Portugal’s AVK Adds XR Stage with Analog Way’s Aquilon RS4 at its Core

AVK Soluçoes Audiovisuais, S.A., an events management company in Sintra, Portugal, is using Analog Way’s Aquilon RS4 4K/8K multi-screen presentation system and videowall processor to drive the LED videowall and floor in a new 300-square-meter studio designed for virtual production.  

“The main concept behind the new studio was to build an XR stage that could be flexible and powerful enough to meet all the requests we were getting for live events, streaming, film and advertising shoots,” explains Rui Fonseca, AVK’s Senior Video Engineer and Project Manager.  “The challenge was to have a big enough stage to accommodate all possible clients without compromising technical performance.”

Although AVK initially purchased the Aquilon RS4 for other purposes, the XR stage proved to be a perfect home for the system.

“Aquilon is so versatile and powerful that it can be adapted to any project, so we decided to include it in the new studio from the beginning,” Fonseca says.

The XR studio features a 14-meter, curved 2mm LED videowall and 4mm LED floor, a media server to facilitate XR workflow, two 3D game engines, one fixed and two tracked cameras, a 2.8mm LED comfort monitor and several 55-inch monitors.

“The whole system is based on XR merging Mixed, Virtual and Augmented Reality,” Fonseca points out.  “We use 3D engines, such as Unreal and Notch, to provide backplate and frontplate mapped contents to use in the XR environment. With this approach, we are able to achieve interactive and immersive environments mixed with AR content.”

Aquilon RS4 serves as the main switcher for all signals, feeding them from the media servers to all the LEDs, streaming encoders, and monitors.  It also manages all GFX and media when the stage is not used for XR production.

Aquilon is running perfectly,” Fonseca reports. “It’s always surprising the way it responds to every demand.  All 16 outputs are being used and, even so, each time we think of a new idea its power is just limitless: Aquilon always has a little bit more to give or some other way to do things.  And it is still a young product – I can only imagine what it will be able to do in two or three years!” 

AVK will surely discover Aquilon’s future potential since it has built the XR stage to last for the long run.  “We believe that virtual production will continue to have a major role in the future of the events industry,” says Fonseca.  “Analog Way’s support has been very helpful in every stage of this new project.”