Virtual production is coming of age and entering a phase defined less by experimentation and more by repeatability, scalability and real-world usability.
Industry observers cite a clear shift in how VP technologies are deployed.
“There’s been a notable maturation in how productions think about workflow,” Pixotope Chief Experience Officer Simon Davis said. “The early conversation was largely about what’s possible; now it’s about what’s repeatable and reliable.”
Clients want solutions that their existing teams can operate, rather than relying only on specialist technicians, he said.
“We’ve also seen growing interest in hybrid approaches that blend physical and virtual elements more fluidly, as well as a continued push toward tighter integration between the creative and technical sides of production.”
Davis said Pixotope is working to democratize virtual production. The Oslo-based company announced its latest strategic partnership last month; it is working with Qatar-based systems integrator Ventum Tech to extend the reach of its accessible virtual production and extended reality solutions across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.
Pixotope sees growing demand for advanced broadcast graphics, extended reality, augmented reality and virtual studios.
Cesar Caceres, product lead at LED processing technology producer Brompton Technology, noted quite a bit of change since the industry last gathered at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
“Over the past year, virtual production has moved decisively toward greater accessibility and scalability,” he said. “Networked systems now allow studios to expand or reconfigure setups on demand, making workflows far more adaptable. On the hardware side, higher-resolution LED panels combined with next-generation processors have set a new benchmark for control and image quality, enabling consistent in-camera final pixels.”
At the same time, he said, hybrid workflows that blend physical sets with virtual environments have become more common, improving efficiency and creative control.
“More importantly, there’s been a shift in mindset: Productions are no longer building fixed pipelines but flexible ecosystems that can scale from smaller shoots to large, complex volumes,” Caceres said. “That adaptability is becoming a key requirement rather than a differentiator.”
AI Expands Further
AI has also made further significant inroads into virtual production this year. Considering the technology’s impact, Davis anticipated how it might continue to expand.
“Within the Pixotope ecosystem, we already have products such as Fly and Zone that leverage machine-learning algorithms to support through-the-lens camera tracking,” Davis said.
“We see a huge interest in cutting down the work on modelling and creation of environments, and we now support Gaussian splatting formats — this is a technology we’re watching and actively engaging with.”
The ability to capture real-world spaces and objects as photorealistic, renderable scenes in a fraction of the time traditional workflows take is something to watch as technology improves, he said.
“Text- and image-to-3D-object workflows open new possibilities for background creation and asset pipelines. It’s still maturing, and its consistency and accuracy need to improve for it to be a reliable tool.”
Given the rapidly evolving nature of innovation driving the sector, Davis and Caceres each discussed challenges and how their respective companies are positioned to tackle them.
“The biggest challenge is arguably the gap between ambition and operability,” Davis said. “The technology has advanced rapidly, but the pool of people who know how to deploy and run it confidently hasn’t kept pace.”
He said that puts pressure on platform providers to build tools that are more intuitive, better documented and easier for production teams who aren’t virtual production specialists by background to support.
“Beyond skills, we’re seeing hardware prices rise due to the memory demands of the AI boom,” he continued. “Pixotope is slightly removed from that, being a software-only solution, so our customers can shop around for hardware rather than relying on vendor-locked hardware supply chains.”
Workflow standardization and monetization continue to be a struggle for many studios despite technological advances, Caceres added.
Scale Issues
“Smaller teams often find it difficult to scale processes used in larger productions, which can complicate project management and profitability,” he said.
“Integration across multiple vendors’ hardware, real-time engines, servers and processing also remains complex, requiring specialized expertise.
“Balancing quality, cost and operational reliability continues to be a challenge, particularly for smaller studios seeking to compete in an increasingly sophisticated market,” he said.
At the convention, Davis said, “We’ll be talking about the Pixotope platform and a host of quality-of-life improvements for our customers — demonstrating how we’re making real-time virtual production more accessible, stable and scalable for teams of every size.
“With the biggest XR (eXtended Reality) installs under our belt this past year, we’ve continued to focus on workflow. How do you take genuinely complex, multimachine production environments and make them manageable without sacrificing the power that large-scale productions demand?” Pixotope also will announce support for some Gaussian splatting formats.
Brompton, Caceres said, will focus on the evolution of LED processing and display technologies across industries, highlighting the importance of flexibility, scalability and real-time control.
“We will explore how creators are moving beyond static pipelines and adopting IP-based workflows that can support projects of any size. We will also examine how industry evolution and standardization work hand in hand with flexibility, ensuring consistent results across productions.
“Our goal is to show how adaptable systems empower teams to deliver high-quality content efficiently, while remaining creative and responsive on set.”
Davis said technological democratization should continue, with changes driven by those who are creating content. “We anticipate that Gaussian splatting and similar capture technologies will become a mainstream part of asset pipelines, dramatically compressing the time from location to a usable virtual environment,” he said.
“Perhaps most importantly, we see the center of gravity in the market continuing to shift: The next wave of growth won’t come from the biggest productions, but from midmarket broadcasters, sports leagues and content creators who are just now discovering what’s possible — and building the workflows to match.”
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