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Virtual Reality in Sports: The Top 10 Game-Changing Technologies of the Decade

This past years has evolved, Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a groundbreaking technology, transforming various aspects of sports. From training and performance analysis to fan engagement and rehabilitation, VR has revolutionized the sports industry. This article delves into the top 10 game-changing VR technologies that have significantly impacted sports over the last decade.

Immersive Training Simulations:

One of the most significant advancements in VR technology is the development of immersive training simulations. Platforms like STRIVR and Oculus have created virtual environments where athletes can practice skills and strategies without the physical strain of actual play. These simulations allow athletes to experience game scenarios, improving their decision-making and reaction times. Immersive training is particularly beneficial for sports requiring strategic planning, such as football and basketball.

Enhanced Performance Analysis:

VR technology has revolutionized performance analysis by providing a detailed and immersive perspective on an athlete’s performance. Coaches and analysts use VR tools to review and dissect plays, movements, and techniques. This detailed analysis helps identify areas for improvement and refine strategies. By offering a 360-degree view of the action, VR enhances the understanding of performance dynamics, making training more effective.

Injury Rehabilitation:

Injury rehabilitation has seen significant improvements with the integration of VR. Rehabilitation programs using VR, like those developed by Culturro and Mieron, offer interactive and engaging exercises that aid recovery. These programs provide a controlled environment where athletes can gradually rebuild strength and mobility. VR rehabilitation ensures a more comprehensive recovery process, reducing the risk of re-injury and speeding up the return to play.

Fan Engagement and Experience:

VR has transformed the fan experience by offering immersive and interactive ways to engage with sports. Platforms like NextVR and Oculus Venues allow fans to experience live games and events from a virtual front-row seat. This technology enhances the sense of presence and excitement, making fans feel like they are part of the action. VR fan engagement tools also provide behind-the-scenes access, virtual tours, and interactive content, enriching the overall sports experience.

Remote Coaching and Training:

Remote coaching and training have become more accessible and effective with VR technology. Coaches can conduct virtual training sessions and provide real-time feedback to athletes, regardless of their location. This capability is particularly valuable for athletes in remote areas or those unable to travel frequently. VR platforms enable coaches to monitor progress, correct techniques, and offer personalized training programs, ensuring continuous development.

Mental Conditioning and Visualization:

Mental conditioning is a crucial aspect of athletic performance, and VR has proven to be a powerful tool in this area. VR visualization tools allow athletes to practice mental rehearsal and visualization techniques, enhancing focus and reducing anxiety. By simulating game scenarios and critical moments, athletes can prepare mentally for competition, improving their confidence and performance under pressure.

Real-Time Data Integration:

The integration of real-time data with VR technology has enhanced the accuracy and effectiveness of training and performance analysis. VR platforms can incorporate data from wearable sensors, GPS tracking, and other performance metrics, providing a comprehensive view of an athlete’s performance. This data-driven approach allows for precise adjustments and personalized training programs, optimizing performance and reducing the risk of injuries.

Skill Acquisition and Development:

VR technology has proven to be an effective tool for skill acquisition and development. Athletes can practice and refine their techniques in a virtual environment, receiving instant feedback and guidance. This approach is particularly beneficial for complex skills and movements that require precision and repetition. VR skill development programs enable athletes to achieve mastery faster and more efficiently.

Augmented Reality Integration:

The integration of Augmented Reality (AR) with VR has created new possibilities for sports training and fan engagement. AR overlays digital information onto the real world, enhancing the VR experience. For example, AR can provide real-time stats, player information, and tactical insights during a virtual game. This combination of VR and AR offers a more immersive and informative experience, benefiting both athletes and fans.

Accessibility and Inclusivity:

VR technology has made sports more accessible and inclusive. Virtual environments allow athletes with disabilities to train and compete in ways that were previously impossible. VR also offers adaptive training programs and tools, ensuring that all athletes can benefit from the latest advancements. This inclusivity promotes diversity and equal opportunities in sports, enriching the overall athletic community.

