SACRAMENTO, Calif.—CBS Sacramento is debuting a new augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) technology-driven studio today, Monday, May 11, at 12:00 p.m.

The launch is part of an ongoing push to provide viewers with more immersive storytelling and next-generation journalism at the CBS Television Station group, which has been deploying AR/VR technologies developed in-house at various stations around the country.

The Sacramento station becomes the 12th newsroom in the CBS Television Stations group to adopt AR/VR technology across its local newscasts.

“CBS Sacramento has long served our community through trusted journalism and compelling storytelling,” said Scott Warren, president and general manager of CBS Sacramento and CBS Bay Area. “This new AR/VR studio gives viewers greater context and perspective, creating a more immersive way to experience the weather and local news stories that matter to them.”

Beginning with the 12:00 PM newscast on CBS Sacramento (KOVR), AR/VR technology will be integrated into all the station’s newscasts, including news, weather and sports. Select AR/VR elements will also be used during news and weather segments on GOOD DAY on KMAX, while the remainder of the program will continue to originate from a traditional studio.

The technology allows journalists to visually explain complex stories, breaking news and weather systems with greater clarity while maintaining the station’s editorial standards.

As previously reported, the Sacramento launch continues the expansion of the CBS Stations AR/VR newsroom initiative, building on innovations first introduced at CBS Bay Area under Warren’s leadership.

CBS Sacramento serves viewers across the greater Sacramento region through CBS KOVR and KMAX, delivering local news, weather, sports and community coverage across broadcast and digital platforms.

DETROIT—CBS Detroit has announced that it will debut an Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) technology-driven studio, on Monday, April 20, during the 5:00 PM newscast, with AR/VR-enhanced weather forecasting.

The CBS O&O is billing the launch as a first for the region. It is part of a larger rollout of AR/VR technologies at the station group, with Detroit becoming the 11th CBS station to launch the studios.

The AR/VR experience will premiere during the weather segment, led by chief meteorologist Ahmad Bajjey, providing viewers with a more dynamic and visual way to understand forecasts and weather conditions.

“Having seen firsthand how AR/VR strengthens local journalism, it’s especially meaningful to bring this technology to Detroit,” said Jennifer A. Lyons, regional president and general manager of CBS Detroit and CBS Chicago. “It powerfully enhances storytelling – making complex information clearer, more engaging and more immersive – while allowing us to elevate how we explain, visualize and connect with the communities we serve.”

As part of a broader commitment by CBS Television Stations to invest in local journalism, CBS Detroit joins a growing group of CBS owned stations nationwide to launch AR/VR technology, which was developed in-house by the stations.

“This is a big moment for Motown,” said Kennan Oliphant, station manager and vice president of news at CBS Detroit. “Detroit has always been a place of innovation and creativity, and this investment aligns with that legacy. Being the only station in the market using AR/VR technology allows us to push forward with journalism that is modern, thoughtful and focused on the community we serve.”

As the technology continues to roll out, CBS Detroit plans to expand AR/VR use into additional newscasts, including morning programming and into immersive storytelling areas such as sports and other news coverage later this summer.

SAN FRANCISCO—CBS Bay Area (KPIX-TV) has announced a partnership with KION that will see KPIX deliver news and weather coverage to additional Northern California communities in Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties beginning Tuesday, Sept. 23.

As a result of the partnership with KION, which is owned by News-Press & Gazette Company, viewers in Santa Cruz, Salinas, Monterey, and Carmel will now see local reporting and weather coverage delivered by CBS Bay Area, which has deployed an innovative AR/VR studio to present local news and weather forecasts.

As part of its commitment to covering news across Northern California, CBS Bay Area also reported that will add more newsgathering resources to covering the Santa Cruz–Monterey–Salinas region and that it will extend its weather forecasting to include local coverage for those communities.

“CBS Bay Area is proud to serve viewers who call the Monterey Bay and Santa Cruz communities home, by telling their stories," said Scott Warren, president and general manager of KPIX. “We are also excited for viewers to now see and experience their local weather forecasting in a more dynamic and accessible way through our cutting-edge AR/VR presentation technology.”

