Virtual reality sports coverage: When seeing is believing
That may still be some way in the distance, but the next step in screened sports coverage is already here.
BBC Sport 360 is an experimental mobile app designed to let you experience live action and highlights from the Rio Olympics in 360 degrees, while this week Sky launched its first virtual reality app.
Richard Nockles, creative director of Sky VR Studios, told Wareable magazine recently: “We’ll be following athletes as they prepare for their big events.
“It almost takes on a documentary feel. Then we get to the big day and we’re right there in the action with them.”
Another company, Beyond Sports, uses player data from matches to create game simulations.
Fans use mobile VR or an Oculus Rift Headset to watch computer-generated graphics.
“At first it was just stick men running around,” Sander J. Schouten of Beyond Sports says. “But the important thing was, the co-ordinates were accurate, and so we knew which way the players were facing. And that’s all we needed to give a view from the player’s perspective.”
The footage is able to be broadcast with a delay of just 0.01 seconds, which isn’t noticeable to the human eye, and Beyond Sports offers a pro service that lets coaches and players live out real-life game scenarios.
“Once we started seeing these scenarios, we started adding our own possibilities,” Schouten says.
“So you can put yourself in the player’s boots and decide what’s the right thing to do.
“Should you pass to player A, B or C? It’s a really handy tool for training.”
It has partnered with the football clubs Ajax and PSV in its native Holland, as well as the Royal Dutch Football Association and Utrecht University.
Another company, Virtually Live, builds a virtual reconstruction of a sport’s settings, characters, sponsors and vehicles — then the viewer experiences it from whichever viewpoint they like. It has signed deals with electric racing league Formula E and the Scottish Professional Football League.
Virtually Live CEO Tom Impallomeni thinks the social aspect is vital to VR: “There’s a good reason Facebook bought Oculus — it’s because it’s fundamentally a social platform. It removes the need to travel distances, which makes it compelling for people wanting to visit friends and family.
“It’s got a long way to go, but it’s tremendously exciting, because even with pretty primitive headsets, you can have incredible experiences.”
Yet another company, AltspaceVR puts the social aspect front and centre.
“The whole focus is for people to hang out together in virtual reality, enjoy each other’s company, and do stuff together in VR,” says Bruce Wooden of AltspaceVR. “One of the first big events we had was us all watching the Super Bowl together in VR. There was a huge, Jumbotron-sized screen showing the livestream, and about 200 people watched it with us.”
Industry experts estimate it’ll be five to ten years before true VR can work with proper video, when we’ll be able to zip around the pitch and watch from anywhere. Audio poses another problem, because while you want to capture the crowd, you don’t necessarily want every aspect of it.
“Crowds tend to eff and blind, so you don’t want to capture everything they say in a lot of detail,” says Impallomeni. “There are also all sorts of privacy issues. If you’re capturing everything everyone’s saying, you have it on record. So that’s something else to think about.”
Then there’s the price. For an Oculus VR or HTC Vive plus a PC, you’ll have to spend thousands of euro, but the hardware will soon become more powerful and more affordable. “Once the camera technologies mature, VR is going to be a game changer,” says Wooden. “Then it’ll be a real alternative to going to the game in person.”
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