Conclusion:

The past era has seen remarkable progress in VR technology, significantly impacting the world of sports. From immersive training simulations and enhanced performance analysis to injury rehabilitation and fan engagement, VR has transformed various aspects of the sports industry. The continuous development of VR tools and platforms promises to further revolutionize sports, offering endless possibilities for athletes, coaches, and fans. As VR technology continues to evolve, its potential in sports will only grow. Embracing these game-changing technologies is essential for staying ahead in the competitive world of sports.

Quelle:

Virtual Reality in Sports: The Top 10 Game-Changing Technologies of the Decade

12. Juli 2024 0 comment

Examples

The Top 10 Companies Building the Sports Metaverse

Innovators in the Sports Metaverse Space

As interest in the expanding Metaverse landscape continues to accelerate, companies are discovering a range of potential use cases for digital environments. In recent years, numerous leading brands have begun to build their own Metaverse strategies, designed to engage customers, support employees with immersive training and improve collaboration.

In the sporting world, the metaverse space allows teams and athletes from every environment to connect with fans in a new, more engaging space. Already, we’ve seen entertainment companies in the sports sector, such as the Fox Corporation, investing in extended reality tools and virtual platforms. Even vendors like Nike have taken part in the transformation, creating a new space for sales and customer service in Roblox.

Here are just some of the companies investing in the evolution of the sports metaverse.

1. Sony

Japanese electronic leaders Sony purchased the Beyond Sports brand in 2022, to assist in taking their sports gaming experiences to the next level. The Beyond Sports company was invested in developing real-world data for 3D animations, designed to assist companies in building immersive experiences.

Alongside this acquisition, Sony has also expanded its footprint in the metaverse in recent years, with the purchase of Hawk-Eye Innovations, helping the brand to build RT3D content for football, basketball, tennis, and baseball events. Elsewhere, the company also acquired Pulselive, to provide live streaming metaverse experiences to audiences worldwide.

2. OKX

OKX is a cryptocurrency and web3-focused business which provides users with access to a range of investment opportunities centered around DeFi and NFTs. Recently, the company partnered with the Manchester City football club, to create a new sports metaverse campaign for the team.

The OKX metaverse experience created for Man City will include appearances from sporting starts like Jack Grealish and Alex Greenwood. It also provides fans with an opportunity to access exclusive content, crypto-style rewards, and NFTs. The partnership builds on OKX’s decision to sponsor Manchester City as an official training kit partner for the 2022-2023 season.

3. Loot Mogul

Widely recognized as one of the world’s top sports metaverse organizations, LootMogul provides sports teams, athletes and brands with the technology required to create virtual cities for fans, and engage customers with real-life rewards. More than 241 professional athletes in the US have already signed up with the brand, creating competitions, training experiences, and games in the metaverse.

Recently, LootMogul partnered with the marketing and commercial rights company Six Sport, to assist in developing its strategy for blockchain development. Working alongside Six Sport, LootMogul aims to build on the Web3 community, creating new innovative experiences for teams and athletes worldwide.

4. Zetly

Zetly offers companies, athletes, and fans access to an extensive all-in-one platform for sports experiences. The Web3-focused ecosystem allows users to collect, earn, and trade digital club tokens, and purchased NFTs. Zetly has its own blockchain technology ecosystem, which companies and teams can leverage to create metaverse, streaming, and gamification experiences.

Recently, Zetly partnered with Haste Arcade, PowChess and Transmira on a pilot program for the “Sports Metaverse”. This initiative will provide a selected number of sports clubs with advanced technology solutions for building their own digital environments. The all-in-one platform supports the creation of crowdfunding campaigns, NFT minting, and loyalty programs.

5. Sports Icon

Sports Icon is another company investing in its own version of the Sports metaverse. The company offers a platform to teams, fans, and athletes, where they can collect and trade unique digital collectables and NFTs. The ecosystem is built on the Flow blockchain for security and verification. Plus, the company has invested in a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface for beginners.

