In-camera VFX — ICVFX — is the technology behind the LED volumes you’ve seen on major productions. It’s not a green screen replacement. It’s a fundamentally different way of making television and film, and it’s moving faster than most of the industry realises.
What it is
An XR stage is a curved LED wall — typically wrapping 270 degrees around the talent — displaying a real-time rendered background generated in Unreal Engine. A camera tracking system feeds the camera’s position and lens data to Disguise and Unreal, which shift the perspective of the rendered environment in real time to match what the physical camera sees.
The result: the background looks correct from any camera angle, reacts to the actor’s physical lighting, and can be changed between takes without moving anyone or anything.
Why broadcast is adopting it
Speed. A location shoot requires travel, logistics, permits, weather management, and continuity across multiple days. An XR stage shoot happens in a controlled environment, with repeatable lighting, in a fraction of the time. For episodic television with tight schedules and tight budgets, the economics are compelling.
The technical requirements
This is not a plug-and-play technology. You need a Disguise server running the media playback and camera tracking integration, a high-performance Unreal workstation, a camera tracking system (Mo-Sys, Stype, or similar), and LED panels with low enough latency to not introduce visible artefacts on camera. Each element has to be calibrated against the others before you roll camera.
Done well, the audience cannot tell. That’s the point.