The program will fund the Brainstorm “TelePorter” project to develop an augmented reality teleporter system for immersive news

Valencia, Spain, March 27th, 2019. Brainstorm, leading manufacturer of real-time 3D graphics, augmented reality and virtual studio solutions, announces its selection amongst the winning projects of the 2019 run of Google’s Digital News Initiative (DNI). The DNI Fund is a European programme that’s part of the Google News Initiative, an effort to help journalism thrive in the digital age, and directed to organisations and individuals that aim to produce original journalism and to enlighten citizens with trustworthy journalistic content, whose projects focus on encouraging a more sustainable news ecosystem.

As the news landscape is rapidly diversifying as a result of internet broadcasters and lower-end market entry costs, new challenges and opportunities rise. Broadcast news and real journalism faces the challenge to remain relevant, engaging and appealing to audiences, particularly at a time of tightening budgets. The opportunity is to create accessible, affordable ways to enable a new breed of journalists to deliver compelling broadcast news that reflects traditional values of journalism, whilst embracing the possibilities offered by new technologies.

Brainstorm’s TelePorter creates compelling, immersive visual news content through the use of Augmented Reality (AR) broadcast technology, allowing reporters to appear ‘in situ’ or places the journalists together with interviewees regardless of their physical location. By ‘teleporting’ journalists or participants into an AR environment, viewers can have access to rich visual news. The system also allows for additional content to be included and sourced from standard presentation tools. The TelePorter technology will be affordable and user-friendly enabling smaller broadcasters to access and use the technology.

This project builds on Brainstorm’s experience in 3D graphics, virtual sets and augmented reality, and will be developed on the ground of Brainstorm’s patented TrackFree™ technology, and more specifically the acclaimed TeleTransporter feature of InfinitySet, and other advanced features like virtual shadows and defocus or talent optical tracking to name just a few. This technology is the development base for the new TelePorter project, which is designed to empower the new breed of journalists with new, compelling technologies that will enhance the way news are created and delivered, in a more affordable way. Also, the development of a single control room allows this product to be a standalone solution, and easy to manage with just one operator.

According to Francisco Ibáñez, Brainstorm’s R&D Projects Director, “we are excited to be part of Google’s Digital News Initiative, which will allow us to expand our advanced AR technology to new fields such as wournalism, which will surely change the game in the news arena by providing additional tools for newsmakers.”