The Ski Jumping World Cup Finals is one of the biggest sporting events in Slovenia and a fantastic opportunity to explore the future of news with AI and XR technologies. Last year in March, we captured volumetric images and developed storytelling guidelines. This year, TRANSMIXR was there to showcase what’s possible.
The FIS Ski Jumping World Cup Finals in Planica took place from Thursday to Sunday in the last week of March, which was also the last day of the ski jumping season.
Planica VR is a cutting-edge prototype that was available for testing at the Planica Media Center. It provided a platform to demonstrate the TRANSMIXR project’s achievements to journalists, photo reporters, and journalism students. The TRANSMIXR project team spent Friday and Saturday at the Planica 2025 Media Centre, the central hub for journalists from print and online media, radio and TV stations, reporters, and photographers.
Media professionals from Slovenia, Poland, China, and other countries tested the Planica VR experience. Among the Media Centre visitors who tried out Planica XR was a group of students from the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana.
One of the notable visitors was also Cene Prevc, a former Slovenian ski jumper and silver medallist in the team event at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Having “flown over” Planica many times on skis in the past, experiencing it through immersive technology, as a hot air balloon flight, was a particularly unforgettable moment for him.
Those who tested the Planica XR prototype were impressed with the concept—a virtual journey over Planica from an aerial perspective, accompanied by walking stations and enriched with thematic content. This included archival footage from ski jumping competitions preserved by the national media service, a video overview of how Planica has changed due to climate conditions, and an interview with a climate expert.
Sabrina and Matej, who were present at the event, said younger visitors were especially drawn to the segment that closely resembled a gaming narrative: exploring 3d models of ski jumping and other facilities in the Nordic Planica Centre, which are part of the Planica VR experience. They pointed out that based on feedback from testers and observers, the concept is highly engaging and has strong potential for further development. Many expressed a desire to see more content presented in this way in the future, as it represents a powerful technological and narrative upgrade of traditional storytelling methods.
Authors: Sabrina Povsic Stimec and Matej Praprotnik from RTV Slovenia.