Sony Group Boosting its VR Production Business

Sony Group is increasing its focus on the virtual production business, where it is experiencing market-beating growth, according to a company executive, leveraging the Japanese entertainment conglomerate's technology. The company, which provides virtual production facilities to filmmakers and broadcasters, employs a wall of light-emitting diode (LED) panels that display images - such as a science-fiction landscape or a downtown cityscape - that are integrated into the scene as it is shot.

Advantages of the system include more realistic reflections created by light from the panels and greater immersion for actors on set, as opposed to green screens, where digital effects are added later.

Sony sees its edge from the company's strength in hardware - the conglomerate makes everything from image sensors for cameras to the supersized LED video walls - and moviemaking expertise as a major player in Hollywood.

"It's because we have the hardware that we can recreate in the virtual world," Sony's head of virtual production, Yasuharu Nomura, explained in an interview.

Sony has shed struggling electronics lines in recent decades to focus on games, movies, and music, but it still manufactures hardware such as movie cameras. Epic Games, whose Unreal Engine is used to create digital environments, is an investor in the company. Sony claims that its virtual production business is growing at a rate of around 35% per year, faster than the overall market, with services accounting for an increasing proportion of sales.