perspective changes; OCIO, a system that allows colour space to be defined on virtual production sets; Reimaging 2. 0, a workflow to reduce downtime when setting up media servers; and Porta, a Disguise solution that will be upgraded to improve the level of control available to operators on set with more experimental transitions, scheduling and content manipulation options.

Abi Bowman, director of collaboration at Disfarce, emphasises that “MAX-R will offer exciting new opportunities to broaden the way creators and audiences craft, present and interact with digital realities.” “By offering an array of tools to streamline existing ways of working or facilitate exciting new ones, we’re making sure that the next generation of content creators have the tools they need to make the virtual world look and feel as real as the physical one,” she concludes.