Ross Video Creates Voyager V4.0 for Enhanced Graphics Rendering, Integrates UX Control Platform With Monogram’s Creative Console

As part of the Ross Live | 2020 program, Ross has launched Voyager V4.0 – the latest version of our highly successful graphics rendering solution for virtual studio and augmented reality applications. In addition, the company revealed that the UX control platform now integrates with Monogram’s Creative Console.

Voyager V4.0
Voyager is based on Epic Games’ popular Unreal engine and provides content creators with unparalleled creativity and realism when producing on-air graphics. Voyager V4.0 has been built on the latest Unreal V4.25 release (which offers internal chromakeying within the engine for the first time) and features a number of valuable enhancements. Voyager V4.0 includes support for multiple composition layers, 3D models (meshes), and garbage mattes, and also offers a new way to integrate the talent into the virtual environment. From a workflow perspective, V4.0 supports HTML 5-based MOS workflows for newsroom environments, enabling journalists to work on their stories from any browser in any location.

V4.0 of Voyager comes hot on the heels of V3.1 which was released last month and introduced a number of workflow enhancements, including HDR and also a new Voyager Designer License enabling designers to create on any platform or workstation and then move their projects directly to the Voyager engine for playout. V3.1 also offered creators the ability to create off-axis projection (a virtual window or portal) on a physical LED wall.

Customers with existing maintenance contracts can upgrade to V4.0 without charge, and the latest release will be available by the end of August 2020.

“When we launched Voyager, we said we wanted to gather real-world feedback from customers and incorporate it into the platform as efficiently as we could,” says Gideon Ferber, Director of Virtual Solutions at Ross. “I’m pleased we are in a position to announce V4.0 less than one month after V3.1, and I know our customers are really going to benefit from the additional flexibility and support that we’re building into this new version.”

UX Control Platform
Based in Waterloo, Canada, Monogram has engineered a new modular, freeform control surface designed to enable hands-on and dynamic interaction with UX and other creative software solutions.

“We’re very excited to partner with Ross Video to offer virtual production and broadcast operators an improved and more efficient tactile user experience in UX,” says Calvin Chu, CEO of Monogram. “Creative Console offers an operator environment designed specifically for the non-engineering user, and provides extensive ease-of-use by taking the technical complexity out of deploying and operating virtual environments with familiar, tactile tools.”

Creative Console is a highly flexible and customizable control surface that comprises different modules – including an innovative trackball alternative, dials and sliders – that can be arranged in the way that best suits the operator. Each module attaches to the others magnetically, enabling operators to mix and match and create an expandable control surface that best meets their own ergonomic needs and preferences. Going well beyond event triggering, Creative Console lets operators control virtual cameras and lights, edit chroma keys and have direct access to objects in the scene, as well as providing the ability to move, rotate, scale, save, and animate them without going into the editor or the engine.

“Creative Console offers operators a highly flexible control solution, and the ability to pick and choose modules and change them as needed is very elegant,” says Ferber. “Creative Console is a very easy-to-use and intuitive system that’s perfect for broadcasters working with Ross Video’s UX control platform and Voyager graphics rendering solution.”