Whatever the outcome of the US elections, some of the main winners of the night have been the teams behind a new generation of broadcast graphics.
There are 64 major elections happening round the world this year involving billions of people. So many of them in fact that Vizrt has a webpage that counts down to the next one. Currently that has the USA at 0 days, Algeria in 24 days, but Ireland looks like it will try and cram a cheeky one in this month, so they're going to have to update that graphic soon.
If you want to see the state of the art of covering a huge election though it's well worth checking in on the live blog the company is running today. Meet the media tech behind the 2024 US Election is highlighting the work of broadcasters around the world and how they're leaning into the latest technology to cover the US vote.
Immersive graphics, 3D environments, virtual studios, and more feature from a properly diverse range of outlets.
We first wrote about virtual studios being used in elections over a decade ago and it's interesting to see how far we've come in the years since. "A virtual studio looks to the audience like an extremely sophisticated set, where the election graphics can become not only solid 3D objects, but real-looking things that the presenter can walk around and in front of," we explained rather excitedly at the time.
Given that we're now talking about realtime graphics being created in Unreal Engine 5 helping to generate immersive experiences that work seamlessly across broadcast and on into social media, we've come a long way since.