To help increase adoption of their sporting environment among digital brands, Sports Icon have also implemented their own rewards system for community contributors. Users can participate in challenges, refer friends, and engage in other actions to earn tokens which can be used to access exclusive experiences.

6. Tobii and HeadVantage

Leading eye tracking technology vendor Tobii partnered with HeadVantage in 2022, on a new initiative to provide athletes with sensors, cameras, and cutting edge XR technologies. HeadVantage already works with various major sports entertainment firms including Sky Sports and NBC Sports. Following this collaboration, the company plans to create new solutions for fans to view athletes performing at games in the entertainment space.

The solution created by Tobii and HeadVantage can fit under headwear such as helmets and sports caps, to track eye movements quickly and accurately. As part of the Comcast NBCUniversal Sports Accelerator, the firms showcased the benefits of their solution at the PGA Korn Ferry tournament.

7. EE

British telecom provider EE launched a 5G store at the London Wembley Stadium in 2022, allowing fans to pilot a new AR (Augmented Reality) experience in the metaverse. Using smartphones with AR capabilities, fans could incorporate overlays of a superstar athlete into their purchasing experience. The solution builds on EE’s initiatives in the 5G and connectivity space.

Within the 5G store, customers have an opportunity to view live avatars wearing England sportswear. The experience also gave visitors an opportunity to interact with a virtual avatar version of the Liverpool and England FC athlete, Trent Alexander-Arnold.

8. NReal and Immersive

Augmented Reality vendor NReal partnered with the Immersiv XR company in 2022, to create a personalized 3D system for metaverse experiences. The initiative allowed the companies to display augmented reality visualizations during live broadcasts. Following the partnership, the companies even worked with the Devon Football league to create an AR-ready live stream of the SuperCup for 2022, which they defined as the future of TV.

The NReal live video streams include access to virtual screens to view broadcasts, alongside accompanying AR experiences for event analytics and RT3D assets. NReal has also worked with BT Sport to create Premier League metaverse-style broadcasts using 5G and AR.

9. Algorand

During 2022’s World Cup, FIFA announced a series of strategies to launch it into the metaverse landscape, including the introduction of new blockchain NFT collectables. The new iniatitive was created in partnership with Algorand, a web3 company offering access to powerful and sustainable blockchain technologies.

Throughout the lead up to the matches in December 2022, Algorand opened access to the collectibles for fans, and offered customers the opportunities to view exclusive moments from matches throughout the tournament. FIFA Chief Business Officer said they believe the solution offers a new and exciting opportunity for athletes and fans.

10. Insomnia Labs

Ad-tech company Insomnia Labs works with companies and brands to produce immersive campaigns that engage and convert new customers. In 2022, the company joined forces with the National Basketball Association (NBA) to create NFTs for users in the metaverse to collect. The NFTs were created based on Stephen Curry’s Under Armour trainer collection.

The NFT and crypto trading platform also commemorated the NBA finals, as well as major moments from the events with new NFT collections. Partners like Smilesss, Hape, and Chibi all developed digital assets to add to the collection.

Quelle:

The Top 10 Companies Building the Sports Metaverse

22. Februar 2023 0 comment

Knowledge Research

Inside The NBA’s Virtual Reality Broadcasts

You’ve got to take the elevator just about as high as it will go in Chicago’s United Center, then circle a ring of high-end suite seating before you finally find a room marked, on a small decal in the upper right of a gray door, with the words, “TRUE VIEW,” and the Intel logo. The room is cramped, tightened further by walls plastered with television monitors and a team of a half-dozen technician/editors solemnly tapping computer keyboards. The space is small enough that any of the techs could swing an elbow and conk three heads on the other side of the room.

It doesn’t look like a place where the way we watch sports is being forever transformed. But that’s what happens in this room, home—for last month’s NBA All-Star Weekend, at least—to the beating heart of Intel’s True View technology. Here, editor/technicians feed national and regional broadcasters, provide content for the virtual reality broadcast, give in-arena Jumbotrons spectacular view as they cobble together 360-degree replays from every angle in about a minute.

