Lux Machina at Coachella 2024

It was a monumental day when the chance to work with Coachella 2024 landed!
The brief from the Coachella Innovation team was to provide a solution for augmented reality across two stages: the Main Stage & the Sahara tent. As a festival renowned for creative innovation, AR experiences had been created at Coachella before, but not on two stages simultaneously. The event organizer chose Lux Machina Consulting, a part of the NEP Group, Inc. ecosystem due to their ability & commitment to deliver under the compressed timeline.
Collaborating with artists such as Anyma, Doja Cat, Ludmilla, Grimes & DJ Snake, the team set up a robust AR pipeline that included seamless tracking & integration with artist camps' existing art pipelines, providing them with remote access to our systems directly from their tour buses.
Our geek highlight was the use of advanced technologies like LiDAR (light detection and ranging) employed for the first time at Coachella to create a 3 billion polygon digital twin, aiding in alignment & occlusion management.
The numerous challenges included: extreme heat, 1km between stages, quickly onboarding the artist teams into Perforce Software, managing dust & ensuring that timecode & playback were synchronized across diverse setups.
Lux Machina provided 6x Panasonic UE150 PTZ Cameras, Lux ARCA Servers (www.luxmc.com/lux-arca), Unreal Engine & camera tracking/calibration software & comprehensive project management.
Halon Entertainment deployed a Creative Director & Virtual Art Department (VAD) Artist & helped integrate the creative visions of all parties underscoring the oft synergistic relationship between Lux Machina & Halon.
In the words of Halon VAD Producer Andrew Ritter “Halon worked with Coachella Innovation & Lux Machina to to prep & generate assets in the UnrealEngine for Augmented Reality real-time playback. It was a race to the finish line collaborating with creative partners from each artist team. We delivered custom content for both stages in record time. The team got hot & dusty but had a blast."
Lux Machina’s Producer Viduran Roopan's perspective was “ For me Anyma's performance on Sun night was my highlight. The creative was the most interesting, it was executed really well, his artist team was very organized. I'm grateful we had an extremely talented & dedicated team as this was a pretty monumental task to accomplish. Hope the viewers appreciated the ingenuity it took to make this a reality.”
From Eric Wagliardo, XR Producer, Coachella Innovation "We were stoked to work with Lux to expand our AR program beyond the main stage for the first time & double the number of artists AR moments from last year. It was a pleasure working with Wyatt & the Lux Machina team. They knocked it out of the park"
Some final words from Exec Producer Wyatt Bartel “this project was a phenomenal experience, it’s not every day you get to use cutting-edge tech to create digital twins & bring the creativity of famous musicians to life”
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