“Our partnership with KPIX ensures that viewers across the Monterey, Salinas and Santa Cruz region continue to receive the high-quality local journalism they deserve,” said Rall Bradley, executive vice president of broadcast at News-Press & Gazette Company. “This collaboration brings together KION’s deep roots in the community with the trusted reporting and innovative storytelling of CBS Bay Area — delivering a seamless experience for viewers during a time of change.”

This launch marks a return to the region for KPIX, which originally supplied CBS programming to KION (then KMST) when the station signed on in 1969.

In my search to understand what the metaverse is and how it might apply to broadcasting, I have found a suitable definition that describes the metaverse as technologies that are a creative platform used for developing enhanced experiences. Sounds something like ATSC 3.0.

If the metaverse is a computer-assisted production platform, then I can see broadcasters embracing computer-enhanced productions using limited goggle-based augmented reality to supplement the broadcaster’s content. For example, the content producer might let the consumer experience a lap around the racetrack or take a swing at the pitch of a major league athlete. 

Traditional broadcasting is still dependent on seeing the picture with support from the sound.  The metaverse is described as where the consumer goes beyond looking into the digital space to also moving through and interacting with the space. To achieve this fully immersive experience, the metaverse seems to depend on the cocoon-type experience necessary to control and stimulate the senses. As with television, the metaverse seems to still be tied to basic human senses such as sight and hearing, but perhaps the metaverse will include taste, touch and smell. So, what role or influence will the metaverse play in the broadcasting space?

Alerted by Sound
Without much consideration I conclude that the metaverse is in conflict with broadcasting because the metaverse is computer-rendered into the VR, AR, XR and MR space, which requires a different level of attention than what broadcasters currently expect. 

For example, sports broadcasting is often a shared experience. I would argue that most consumers are not particularly interested in The Super Bowl, but the event provides an opportunity to drink, eat and socialize, and clearly television is perfect for sports because the consumer never misses anything. The consumer is alerted by the sound that something eventful has taken place and the producer is obligated to show multiple replays with endless commentary of the play, the strategy and the game along with a lot of unnecessary laughing. 

Additionally, news and hosted programs such as talk shows and sports are often consumed in the background. Essentially a lot of television is a low-attention pastime and I argue that consumers like it that way as opposed to a goggle-intensive experience.

Recently I heard a newscast that stated the metaverse is “the future of the internet.” I guess it could also be argued that, if the metaverse is the future of the internet, then by logical extrapolation it could be reasoned that the future of broadcasting may be linked to the metaverse since ATSC 3.0 is built on internet protocols. If the future of broadcasting is 3D, then the metaverse and internet may be a path forward from 2D to 3D visuals. The concept of the metaverse as a production platform seems plausible with a goggle experience like VR, however research has shown that people still want to watch television on the big screen.

The metaverse has also been described as moving beyond just looking at a screen or picture to also interacting with that screen or picture. It is possible for computers to generate believable graphic content for a fully immersive goggle experience, but in my mind, this is more of a gaming experience than a passive viewing experience like watching drama, movies, news or sports. 

Telly-Verse
Perhaps the metaverse is an “extended reality” that has already been contemplated by television engineers and producers. Hyped-up and interactive sound seems to be defined and described by the metaverse as well as the “telly-verse.” I see the convergence of sensory technologies and use of extended data enhancements as “Next Generation Television” and not defined by a meandering definition of a bold new meta-universe promising nirvana.

Perhaps future broadcasting experiences will also include the additional senses of smell, taste and touch, which clearly benefit an extended reality approach to television. I think the metaverse relates to television in a way that you can “dial-in” or vary the experience. For example, the addition of smell to a cooking show delivers more entertainment value than the smell of a locker room. Dial in more smell or turn off the smell-o-rama.

