Zero Latency Motion Control
How the Synapse VP team pioneered a solution to eliminate frustum latency with high-speed motion control rigs, enabling precise, zero-delay camera moves on a virtual production stage.
The Mission
To integrate fast-moving motion control camera platforms into a virtual production stage environment and eliminate tracking and frustum latency issues.
The Problem
With every camera tracking system presenting positional data to the Unreal Engine-driven virtual environments displayed on a volume's LED panels, there is an unavoidable time-delay, known as latency, in collecting, transmitting and then translating that information to the virtual camera's frustum in the virtual environments being created in realtime and subsequently mapped onto the LED screens.
Having a significant time lag from when the camera moves to when the frustum moves could potentially be a deal-breaker with a fast-moving motion control shot.
The Solution
The Synapse VP team partnered with motion control innovators Simon Wakley and Chris Toth at Camera Control to pioneer a unique solution to negate system latency.
Since a motion control rig already deals with numerical positional values, distance to subject, lateral placement, height, pan, tilt and roll, for the lens's physical point in space, having that data talk to Unreal Engine (and thereby drive the content on the screens) would enable the motion control platform to dictate how that information is conveyed.
That idea of manipulating the camera position data allowed the team to alleviate the latency inherent in conventional camera tracking solutions by preemptively sending the camera's position and movement before the camera actually moved. The moco's data set preceded the rig's movement by exactly the number of frames of latency experienced in the Unreal system's specification.
The result? The frustum of the Unreal virtual camera view was precisely locked with the high-speed movement of the motion control rig. Zero latency motion-control camera moves achieved.
On Set
This cutting-edge technique allowed director Rich Lee to incorporate stylish quick Bolt-system moco moves, as well as conventional motion control multi-passes to have one of the performers, a sawed-in-half man, have his legs perform one part of the dance choreography on the left of the screen while his upper body moved with the music on the right.
With our team of VP specialists at Synapse, finding innovative solutions to any challenge is what we do.
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