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CULVER CITY, CA, February 12, 2016 — Software company Vixi, Inc. launched the first new real-time 3D social broadcasting platform during the recent Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium. The turnkey platform, also called Vixi, is patent-pending IP and uses a real-time game engine to display high-end 3D visuals seamlessly integrated with social aggregated and moderated content.
Vixi pulls in social content such as photos, Tweets and videos from one or several hashtags or local sources. The content is then moderated and mapped onto 3D objects into a dynamic real-time 3D environment.
This latest version of Vixi features new proprietary 3D visuals, complete with a 3D grid and real-time rendered 3D environments (Stadium, Real-time Lighting, Dynamic Crowd System, a proprietary Grass Shader) to display fans’ social content in a whole new way.
Video of Vixi in action at Super Bowl 50 can be viewed below:
Vixi: Super Bowl 50 from Vixi on Vimeo.
Stats for Vixi usage at Super Bowl 50 were as follows:
– The Vixi 3D stadium template ran non-stop at SB50 from 10:30 am to 7:00 pm PST on the Levi’s Stadium exterior concourse boards.
– The Vixi 3D Social Grid was run heavily during SB50 pregame inside Levi’s Stadium on the 1920x650px segment of the boards.
– During the actual game, Vixi was used during several time outs during both halves.
– At the peak of the event, specifically halftime, there were over 4 million tweets hitting the #SB50 hashtag on Twitter. Instagram was also flooded with images, with around 500,000 posts.
Actual SB50 content moderated by Vixi operator:
– 269 unique submitters,
– 469 images approved (#SB50 was hit hard as a hashtag and moderation was more challenging than with the typical event-specific tags. Number of moderated images/tweets is often 1,000-2,000 for other events).
– 268 images featured (image takeover on screen),
– 1942 images rejected,
– 107 images added to queue through Twitter (many were added celebrity posts using other hashtags such as #Superbowl50 or #SuperbowlSunday),
– Potential reach: 51,731,613,
– Potential impressions: 67,633,344.
Vixi, Inc. is a Culver City, CA-based software company founded by the owners of integrated production company The Famous Group, under their experiential division.
Greg Harvey, CEO, Vixi, said “Event experiences and presentations have advanced significantly in recent years, and it’s now time for displayed social content to take a similar leap forward. Vixi was developed to transform today’s traditional flat social wallpaper with patent-pending technology to create dynamic real-time 3D environments that integrate social content, sponsors and more. It’s a real-time broadcasting system driven by event-based social content, and is a major shift from current social display software platforms.”
Vixi background
The new Vixi uses the bold graphics of a real-time gaming engine to power socially driven visuals for live events, combining the foreground 3D social content with any background (still photos, live video feeds, 360 video and dynamic graphics). No other provider of social display platforms has these capabilities; all others are limited to 2D infographic-style visuals.
The use of a mobile game engine to power the real-time graphics means Vixi visuals run and look amazing on mobile devices, as well as in a browser through WebGL. This flexibility to run across browsers and mobile devices is critical.
Vixi works for events of all sizes, including those without multi-million dollar control rooms that run the entire show on video boards. It acts as a turnkey “broadcasting” platform focused around live events, running on a small-form computer. Event operators can build the broadcasting programs on any web browser through the Vixi CMS and run the programs out to any size and resolution display board.
Another key element to the platform is that the 3D scenes are never pre-rendered, nor does the system ever stop to buffer itself as the social content is dynamically streamed into the 3D scenes. This enables Vixi to display aggregated content of all types in real-time 3D scenes. It’s similar to the real-time graphics used by broadcasters during live sporting events, except social posts drive the content.
The platform offers unlimited possibilities as the environments and social tile animations can be custom built for any brand, sponsor or event. The graphics themselves are also practically future proof, as Vixi will continue to scale with the technology and is built to run on the most powerful hardware.
How it works:
The platform has a variety of 3D social templates (3D Grid, 3D stadium, 3D Voting/Polling, 3D stats, etc). Each template has a foreground and background (the 3D scene is considered a background and the social content is considered a foreground element), enabling backgrounds and foregrounds to be switched in real-time.
For example, at Levi’s Stadium during Super Bowl 50, the background was the 3D stadium and the foreground was the 3D social tiles displaying social content. Background could be switched to any feed, such as a still photo, live video feed, 360 video background, etc., while foreground 3D social tiles continued to run over the background as it is switched. This gives ultimate visual flexibility for the event operators.
3D templates can be customized in unlimited ways. Within the 3D football stadium scene that ran during Super Bowl 50, the time of day was changed from day to dusk to night as time passed, and the configuration of social tiles changed from 3 to 12 to 1, etc. Animated content on the ribbon boards was changed from sponsorship animations to team specific prompts, and the dynamic 3D crowd system in the stadium was fully customizable from different cheering animations to the color of the individual crowd members clothing.
Ease of use:
Vixi is designed to make it easy for operators to create a program. Various 3D templates can be customized to preference and placed in order on a timeline. The operator can add customized transitions in between each 3D template so image transition is fluid.
The platform also has a full-frame messaging system called “Heroes”, where images can be placed on the timeline at points between the 3D scene templates, with each set to run a specific length of time before transitioning. The operators can at any time trigger featured content (a specific photo, video or Tweet) that animates in on top of any 3D template. When featured content is triggered, the scene behind it is dimmed down the focus in on the featured piece of content.
Sponsorships can be integrated across all 3D templates, featured content, Hero images and transitions, enabling event operators to use Vixi to generate additional sponsorship revenues.
3D Vs. 2D
The patent-pending IP is a major disrupter in the display of social content at live events. Previously, social aggregation and display platforms placed social content on flat 2D templates and flat grids that have little to no movement, dimension or depth and only a few templates. They typically display a single image, Tweet or a grid populated by social content (photos and Tweets) and a polling/voting template (visually flat, similar to a web infographic).
Today’s game day presentations have come a long way from the old 5 frames per second 2D cartoon animations, now rivaling the same quality as a sports broadcast with high-end produced video and 3D graphics. Flat social display systems need to catch up, and that’s where Vixi is a game changer.
Credits
Vixi Super Bowl 50 case study video credits:
Music track”OLE! Times Ten” by Moonwlk
Video Footage shot by: Steve Davis
Edited by: Elliot Michel Diviney and Tony Rago
Super Bowl 50 Credits:
Event Operation:
Bob Becker, Control Room Director, VWSE
Sammy Choi, Director Events, NFL
Vixi Team Credits:
CEO: Greg Harvey
Executive Producer: Andrew Isaacson
Lead Developer: David Green
Lead Producer: Tony Rago
Producer: Aaron Lane
Quality Assurance: Kristin Mihara
Unity Developers: Sebastian Patric, Michael Isaacson
Unity Artist: Alex Zambrano
For more information about Vixi, please visit http://www.govixi.com