reality mixers
I didn't get too worked up when U2 3D came out - I figured it was an overpriced marketing ploy for the most part, showing a concert on a movie screen, though I wish now that I'd seen it. The company that produced U2 3D, 3ality Digital, is expanding its reach into sports with rugby, basketball, and now the NFL with a 3-D minicast of last Thursday's game to three test sites.
Picturing what a 3-D sports broadcast is like is cool, but I can't help but think the experience will be limited by the fact that the cameras will still be outside the field of play. More intriguing is the idea of immersive viewing, possibly still 3-D but reliant not on a border of cameras (and mikes) but a network of them, scattered throughout the field of play on uniforms and helmets, the ball, the field, the goals, etc (not sure how you'd make a shock-proof minicam that could take the hit of a 300 lb dude that can run 10-second hundreds, but I'm the idea guy, not the tech guy). Cycling and rowing would be ideal sports for first gen systems as they have lots of inanimate, non-bending surfaces on which to mount stuff, and they'd greatly benefit from letting people see what goes on up-close (it just dawned on me that Nascar has uses this kind of immersion - in its infancy, but car-to-car and dashboard perspectives nonetheless).
An interesting consequence of such a set up could be the rise of the mixer, a post-action video choreographer (or team of them most likely) that knit together the perspectives into a fluid experience of the action, to augment the viewer's ability to move through different perspectives in more or less real time. How cool would it be to be in the middle of a pack of sprinting cyclists, in the scrum looking up from the ball's perspective at the players, or in the end zone, watching a player and the ball converging right toward you?
Picturing what a 3-D sports broadcast is like is cool, but I can't help but think the experience will be limited by the fact that the cameras will still be outside the field of play. More intriguing is the idea of immersive viewing, possibly still 3-D but reliant not on a border of cameras (and mikes) but a network of them, scattered throughout the field of play on uniforms and helmets, the ball, the field, the goals, etc (not sure how you'd make a shock-proof minicam that could take the hit of a 300 lb dude that can run 10-second hundreds, but I'm the idea guy, not the tech guy). Cycling and rowing would be ideal sports for first gen systems as they have lots of inanimate, non-bending surfaces on which to mount stuff, and they'd greatly benefit from letting people see what goes on up-close (it just dawned on me that Nascar has uses this kind of immersion - in its infancy, but car-to-car and dashboard perspectives nonetheless).
An interesting consequence of such a set up could be the rise of the mixer, a post-action video choreographer (or team of them most likely) that knit together the perspectives into a fluid experience of the action, to augment the viewer's ability to move through different perspectives in more or less real time. How cool would it be to be in the middle of a pack of sprinting cyclists, in the scrum looking up from the ball's perspective at the players, or in the end zone, watching a player and the ball converging right toward you?
posted by jim at 12/09/2008 07:40:00 AM
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