Factory 42

Transport Audiences to Immersive 3D Worlds With Augmented Reality

Objective

Factory 42 uses NVIDIA RTX™ and CloudXR™, the award-winning creative team elevated the AR experience and delivered high-fidelity, photorealistic virtual environments over EE’s 5G network.

Customer

Factory 42

Use Case

Media and Entertainment

Technology

NVIDIA CloudXR and RTX

Factory 42 uses NVIDIA RTX and CloudXR plus 5G to power an interactive green planet augmented reality (AR) experience.

Factory 42, an impact entertainment studio, was tasked with creating digitally immersive natural worlds at a venue in London’s Piccadilly Circus. The goal was to include rainforest, freshwater, saltwater, desert, and seasonal environments.

Inspired by the BBC Green Planet series, The Green Planet AR Experience’s mission was to educate visitors on ecosystems and the importance of biodiversity. By showcasing how plants are vital to all life on earth, organizers wanted to inspire positive change to protect our planet.

Factory 42, an impact entertainment studio, brings together technology, stories, and people to deliver memorable and immersive experiences. The company partnered with BBC Studios and NVIDIA to create The Green Planet AR Experience. The boundary-breaking display was located in London’s Piccadilly Circus and powered by EE’s 5G network.

Factory 42 planned to deliver 3D holograms and AR to smart devices to bring distinct biomes to life in the Green Planet AR Experience. To capture the rich, vivid colors and details of natural worlds in an immersive experience, the Factory 42 team needed high-quality imagery and graphics power.

Partnering with NVIDIA and leveraging EE’s private 5G network for mobile edge computing, Factory 42 delivered the interactive experience to Samsung S21 mobile handsets that were provided to each visitor.

Image courtesy of Factory 42

Factory 42 leveraged NVIDIA technology to:

Deliver high-fidelity, photorealistic virtual environments over a 5G network
Create virtual worlds with AI, ray tracing, and simulations

Stream 3D content from edge networks to mobile devices
Construct true-to-reality immersive digital experiences that included hundreds of plant and animal species

Image courtesy of Factory 42

Ultra High-Quality 3D Assets Streamed From the Edge

To bring these virtual worlds to life in a sustainable way, Factory 42 combined captivating storytelling with cutting-edge technology. Using NVIDIA RTX™ and CloudXR™, the award-winning creative team elevated the AR experience and delivered high-fidelity, photorealistic virtual environments over EE’s 5G network.

NVIDIA RTX uses AI, ray tracing, and simulation, to power 3D designs, photorealistic simulations, and stunning visual effects.

NVIDIA CloudXR, built on RTX technology, delivers VR and AR over 5G and Wi-Fi networks.

Using NVIDIA RTX, Factory 42 created ultra-high-quality 3D assets, environments, interactions, and visual effects to build true-to-reality digital representations of natural elements. The AR experience runs on a custom, on-premises GPU-powered edge rendering stack powered by RTX 8000 professional GPUs.

With CloudXR and NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation (RTX vWS) software running on VMware Horizon, Factory 42 was able to stream ultra-high-quality content from the 5G edge network directly to the Samsung smart devices.

Image courtesy of Factory 42

"NVIDIA RTX and CloudXR are fundamental to our ability to deliver this 5G mobile edge compute experience. The RTX 8000 GPU provided the graphics power and the NVENC support required to deploy into an edge rendering cluster. With CloudXR, we could create robust connections to mobile handsets."

Stephen Stewart
CTO, Factory 42

From the Depths of the Ocean to Holding a Virtual Butterfly

With an interactive AR experience that blends physical and digital worlds, The Green Planet AR Experience brings audiences into closer contact with nature.

Powered by EE 5G, visitors use a mobile device to traverse a living rainforest with six distinct biomes, led by a 3D hologram of Sir David Attenborough—the narrator of some of the world’s most-watched nature documentaries.

The creative team at Factory 42 designed the AR content, which is generated in real time with the Unity game engine. The 3D hologram of Sir David was created using volumetric capture technology provided by Dimension Studios.

Spatial audio provides a surround-sound experience, as digital plants and animals react to the presence of visitors in the space.

The visitors take an interactive journey through nature, from exploring the depths of the ocean to holding a virtual butterfly in the palm of their hand. Through virtual immersion, audiences gain a deeper understanding of ecosystems, the importance of biodiversity, and what it means to protect our planet.

Image courtesy of Factory 42

Doubling Down on Sustainability

Factory 42 designed sustainability into every level of construction and operation. The materials used in building The Green Planet AR Experience will be reused or recycled after the event to promote circularity.

By combining NVIDIA RTX and CloudXR with 5G, Factory 42 delivered realistic interactive experiences that included hundreds of different trees, plants, and creatures inside an eco-friendly, virtual space—all without the carbon cost of travel.

Ready to Get Started?

To learn more about NVIDIA’s streaming XR solution, visit:
www.nvidia.com/CloudXR