Pixomondo PXO AKIRA Vehicle Imaging Platform

CES2025

At their CES 2025 press conference, Sony introduced its “Creative Entertainment Vision,” a vision for where Sony wants to be in 10 years’ time, and made new announcements about mobility, sports, entertainment, and more. This year, Sony is focusing particularly on entertainment areas such as music, games, and animation, but one particularly eye-catching announcement was the launch of Pixomondo PXO AKIRA, a groundbreaking motion platform that supports vehicle filming for virtual production.

Pixomondo, a virtual production and VFX company under Sony Pictures Entertainment, announced that filming car scenes and other vehicles is very labor-intensive. Current methods for filming moving scenes require road closures, police cooperation, and process trailers, which are costly. In addition, they are dependent on weather and have safety concerns, hindering creativity. To solve these challenges, PXO’s Innovation Lab developed the all-in-one moving object filming system, “PXO AKIRA.”

No composition is required, and realistic shooting is possible. Because it can rotate 360 degrees, scenes that are difficult to shoot in real life can be shot with ease.

There is a growing need for car photography in virtual production technology. In particular, the expression of reflections on the body of a car using virtual production is highly regarded compared to green screen compositing. However, until now, cars were brought into the studio and intense scenes such as car chases were achieved using analog methods, such as shaking the car by hand or shaking the camera. This put a limit on the realism, making it difficult to express intense scenes.

Pixomondo offers a new moving object shooting system for vehicle-based filming by combining a “motion platform,” “robot camera crane,” “LED volume,” and “racing simulator.” The uniquely designed motion platform can be used to shoot any moving object, including passenger cars, motorcycles, and helicopters. It can rotate 360 degrees and synchronize with the virtual space reproduced in the LED panel in real time to realize realistic moving object movement.

The motion platform is a moving base on which various moving objects such as cars, bikes, and boards can be placed.

The programmable robotic camera is highly accurate and flexible, enabling 360-degree camerawork on the move, and the Unreal Engine-based previsualization platform enables the creation of a digital twin of the studio during pre-production, facilitating the smooth transfer of visual assets to final shoots.

Using a robotic camera crane, you can set the shooting angle in advance and shoot from various angles.

It is possible to program movements in advance. It is possible to program movements with a high degree of precision before shooting begins.

The driving simulator also allows filmmakers to test and refine driving routes in a virtual space before filming begins. A highly scalable 3D content library allows for dynamic, real-world and virtual 3D environments to be created in real time. Combined with content from LED Studio, PXO AKIRA delivers high-quality in-camera VFX with synchronized camera movements and motion platform, significantly reducing post-production work hours.

For pre-programming, a system similar to that of a car simulator, which is used in games called racing simulators, is available. Using this system, it is possible to program the movement in advance.

Pixomondo has seven production bases in Canada, and plans to first introduce the system to its Canadian studios. It may be possible that the Pixomondo PXO AKIRA will be expanded to Sony PCL and other studios in Japan in the future, but nothing has been decided yet.