The Origins of SETS

One of Sony Group's long-standing initiatives is the internal Sony Technology Exchange Fair (STEF), held since 1973. Bringing together engineers across Sony Group companies in Japan and overseas, STEF serves as a forum to share technologies and exchange ideas for the purpose of inspiring new forms of collaboration. SETS began as an initiative to take STEF's spirit of technological exchange outside of Japan and applying it to the field of entertainment.

The goal for SETS was thus to bring new technologies together and link them with the perspectives of the people who would use them, turning that exchange into the next idea.

SETS was created from this core concept, gathering people from Sony's entertainment business domains across Gaming, Music, and Pictures, all the way as to include participants from outside Sony Group.

From Los Angeles to London: Expanding the SETS Community

After the inaugural SETS in Los Angeles in 2023, the event was hosted in London in the United Kingdom. As several Sony entertainment businesses is located in London, the city was well suited for fostering connections across Sony's businesses. Locally based Sony Group companies worked closely together to bring a greater diversity of attendees to the event, selecting venues including nearby immersive entertainment facilities and conference spaces within Sony offices to maximize attendance.

SETS has evolved beyond a single event into a community. The connections formed in Los Angeles and London have led to new collaborations and inspired activities that continue to expand across each region.

SETS LA 2026 － This Year's Highlights

The growing SETS community came together once again in Los Angeles this year, this time featuring technologies that bring new possibilities for entertainment in areas such as film and TV production, spatial content, audio, and production workflow efficiency.

Below are some of the exhibits featured at this year's event.

Lens Calibration-Free Live-Action CG Compositing (OpenTrackIO)

Lens Calibration-Free Live-Action CG Compositing is a technology for real-time incorporation of high-quality CG assets captured in advance with live-action footage. Using OpenTrackIO - an open-source software that transmits information such as camera position, orientation, zoom, and focus to other equipment in real time - this technology makes live-action and CG compositing more accessible.

Virtual production, a film production technique in which background footage is displayed on LED screens while performers and sets are filmed in front of them, requires accurate information sharing across multiple pieces of equipment. This technology is designed to reduce that complexity and help streamline the production process.

4D Capture Technology

Creating moving 3D models, a process known as 4D capture, typically requires large-scale setups. This technology enables the generation of high definition 4D models of a subject and 4K depth map by one-shot with a single camera. By combining a long-range LiDAR* and a mirrorless camera, the proprietary sensing device captures rich, high-density data including fine details, such as wrinkles in clothing or object textures, and is expected to be used in areas such as video production and spatial content creation.

* LiDAR is a sensing technology that emits laser light and measures reflected light to determine the distance to an object and the shape of a subject with high precision.

AutoDailies

In film and TV production, "Dailies" refers to the process of organizing each day's recorded visuals, sound and metadata, preparing them for review by directors, producers, editors, and other production staff. The process is crucial, as it is the first time the words from the page have been rendered into reality, including performance, staging, and visual style.

AutoDailies is an in-house tool designed to automate the most repetitive parts of this workflow. It analyzes recorded footage to locate the slate, a visual sync and data marker, and uses that frame as the reference point for aligning picture and sound. In parallel, it reads camera reports and other production paperwork, extracting roll numbers, scenes, takes, and circled takes into structured data that flows directly into the dailies grid instead of being retyped by hand.

By reducing repetitive manual work and turning production materials into structured, reviewable information earlier in the process, AutoDailies has the potential to make dailies faster, more consistent, and easier to scale across productions as teams look for more efficient ways to manage production workflows.

LBE Technology in Wwise

In location-based entertainment (LBE), immersive experiences are created through the combination of multiple elements, such as visuals, sound, and haptics. Wwise is a cross-platform interactive audio solution, the trusted standard for the gaming and interactive media industries. Within LBE, Wwise provides out-of-the-box support for customized solutions that can include irregular speaker setups and enables creators to produce audio tailored to the speaker layout of a specific venue, while linking haptics in a single integrated system. By allowing multiple elements of the experience to be designed and adjusted together, this technology supports the creation of truly immersive experiences.

This solution was also used in the proof-of-concept exhibit Sony presented at CES 2025.

XYN Spatial Content Creation Solutions

Sony offers XYN™, a suite of integrated software and hardware solutions designed to support spatial content creation. At this year's SETS, Sony showcased XYN's "Spatial Capture Solution", which enables users to create high-quality 3DCG (3D Computer Graphics) assets. By connecting a camera to a smartphone and following the guidelines from "XYN Spatial Scan Navi", a dedicated smartphone app, users can simply capture a real-world space with a camera and generate high-quality 3DCG by "XYN Spatial Scan". The solution helps simplify and improve the end-to-end workflow for creating and using high-quality 3DCG, an area that traditionally required significant cost and technical expertise.

Throughout the exhibition venue, visitors were seen exchanging ideas with developers. On the final day, the event also welcomed guests from a variety of backgrounds, including external creators, representatives from the film and TV industry, media company employees, professors, and students.

Visitors gave positive feedback, including some who said they were impressed not only by the technologies themselves, but also by the event's concept of connecting people and ideas. Others noted the event's potential to improve production workflow efficiency, while many also commented on the emphasis placed on the creator community, and on the opportunity to see how different Sony Group companies are collaborating to address the needs of both creators and industry professionals.

Panel discussions held alongside the exhibition also drew strong interest. Among them, the session on accessibility attracted particular attention, offering participants an opportunity to deepen their understanding of initiatives being advanced by Sony Group.

New Possibilities Born from Entertainment and Technology

The technologies showcased at SETS are not always fully finished products or commercial solutions, as many of them can be further refined through dialogue and feedback from creators, opening the door to future collaboration and new forms of creative expression. The conversations and connections generated through these sorts of exhibits, conference sessions, and networking opportunities are becoming one of the driving forces behind the creation of new entertainment experiences.

SETS will continue to bring entertainment and technology together, expanding the possibilities for new creative collaboration.