ABBA's successful avatar show in London offers a glimpse at a daring new direction for live music

Before the launch of "ABBA Voyage," the London concert performed by 3D digital avatars of the Swedish band, member Bjrn Ulvaeus said they hoped audiences would "feel that they've gone through something that they've never seen before"

Fans, industry professionals and domestic and international critics have been rapturous with the response to it.

"Other than the team involved, no one really knew how they would integrate an avatar-based performance," Sarah Cox said. That made me want to work on real-time graphics. My jaw fell down. People are buying into the idea that there is a band called Abba.

The show's run has been extended to November 2023 and there is strong demand.

The show wants to go around the world.

We could do another one in Europe if we wanted to. The producer told the U.K. government committee that they could duplicate the arena and show.

Other shows are expected to follow the same model as well.

The way in which we've used it and scale and barriers we've broken down are new to us. Gisla said that others will follow and plan to follow.

She said that it could be the case in Las Vegas, where some shows run around the clock.

We have a band that does seven shows a week. Roll the clock around. This style of entertainment will be popular in Vegas.

The ABBA Arena was built specifically for the show on a site in east London and has a standing pit, tiered seats, and private dance booths.

View of the ABBA Arena on May 26, 2022 in London, England.

It was designed to be flexible. It was built on a one meter raised platform and could be disassembled and reconstructed elsewhere, or it could stay and host another show.

It will be difficult to duplicate Voyage's model, which sees digital replicas of the four band members perform classic hits and newer numbers for 90 minutes, interacting with each other and speaking to the audience between songs.

The show was funded by global investors and had a budget of over 130 million dollars. According to Gisla, it needs 3 million people to break even.

The members of Abba did five weeks of performance in motion capture suits after choosing their set list. Industrial Light & Magic, a visual effects company founded by George Lucas, had hundreds of visual effects artists working on the show for two years.

Promotional image for ABBA Voyage, the digital avatar-based live show currently running in London.

A decade ago, a performance at the festival featuring an apparent hologram of the artist impressed the audience and suggested that alternative reality could be used in live shows.

The visual effects team projected a 2D image onto an angle piece of glass, which was itself projected onto a Mylar screen, creating a 3D effect. 16 years after his death, he performed two songs.

A laser-based hologram is not part of the show, even though the team is tight-mouthed about how it works. It involves 65 million screens which give the illusion of a band performing on stage in 3D in real time, with traditional-style concert screens showing close-ups and different views.

Gisla said that the server was being pushed to the "absolute extreme" in order to render the images without lag. There are improvements that could be made to the 10-meter high side screens.

Rapper Snoop Dogg (L) and a "hologram" of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur perform on stage on the third day of the 2012 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

With real-time render speeds becoming quicker, she said, "Benny and Bjorn could be sitting in a chair at home connected to their avatars, updating them to talk about last night's football result to the audience." That is going to happen.

The kind of processing and motion capture technology used by Voyage is still too expensive for most productions, but Sarah Cox believes it is a brand-new format that will be replicated time and time again.

Multiple shows could be hosted at an Immersive venue. The cost comes down because you have the technology stack, the venue, and all the money goes into creating the virtual experience.

If they are wary of the general trend towards metaverse-based virtual experiences, many will remain skeptical of digital avatars-based jobs.

Bjorn Ulvaeus told CNBC that he has concerns about the misuse of the technology to create "deep fakes" which will be "indistinguishable from the real thing".

Finding suitable artists is one of the questions. A band with a large catalogue of hits, a multi-generational worldwide fan base, and a full set of members who have not toured together for 40 years is not often offered.

ABBA avatars perform their 1981 song The Visitors in London, 2022.

Gisla said that you can put artists back on stage, ethically, you may or may not have a view on that. This is a concert by Abba. The decisions were made by ABBA and they made the show.

She said that without the input that makes this show feel so tangible, you could create an accurate replica.

There will certainly be more of those available in the future, though live shows that provide a "shared experience" like ABBA Voyage hold a greater appeal for Cox.

In the world of gaming, events, sports, theater and beyond, both augmented and virtual reality are present.

In 2020, musician Travis Scott will premiere a song within the wildly popular game, "Fortnite", with his digital avatars looming over players who were still moving around within the world of the game. A total of 45.8 million people watched it. The rapper performed in the game.

A 15 year-old plays Fortnite and Travis Scott Present: Astronomical on April 23, 2020, in Los Angeles, United States.

Jo Twist is the chief executive of UK Interactive Entertainment.

Growth in both the number of people who play and online game worlds that enable user generated content could open games up to all kinds of performers, allowing them to successfully tap into its enormous potential."

Giulia De Paoli is the founder and general manager of Ombra, a studio that works on augmented reality and virtual reality.

She said that they were able to create a full show for broadcast events that would be impossible with traditional projection andLED setup.

"We see this developing into a full experience for people to watch live and, as the word says, augmenting the reality around us."