When you watch a play that looks like it is something out of The Matrix, these are the folks who make it.

Here in the True View room, a technician is sitting at a console looking at feeds of Luka Doncic making a 3-pointer from various camera angles during a recent game in Dallas. There are 38 cameras in all and in a matter of seconds, Doncic is paused in mid-air and we can see him straight on. The angle rotates. We see Doncic from behind and from all sides—the look on Doncic’s face is frozen, the positioning of the other players is locked. There’s a beer vendor in the aisles in the background. You can see him, too.

“We have cameras in 10 different locations around the building,” said Nadia Banks, business development manager for Intel Sports. “There’s multiple lenses at each location, each pod. So there isn’t much that happens in the arena that the cameras are going to miss.”

It’s still relatively new technology for the NBA, set up in only a select few places: Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Dallas, Indiana, Washington and Atlanta. A state-of-the-art system has been installed in Sacramento, too, which will be used for research-and-development. But the NBA, along with the NFL (where it can be found in 17 stadiums) and some soccer teams in Europe, has been making a major bet on True View as the heart of the sports broadcasting’s future.

That’s because the True View tech will be the driver of virtual reality broadcasting. Forget your 60-inch QLED—sports viewing is moving toward 3-D goggles, which might sound intimidating to fans who just want to sit and watch a game. We’ve been watching sports pretty much the same way since the first sports broadcast in 1939. That’s part of the reason VR, which has been hyped for years now as the Next Big Thing in broadcasting, has not caught on among rank-and-file fans. Not yet, at least.

An up-close look at an Intel True View camera pod at the United Center in Chicago. This one has six cameras. – SEAN DEVENEY

Intel is betting that the demand for VR will catch up with the ever-improving technology. It’s not all that complicated to begin watching games in VR now—those who have the Oculus or Samsung Gear headsets only need to download the NBA on TNT VR app—but only a small percentage of fans do so. The idea for a company like Intel and its NBA/TNT partnership is to prepare to give broadcasters and fans of the league something they don’t even know they want yet.

As Shawn Bryant, Intel Sports’ managing director, said, “It’s the old adage, if you asked in the 1700s what a better form of transportation would be, the answer would have been, ‘A faster horse.’ No one would have said, ‘A car.’ We’re trying to think about the car.”

‘Having A Cool Conversation About What We’re Seeing’

Throughout the All-Star festivities, Rip Hamilton sat in the front row of the media section high above the court at the United Center, alongside play-by-play man Noah Eagle. This was Hamilton’s perch for the weekend, where he provided color to viewers watching the events of All-Star weekend in virtual reality. Hamilton—a 14-year NBA veteran and three-time All-Star—had done some work as an analyst before but working in 2-D is different from guiding fans through a game in VR.

Now in his second season broadcasting in VR, Hamilton had to acclimate himself to the notion that his audience is not confined to the same broadcast feed that he sees. They’re seeing it from whatever perspective they want, whether it is a bird’s-eye view, a look from behind the basket or from the star player’s eyes. Viewers are not tethered to the decisions of the production truck. For Hamilton, then, the job is to describe the action in that context.

“You kind of direct it,” Hamilton said. “That’s the good thing about it. We are having a conversation with the viewers like we are all together, sitting in our seats, having a cool conversation about what we’re seeing right there. So I am able to navigate through the cameras and say, ‘Hey, look, LeBron James just drove to the rim, look through the glass cam and see how high his vertical jump is, how high he gets to the rim.’”

When Bryant says he wants his group to, “think about the car,” this is what he means. The car is the ability to see a game in a completely immersive environment, the same way that devotees of video games can experience Fortnite. You’re not just watching a game, you’re surrounded by the United Center the same way a gamer playing Call of Duty might be surrounded by the burnt-out streets of Berlin. In fact, NBA2K has been a touchstone for the development of Intel’s NBA VR product.

