LAS VEGAS—Following its announcement of the acquisition of NewTek, which happened to fall on April Fool’s Day, Vizrt began its press conference with a joke: “A Viking and a cowboy walk into a bar.”
The two companies see the acquisition as a complementary merger, with each possessing different strengths in different areas of the industry. In the immediate future, plans seem to be to let the individual operations continue, with a long-term goal of collaboration to create new technology and products.
On the product front, Vizrt is rolling out Viz Engine 4, the latest version of its render engine for live media. New features include beefed-up options for render pipelines; in addition to Vizrt’s existing render pipeline, Viz Engine adds the Reality Fusion render pipeline for added effects of realism, and includes support for third-party engines such as Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4. Additional features include a new Fusion Keyer, intuitive control applications and a built-in asset management tool that delivers graphics rendering, clip players, downstream keyers, switch functionality and DVEs.
Technology for sports broadcasters will be a focus for Vizrt at the show, with demonstrations of products including Live Virtual Presenter, Viz Libero AR and Viz Arena.
