Immersing Newsreaders With Immerj

Efforts aim to bring VR tools to newsrooms nationwide

Features of lmmerj: a) scene selection menu; b) an embedded 3-D model of the International Space Station; c) text used as a title; d) archival video overlay of the moon landing; e) archival photo of Gene Kranz celebrating at his desk.

Good reporting has a way of transporting readers to the center of the action — whether it’s a battlefield or the halls of justice. But recently, journalists have added a new level of immersion to their repertoire through the use of virtual reality.

Whether gathering alongside crowds for the pope’s arrival in Mexico or teleporting viewers to Mars, the first wave of VR reporting has been greeted with great enthusiasm. However, it takes time and technical savvy to produce such high-tech news packages.

Starting in 2015, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) began a partnership with the UT Austin School of Journalism, the UT3D film program and The Washington Post to develop an open-source virtual reality publishing framework for journalists who lack the engineering skills to publish their own VR content.

The tool they created, called Immerj, makes it easy to embed text or 3-D models within 360-degree virtual reality video. Journalists at leading media organizations began beta testing the tool in January 2018.

“With Immerj, we want to democratize these newly available immersive technologies, thus helping storytellers reach their audience with a more impactful sensory experience,” said Brian McCann, a member of TACC’s Visualization Interfaces & Applications group who helped lead the effort.

Creators can add content elements — including in-scene text, images, 3-D models, spatial audio and video-in-video — to their video timeline, place the objects so they appear as they would in VR and easily export web-ready video files for publication.

[Immerj, an open-source virtual reality publishing framework, allows journalists to publish their own VR content — in this case an immersive experience of the pope’s visit to Mexico. The project is being developed by staff members at TACC in collaboration with the UT Austin School of Journalism, the UT3D film program and The Washington Post.]

“We spent a lot of time with stakeholders to find out what they would be interested in,” said McCann. “The secret is not adding too much but still allowing journalists to do what they want.”

The software prototype was developed by students from UT Austin under the guidance of experts from TACC’s Visualization group, with support from the university and the Knight Foundation. The team presented the tool at the 2016 Online News Association Conference in Denver, the 2016 Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, and in 2017 at the IEEE-VR Conference in Los Angeles and the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin.

“We decided to team up with the Texas Advanced Computing Center and its visualization lab,” said R.B. Brenner, director of the School of Journalism and one of the leads on the project. “Now we are working with computer scientists and engineering students. They learn from us; we learn from them. All of a sudden, we had this powerful collection of talents. That is what has elevated our project.”