As contemplated, the metaverse certainly will impact many areas of our lives and be beneficial in education, travel experiences and training. I envision that the metaverse will piggyback and augment the televized entertainment experience and provide broadcasters additional tools that give complete control over the consumer’s entertainment and educational experience.

The metaverse will not define future broadcast experiences, but it will refine the actual reality of the broadcast experience. 

Wednesday's SMPTE sessions devoted to the burgeoning field of virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) production and delivery focused primarily on strategies to ensure end users a high-quality consumer experience.

Regardless of the massive technical, creative, manufacturing and marketing resources pushing for mass adoption, presenters warned, VR/AR's future depends on consumers' positive overall experiences, which, in turn, require high standards for all the mediums' individual components.

Many people who have experienced VR or AR have quickly developed an almost messianic belief that they've seen "the future." But, according to studies cited, as many as half in groups of test subjects have become physically ill from the experience.

Mary-Luc Champel The presentation "VR/AR: Assuring Quality in Virtual Reality" covered many of the issues that could dissuade potential adopters, as well as some new solutions. "We don't want this to have the same fate as 3DTV," emphasized Mary-Luc Champel, standards director MPEG ATSC and contributor to multiple standards organizations.

The industry, he said, "must offer unique and novel experiences to users and solve issues that could cause rejection." Those include motion sickness ("If it makes the user sick, they won't go back for more," Champel noted) and issues such as refresh rate and flicker, vection—a wide field of view with fast moving objects in the near field—and duration of exposure by the user.

"Some people can experience it for hours," with no detrimental effects, Champel said, "while others can't even go 15 minutes." He shared that the data he's been privy to is far from being able to determine trends about who will respond what way, although the younger audiences seem better able to adapt to the experience overall than older ones and there is a difference between males and females (although he refused to elaborate on this, despite prodding from the audience).

He touched on sensory conflict: when your memory holds one set of data about where you're located in space and your sensory input tells you something different. And he discussed postural instability: when sense of balance tells us our environment has properties other than what we're "seeing" in the headset.

Champel also spoke about methods of compression that allow for massive amount of bandwidth required with minimal detriment to the experience. Because of motion-to-photon latency, it isn't possible to just render imagery to the viewport (the area the viewer happens to be looking towards), and bandwidth constraints can prevent sending full quality to 360 space. As a result, he advocated adaptive streaming that renders everything at highest quality in the viewport and the lowest quality 180-degrees from the viewport.

Champel believes VR/AR is definitely "coming fast" and that it's vital now to develop interoperable formats and standards for compression and delivery that can cope with the enormous bandwidth the mediums require without destroying the delicate effect.

Pierre Routhier Pierre (Pete) Routhier, president of Digital Troublemaker, began his session, "The Special Challenges of Offering High Quality Experience for VR Video," picking up on Champel's key warning (wise for any business) to not distribute products that "make consumers sick." As Routhier pointed out, virtual reality "is not recreating reality. It is just playing an optical trick. You have to know how this trick works to make it work."

He went into detail about a number of areas that must work perfectly in order for the "trick" to succeed. Among these is the way the multiple images are stitched together such that the seams are invisible and differences among capture devices don't destroy the illusion. "Master your lenses!" he stressed.

Different focal lengths, settings or optical characteristics can create images that can never be seamlessly stitched together. Different capture technologies that render images as well as artifacts differently will also destroy the sense of reality for the user when the resulting frames are stitched to one another.

Cameras must be synched, of course, or movement will appear unnatural from one image to the next. He warned of "blind spots," when objects close to the photographic rig get too close and seem to disappear in between the stitched images. In short, the worlds VR/AR creators are trying to build can easily fall apart with what Routhier referred to as "Frankenframes."

Likewise, Routhier expressed great concern that the VR/AR experience have consistency regardless of HMD (head-mounted device), which is completely absent today. Content from the past Olympics, he pointed out, looked quite different depending on HMD used.

"We need consensual standards," he sad, "not just lists of what everybody's doing. It was hard enough in 3DTV where everybody was using different kinds of glasses. The challenges here are increased by 10 times."