By Rob Springer (Producer) & Paula Bruder (Writer/Producer) from RS Media Group / Virtual.Film Press Team

(NYC Oct 2025)

Every October, the Javits Center becomes a two-day pressure cooker of media tech—where broadcasters, filmmakers, creators, and engineers all collide to compare notes on what’s actually working right now. This year’s NAB Show New York (Oct. 22–23, 2025) delivered that familiar mix of big ideas and practical tools, but one theme kept showing up in booth after booth: virtual production is no longer “the future.” It’s the new baseline.

NAB reported a packed show with global reach, and the energy matched the numbers—11,500 registered attendees from 95 countries, with a strong wave of first-timers. TV Tech What we saw on the floor was an industry accelerating toward real-time pipelines that are smaller, faster to deploy, and easier to operate—without sacrificing the cinematic results clients expect.

The Big Shift: VP Moves From “Specialty” to “Standard”

If you’re building content at scale—commercial, corporate, streaming, sports, brand storytelling—virtual production has become the most direct route to consistent quality under real-world constraints. NAB Show New York leaned hard into that reality with show-floor positioning that explicitly spans “cameras and cloud workflows to virtual production and monetization platforms.” NAB Show+1

The most important takeaway wasn’t a single product launch—it was the collective direction: VP is being productized. Tools are converging into repeatable workflows, and vendors are designing for teams that need to execute weekly, not just for once-in-a-career feature films.

Real-Time Graphics + Virtual Sets: Faster Builds, Cleaner Results

One of the most visible “VP-adjacent” breakthroughs is the continued march toward template-driven real-time graphics, where the same operational approach can drive overlays, AR/XR elements, video walls, and virtual studio looks without reinventing the wheel every time.

At NAB Show New York, Zero Density leaned into this with a booth focus on a unified, template-based workflow designed to simplify creation and control across AR, XR, video walls, and virtual studio graphics. resources.zerodensity.io That matters because templates don’t just save time—they create consistency, which is what clients actually pay for when they book recurring content.

Meanwhile, Vizrt framed its show messaging around making it easier to build and deploy sophisticated live visuals. Their event presence emphasized solutions that include Virtual Set Editor (virtual environments for live production) alongside modern production systems and NDI-based workflows—another signal that “virtual sets” are now considered part of the standard production toolkit. Vizrt | Transforming Video Storytelling+1

Topic highlights: template-based XR/AR workflows, virtual set creation for live + streaming, real-time graphics built for repeatability.

VP on the Broadcast Side Is Feeding Film, and Vice Versa

A pattern we kept noticing: broadcast vendors are solving problems that film teams also have—just under different time pressure. And film teams are increasingly borrowing broadcast discipline: shorter turnaround, fewer crew positions, more automation, more reliability.

On the show programming side, NAB’s schedule included sessions explicitly aimed at “Virtual Production for TV and Streaming,” reflecting how VP has matured beyond experimental phases into teachable, repeatable practice. NAB Show The show also featured targeted AI workshops (Oct. 23) aimed at practical integration across film, broadcast, VFX, and legal considerations—because AI is now woven into the production pipeline whether you invite it in or not. NAB Show

Topic highlights: VP education for working pros, broadcast-grade repeatability, AI as a workflow layer—not a gimmick.

Vendor Direction We’re Watching Closely: “All-in-One” VP Ecosystems

Another big theme at NAB NY: vendors are bundling capabilities into fewer boxes and fewer operator roles. Ross Video, for example, positioned its NAB Show New York presence around a spectrum that includes Virtual Production (XR, AR & Virtual Studio) as part of a broader, integrated ecosystem. Ross Video

This matters because the market is demanding VP solutions that work for:

• mid-size studios doing steady client work,

• corporate teams producing in-house,

• live event and streaming teams needing real-time polish,

• and creator brands scaling output without scaling headcount.

In short: the industry is moving toward VP that deploys like a system, not a science project.

Topic highlights: XR/AR/Virtual Studio convergence, smaller teams running bigger looks, system-level thinking over one-off builds.

The Business Reality: VP Wins When It Compresses Time

From our perspective at Virtual.Film, the most valuable “new” thing at NAB Show New York 2025 was the industry consensus that the ROI is time. VP is winning when it delivers:

fewer location days, less travel, faster approvals, more content variations, and more consistency across a campaign.

That’s why the show’s broader emphasis on AI, workflow automation, and next-gen content tools felt directly connected to VP—even when the booth signage didn’t say “virtual production.” TV Tech+1 If your virtual set is gorgeous but your pipeline is slow, you still lose the job. NAB NY felt like the industry acknowledging that truth out loud.

For a visual recap of the event, you can watch the following video: