What They Say
A hat-tip to Invidis of Germany for pointing me to an interesting display application. The Tokyo Olympics will include yachting events and to enhance the experience, a 50M LED display with 12K horizontal resolution is being used to display sailing races to spectators. Images are being provided by 5G with support from NTT Docomo. A similar screen is being provided for journalists at the press centre.
Some viewers at the swimming events will have access to augmented reality devices that will overlay information on top of the view of the event, again exploiting the bandwidth of 5G.
Golf fans will be able to rent devices from organisers that will allow a variety of different views of the competition with multistream live video.
NHK’s NHK World channel had a short video segment on the technology.
What We Think
The idea of a big display at a major sports event for the press is not n5ew. I looked back in my database and found that in 2000, at Photokina, JVC showed a system using three (probably 1600 x 1200) blended D-ILA projectors that displayed a soccer match captured on three fixed HD cameras, so that you could see the whole pitch, without zooming and panning. The plan was to use a similar system in the press rooms for the World Cup soccer in Japan and Korea in 2002. It was not practical for journalists to fly backwards and forwards between the two countries between matches, so this allowed them to get as close as possible, for the time, to a live experience. Since then, of course, you can get more resolution from a single 8K camera and I know from IBC demoes that a big 8K D-ILA projector with a fixed camera and huge screen can be very immersive.
Around three years ago, I tried a VR demo of a baseball match on a headset by Korea Telecom. The system used gaze to work out where I was looking, so what I was interested in. When I looked at the scoreboard, it zoomed up. When I looked at the pitcher, I saw a zoom. It really was an impressive demo. At that point I started to understand the benefit of AR and technology to an event. That was a VR experience, but it would be great when watching my local soccer team it would be great to get information (olayer statistics, other competition scores) without having to look away from the game at my smartphone. There’s always the danger you’ll miss something, even very occasionally, a goal! (BR)
Click on the image for a ‘gallery’ of three images
