Finland’s Varjo have added real-time chroma keying and marker tracking as early access features for its XR-1 Developer Edition headset.
Varjo say it is the first company to deliver chroma keying in real-time for mixed reality devices. It is an industry-standard technique known as green-screening and used in broadcasting and film.
With marker tracking, professional users can instantly anchor any virtual objects to the real world using printable visual markers. Together, these two features allow enterprise customers to integrate virtual and real worlds, interact with photorealistic virtual content as they would in real life, and achieve pixel accuracy and occlusion inside mixed reality.
“We’re excited to introduce real-time chroma keying and object tracking to our customers just three months after the first deliveries of the XR-1, enabling absolute immersion inside mixed reality,” said Urho Konttori, Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Varjo.
VARJO CHROMA KEYING
Varjo said chroma keying is beneficial for professional workflows where aligning virtual content accurately with the physical world is crucial. Users can define parts of reality, identify them with colour, replace them with virtual models or scenery without large costs
.
With chroma key, virtual content also occludes with real-world objects or hands, allowing intuitive interactions. Using Varjo’s object tracking with visual markers, professionals can make virtual objects appear exactly where they want them in their surroundings.
“With chroma key, Varjo took an industry-standard technique and turned it into a useful new feature for dynamic mixed reality simulations,” said Bob Vaughn, Product Manager at FlightSafety International.
Both chroma keying and marker tracking are available in early access to all users of the XR-1 Developer Edition headset. The XR-1 can stream high-resolution video of the reality to user with no observable latency. This, Varjo say, enables tweaking of every pixel that the user sees inside the headset in photorealistic fidelity.
Varjo will show the new features on the XR-1 headset at
DSET from March 10-11 in Bristol, UK.
