News with augmented intelligence

As part of XReco’s News Media Demonstrator, the RAI team explored how modern technology can be used to create powerful and engaging commemorations of past events.

Let’s imagine the following scenario: the anniversary of the Grande Torino airplane crash approaches and Rai wants to commemorate and revive this historical event to reflect and educate people about this tragic event in sports history.

Figure 1 : Illustration of content assets and technologies employed to realise the news report

The Grande Torino tragedy, also known as the Superga air disaster, occurred on May 4, 1949, when a plane carrying the Torino football team crashed into the Superga hillside near Turin, Italy. This catastrophe not only decimated one of the greatest football teams of its era but also left an indelible mark on the Italian sports history.

Here’s how RAI envisioned a news special report commemorating this event, whose production employs the cutting-edge technologies developed in XReco. The broadcast opens in a virtual studio featuring a stunning 3D model of the Basilica of Superga as its backdrop. This immediately transports viewers to the site of the tragedy, creating a sombre and respectful atmosphere. An introductory segment provides a comprehensive overview of the events leading up to and including the fateful day of May 4, 1949. This sets the stage for viewers who may be unfamiliar with the incident. To add a personal touch, the report features a virtual fan telling memories of the tragedy, and helping viewers connect emotionally with the impact of the disaster on supporters at the time. Finally, an interview with a reporter is conducted via holoportation i.e., a real time volumetric capture taking place and transmitted directly from the Basilica of Superga. This gives viewers a sense of presence at the memorial site, adding gravity and immediacy to the report.

How could we implement this vision with a limited budget and without requiring highly skilled personnel?

The answer is leveraging the potential offered by some of the XReco’s more advanced technologies, in conjunction with third-party applications already integrated into the Rai’s workflows.

Initially, the editorial team used the XReco Orchestrator Dashboard’s search and retrieval service to find high quality video clips of the Basilica of Superga. Starting from this content, the 3D graphic designer reconstructed a 3D model of the Basilica, invoking the XReco NeRF service through the Orchestrator, without using any 3D authoring tool.

After the 3D model reached a satisfactory quality, the legal team decided for an appropriate license, in order to clearly specify the conditions for its reuse. Once this license became available in the XReco Orchestrator Dashboard, the model was then ready to be published to the XReco Marketplace.

Figure 4 : Preview of the Basilica of Superga 3D model and associated license

The virtual fan was built using MetaHuman Creator, a tool provided by Unreal Engine that allowed designing and animating the realistic digital human character based on the scan of a real person, ensuring the authenticity of the character. In addition, MetaHuman Animator enabled facial performances to be reproduced as high-fidelity animations, using a mobile phone as a capture device. Once created, the virtual fan integrates seamlessly into the RAI virtual production pipeline. All these steps were performed manually by a 3D digital artist.

XReco technologies allowed co-presence of different technologies like the transmission of volumetric content to the studio and the virtual environment. This made it possible for a journalist to be holoported into the virtual environment from the Basilica of Superga. Using a plugin for the game engine and i2cat holoportation technology, the journalist was inserted into the scene.

By blending state-of-the-art visual effects, virtual reality, and traditional storytelling, this innovative approach to news journalism created a deeply moving tribute to the Grande Torino team. It not only honours their memory but also educates younger generations about this significant moment in football history.

This also demonstrated how XReco technologies can assist RAI newsrooms – and more in general, those involved in the production of news and entertainment – in their reporting of diverse forms of information and journalism. This includes sports events, commemorations, breaking news and in-depth scientific reports, just to name a few.