Winners of 2021 Accelerator Project of the Year Award

IBC recently announced the winner of the 2021 Accelerator Project of the Year Award, selected from the eight project Challenges developed in 2021 by an independent panel of industry expert judges. 

The winner was the 5G LBXR Project which explored the role of 5G in Location-Based Extended Realities across multiple locations and IP formats and one of the Accelerator projects that Net Insight was involved in.

Team focus

The diverse 5G LBXR team focused on examining 5G’s low latency and provision of edge computing as critical aspects required for immersive, ultra-responsive interactivity and the technical feasibility of multi-user, multi-location XR gaming. The group utilized the esports market and tournament production pipelines as an ideal template for 5G use cases for XR formats, due to requirements for low latency, high bandwidth, serious computing power and fan hyper-personalization. 

Final Proof of Concept

The project’s final Proof of Concept solution explored this with two XR formats, using both Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and real-time avatars.

The AR workstream harnessed Hado, a virtual yet hybrid dodge ball game developed to be the world’s first physical esport with a remote gameplay between two locations, between Twickenham Studios and the Vodafone Business Lounge at Coventry Building Society Arena.

The second workstream focused on Nanoclash, the title VR IP at the Park Playground, which demonstrated 5G via multi-player, multi-location between Belgium and Vodafone’s 5G Hub in The Netherlands.

The team

The project was championed by Telenet/Liberty Global, Park Playground, Hado, Digital Domain, Twickenham Film Studios, Vodafone and ESL/Weavr with vendor participants Huawei, Net Insight, Noitom, ProMod Esports and QuarkXR.

“It has been a successful and rewarding project working together with so many different players in the media and E-sport industry where we have had the opportunity to show and utilize the full potential of our cloud solution. I’m looking forward to IBC Accelerator 2022!”Kristian Mets, Head of Sales Business Development, Net Insight

Check out the highlights of the winning project

Net Insight’s role

Net Insight’s responsibility was to show how all these E-sports enabling AR and VR, could be distributed into Cloud, to be cloud produced, for different entities with different needs. Traditionally E-sport has used Twitch and Facebook, in the future Broadcast can represent a new way to reach new markets. In the future rendered inputs to production will enable new cool productions.

The above diagram shows how this connection network would look like, combining different viewer types who will receive feeds different ways. The solutions must cater for the needs of traditional broadcasters, OTT providers as well as VR viewers on net with special devices.

Check out more about Net Insight’s involvement & gain insights in the full project webinar