University of Portsmouth’s Trevor Keeble, Alex Counsell and Pippa Bostock with White Light’s Richard Wilson and Andy Hook
UK - Having secured £3.6m in funding from the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), the University of Portsmouth will launch its new Centre for Creative and Immersive eXtended Reality (CCIXR) in 2021.
The CCIXR will be the UK’s first fully integrated facility to support innovation in virtual, augmented and extended realities. In order to deliver this project, the University has partnered with technical solutions specialist White Light (WL). The Centre will utilise WL’s SmartStage technology for innovation, research, and delivery of the Faculty’s curriculum.
CCIXR will offer 12 XR areas of development. The facilities will enable staff and students, in collaboration with the university’s national and global partners, to engage with a diverse range of content in an innovative way. The flexibility of the SmartStage will allow users to “push the boundaries of integration with different technologies, far transcending the parameters of other solutions”. Content sources such as AR, photogrammetry, motion capture and volumetric video, streamed directly into the SmartStage, will make the Centre a one-stop immersive environment for XR innovation and learning.
Richard Wilson, director at WL comments, “As well as supplying our SmartStage technology for the new CCIXR, we are hugely excited by the partnership with the University of Portsmouth. This ongoing relationship will enable our experts to support the teaching of the next generation and collaborate on R&D with the UK’s leading institution in this sector.”
Pippa Bostock, business and development project manager at University of Portsmouth, adds: “SmartStage epitomises everything that we are trying to do with the CCIXR, as the UK’s home of ground-breaking, innovation in immersive XR technology. It is crucial for us to demonstrate to everyone coming into the Centre, what creative technology can do for them, in a rapidly advancing digital world. With SmartStage as its technological centrepiece, the Centre will be the very first establishment in the UK to bring this whole immersive pipeline together.”
Andy Hook, WL’s technical solutions director, concludes: “We have been deploying XR solutions globally for more than three years now, with SmartStage leading the way for success in corporate and broadcast markets, as well as education. The infrastructure for the CCIXR will help expose students to industry-leading equipment, such as disguise xR servers, which will allow them to unleash their creativity through a mixture of immersive display technology.”

Latest Issue. . .