December 18, 2022
VRT highlights innovation at the Wintercircus fan village of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022
During the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, VRT installed a multi-purpose fan village at the Wintercircus in Ghent. For an entire month, Belgian fans could attend a broadcast of VillaSporza (VRT’s sports talkshow), enjoy World Cup’ live matches on a big screen, and get a glimpse of VRT’s new virtual technologies. Inside the fan village, virtual reality experiences, avatars and gaming were incorporated in a series of installations preparing us for the metaverse.
Interactive installations by VRT Innovation, both for football and gaming fans
VR-game ‘The Da Vinci effect’ is an educational multi-user game, aimed at children and adolescents. Players can immerse themselves into the virtual world of inventor and architect Leonardo Da Vinci and learn about his pioneering inventions in a playful way. Concretely, players must team up in groups of 3 people to fix Da Vinci’s broken inventions, meanwhile discovering the history and technical functioning lurking behind the different inventions.
In the Peetie Club installation, named after the online live show ‘De Peetie Club’ on Ketnet, children can create their own virtual character or ‘Peetie’. Once created, your ‘Peetie’ can socialise, interact, and sing with other ‘Peeties’. At the Wintercircus, visitors had the chance to take a seat at a desk, put the headphones on and start to sing along. The child itself functions as the main driver of its own ‘Peetie’, which ensures that behaviour (like singing) and facial expressions (like winking) will be copied by the ‘Peetie’. An additional feature in this installation are the World Cup-themed animations and acts, such as raising a Belgian flag or performing a backflip. Children can play with these animations and project these acts on their ‘Peetie’ by simply pressing buttons on the desk.
The virtual meet-and-greet installation with VRT-sport presenter Aster Nzeyimana gave visitors the chance to make an augmented reality (AR)-based video via an interactive screen. Afterwards, participants could download the video via a QR-code that automatically appears once the recording is finished and share it with friends and family on their social media accounts like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. The multi-purpose software of this technology is completely made in-house, by VRT, and is also deployable for other VRT-events such as ‘De Warmste Week’.
In the virtual installation MetaHuman, visitors have the chance to take on the role of their favourite Belgian Red Devil player. The installation itself can be used for virtual productions in different contexts, as the technology is controlled with face-tracking and depends on visitor’s facial expressions and mimics. The installation is a fun way for people to interact with cutting-edge technology.
