VISUALMEDIA · Immersive and Interactive Real Time 3D Social Media Graphics Environments for the Broadcast Industry

In recent years there has been a progressive trend toward integrating social media technologies into broadcast technology environments to facilitate direct audience participation in live programming. Thus far, functionality has mainly been to allow individual viewers to contribute to news, current affairs and debates through sending SMS comments, or submissions to voting processes in light entertainment and reality TV content.This technological trend has been slow in evolving and has not as yet reached full potential. The current situation is that broadcasters want more from existing solutions which offer capability limited to small text information and plain 2D graphics generated through ticker representations. Audience feedback and focus group conclusions show clearly that viewer interest is not sustained through current approaches.Project VisualMedia aims to go beyond current state-of-the-art by integrating content generated through social media with real-time 3D graphics capability specifically developed for the broadcast media sector, together with advanced interaction and visualization systems, in order to create added value for both audience and broadcast industry.