“I call it the, ‘I have a kid,’ analysis,” Bryant said. “Watch what your kids like. I have 11-year-old twin daughters and a 13-year-old son. The way they consume content, it’s a combination of watching the live broadcast, catching up on social media and playing video games. So that creates this cycle, ‘OK, what can we learn from that?’ We learn from how children interact with the NBA2K game, the different camera angles they expect.”

It’s one thing to recreate that setting in a fictional world but something entirely different to apply it to an unpredictable live event. Over the past four years, Intel has been ramping up its ability to provide a realistic experience, adding manpower, improving its technology and incorporating new ideas. The broadcasts are only four years old but the improvement has been steady at all levels—for example, it used to take True View editors four minutes to create a highlight that now requires as few as 60 seconds. Still, it’s been Intel’s approach to under-promise and over-deliver.

“What we know,” Bryant said, “is that this generation of fans is expecting to watch what they want, how they want, when they want to watch it. What we’re doing with TNT and the NBA, we’re trying to make sure we stay in lockstep with the evolving tastes of viewers without lowering standards.”

In The Truck: Where The VR Broadcast Comes Together

It’s out in a frigid broadcast truck that all these elements feeding the VR experience come together: the horde of camera pods around the United Center, the frontline True View editing crew, the commentary from Eagle and Hamilton, the vision of a gameday experience that puts a viewer into any spot in a given arena. This is where the empty canvas of VR broadcasting is filled and over the course of All-Star weekend, the truck was buzzing, packed with a crew of 32 and almost no empty seats.

At one point, the show’s director, Bobby Hayden, said to senior producer Rusty West, “You ever think you’d see a day where we filled up a whole truck?”

In the beginning, the VR operation was run out of a van. There were four camera pods and a team of employees with backgrounds in standard broadcasting, struggling to figure out how to produce a show in virtual reality.

“The tactics of how to do it, there was no template for that,” West said. “I mean, no one has ever done it—four years ago, no one had ever produced a VR show. It’s the simplest things, like how do you get from one camera to another? With a regular camera in a broadcast, you cut and go to another camera. But with this, how do you do it? So, in VR, when the camera changes, it is a dip to black. It’s a simple thing but it is a big decision.”

For the crew working a VR broadcast, there is a wealth of content coming in from the camera pods and the True View booth. The bunch has an additional producer who puts together entirely different threads of stories to go along with the game action. “She tells her own stories on the side,” West said. “That’s the great thing, there is no limit on what we can include.”

With a VR headset and a good dose of curiosity, then, a user can chase endless aspects of a game, whether it is a player’s sightlines or Jack Nicholson’s view or whatever it is the beer vendor sees. That level of control is disorienting at first—I tried on a VR headset for a Lakers-Celtics game and found that I spent as much time trying to figure out where to click as watching the game itself—but once you focus on what you’re seeing, it’s an impressive experience.

Sports in VR is a work in progress, but that’s the idea. It’s evolving and getting more accessible as it does—you’re already seeing True View replays on Turner and in NBA highlights, which is a bit like a small taste of the technology, a VR preview.

“We always have to be thinking about what’s next, what’s next,” West said. “Our tech guys want to kill me all the time because they say, ‘Let’s just do a show.’ But no, we always have to add stuff. That’s the beauty of this. It’s wide open. The technology is always getting better, so we have to get better at telling the stories for viewers.”

The product is there—it’s well-crafted, entertaining and interesting. All VR needs now is more users.

Quelle:

Foto: Inside Intel’s NBA on TNT virtual reality truck outside the United Center on All-Star weekend. This is where the feeds from 38 cameras inside the arena are fused into a VR broadcast., SEAN DEVENEY

https://vrroom.buzz/vr-news/sports/inside-nbas-virtual-reality-broadcasts

19. März 2020 0 comment

Examples

England Player Talks Football Training In VR

England footballer Lucy Staniforth tries out a new virtual reality training system for soccer. It enables you to watch a game from any position on or off the pitch.

The Mi Hiepa Sports‘ system uses data collected by sensors worn by footballers and we find out more.
View the Video

Quelle:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06cvhvj

10. Juli 2018 0 comment