360° Series "Nơi Này Hay Cực" - Guiding the XR revolution with a systematic approach.

360° TV show integrates XR content – “blue ocean” for the tourism, entertainment industry, and stories from pioneers.

From the story of the only 360 TV show in Vietnam

In February 2024, for the first time, a Made-in-Vietnam 360 TV show proudly “debuted” at the world’s largest mobile conference (Mobile World Congress – MWC). A phenomenon unprecedented in 7 years of Vietnam’s participation in this event: International guests queued up to experience living like locals and journeying through the scenic, cultural, and historical sites of Hoi An through technology lenses.

Beyond any imagination of conventional TV programs, the “Nơi Này Hay Cực” TV show applies 360 video technology, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in the destination and have full control over the viewing angle to enjoy unlimited beautiful scenes in 360 degrees. Impressively, the first season also carries a strong Vietnamese identity with the integration of VR Game sequences such as lantern painting and processing Cao Lầu – a specialty of Quang Nam province – on virtual reality glasses.

TV Show 360 được cộng đồng quốc tế đón nhận tại MWC 2024.

The success of the “Nơi Này Hay Cực” series marks the collaboration between ADT – a pioneering unit in Marketing, Interactive Technology, and TV360 – the OTT television platform owned by Viettel. The 30-day production “battle” for the show was a challenging journey with no precedent for the entire team.

The first challenge came from the unique format of the program. Not simply a 360-degree video, “Nơi Này Hay Cực” was positioned as a comprehensive, professional 360-degree TV Show – requiring deep scripts, compelling stories, and valuable experiences. Many big names such as scriptwriter Đinh Đức Hoàng – known for his ability to find “gold mines” in stories with over 15 years in journalism, publishing books, and adapting films, or director Lê Nhâm Quý – a former member of DJI Creator and Insta360, ensured the quality of “Nơi Này Hay Cực”. Departing from general content, each episode embodied the authenticity of reality TV, the cinematic beauty, the interactivity of technology, and a profound understanding of Vietnamese life to give a fresh look to familiar landmarks.

The next obstacle lay in operating the filming equipment. While 360-degree video technology in the market is not new, achieving 8K standard for 360-degree videos required a risky decision from the production team: directly mounting a large-sized 360-degree camera with 8 lenses, weighing 17kg, onto a drone. This led to unavoidable risks such as shaky and blurry videos, and the post-processing effort to stabilize and align scenes from 8 cameras was exponentially complex. The effort to harmonize between technological factors and aesthetics in filmmaking came at the cost of many sleepless nights.

Insta360 Titan 11K Cinematic 360/VR Camera được treo cố định vào flycam.

The organization and setup process continued to pose new challenges for the film crew. While 2D videos allow for easy adjustment of camera angles, 360-degree videos always capture the entire scene, meaning that the space needs to be meticulously adjusted on the spot. Notably, the 360-degree TV show utilized the one-shot technique with a continuously moving camera around the actors to capture the story. The limitations on transition effects increased creative pressure on scriptwriting and filming, requiring perfect coordination among actors, cameras, sound, lighting, and props to ensure smooth footage in all conditions. With minimal visual effects support, few TV shows have the ability to meet the criteria as authentically and beautifully as “Nơi Này Hay Cực”.

Một phân cảnh one-shot tại Làng gốm Thanh Hà – Hội An.

In particular, for the first time, XR (Extended Reality) content and technology were fully developed by ADT and successfully integrated into the TV360 platform, allowing users to enjoy the show across multiple platforms including smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, PCs, and VR headsets. This was considered the most challenging aspect of the production process. The XR content, including VR games, cannot run directly on Meta Quest headsets and requires specialized software like Unreal Engine (UE). However, the drawback of using UE is a significant reduction in the quality of 360-degree videos. Unwilling to compromise on the limitations of the technology, the ADT technical team explored innovative solutions by integrating the default 360-degree video viewing feature of the Meta Quest into the UE environment, ensuring the highest quality user experience possible.

At the forefront of pioneering vision

Before the commencement of filming for “Nơi Này Hay Cực” (This Place is Awesome), the ADT team endured a year-long journey filled with challenges: from conceptualization, product research, assembling the right team, proving effectiveness to educating users. From a strategic standpoint, this journey also represents nearly a decade of laying the foundation for ADT, steadfastly pursuing and accumulating quality and quantity in the potential-rich landscape of Immersive Marketing.

Indeed, 360-degree video and XR content have been and are being chosen by international businesses as spearheads for development over the past five years. South Korea, the world’s leading entertainment market, has developed the U+ app, where fans interact with celebrities through a 360-degree perspective, along with a library of 35,000 VR videos attracting 2 million users per month. Singtel, the largest telecommunications company in Singapore, collaborates with the MelodyVR platform to provide immersive shows with unique 360-degree filming and VR experiences.

The Entertainment and Travel Experience content group also ranks at the top in the most coveted AR/VR fields today (according to the “Global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Market 2020 – 2024” report from Business Wire). Among them, the Entertainment Video group is forecasted to reach a value of $79 million by 2025 (research data from Goldman Sachs). Opportunities abound for enterprises willing to experiment with innovation and find niche pathways as the traditional tourism and entertainment industries reach saturation points.

Truly, the pioneering strategy, creative thinking, and systematic approach of those behind “Nơi Này Hay Cực” are now reaping sweet fruits. The official broadcasting of the 360-degree TV Show on the Viettel TV360 OTT platform immediately garnered attention from the international technology community, opening up endless potential for the project itself as well as the professional XR content market in Vietnam.

It can be seen that with complete investment and integration between interactive technology, cinematography, culture, and entertainment, the TV show “Nơi Này Hay Cực” is bridging all distances, pioneering a direction for humane and sustainable development for Vietnamese tourism. A revolution for tourism promotion, a new era for XR content platforms and television is officially established from here!

Explore the 05 episodes of the “Nơi này hay cực” series here:

Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5