[tjohns]

I'm very curious what they're using on the capture side for this. How are they keying out the rest of the stadium? What's the camera setup?

I'm not a huge sports fan, so I honestly couldn't say whether I'd want to watch a game like this - but I love the concept. From a technology perspective it's great to see them trying new things.

I will say that 180° video - the other way to content in VR - makes content feel very emotionally impactful to me. If you haven't watched the Apple Immersive Video series in VR, it's very well produced and worth a watch to see the capabilities of the format.

[BryantD]

They could be using the existing motion capture technology used for sports analytics [1]. The Australian Open did something similar this year to convert skeletal tracking data into animation to get around broadcasting rights issues [2]. I would bet small money that the Open was using the same Hawk-Eye tracking system the NBA is, because both articles mention "12 cameras and 29 tracking points in the skeleton."

I don't care so much about the tabletop view shown, but if we get to the point where I can choose my viewpoint from anywhere on the court I'd be excited. I want to pause the game and rewind and watch Jayson Tatum's jab steps up close, to get a better sense of how he fakes out the opposing player. Put me in the action.

1. https://www.sportsvideo.org/2023/03/09/nba-taps-sonys-hawk-e... 2. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/17/nx-s1-5261006/australian-open...

[dylan604]

Stadiums/arenas are using more and more cameras through out that some very cool/interesting things are coming from it. One of them is a Matrix bullet-time style ability for highlighting plays. The MLB places ads for the TV audience that the people in the stadium do not see. Same for the boards around a football pitch.

There's other tech going on specifically for sports analytics using 8K cameras that analyzes each player to give their sprint speeds, running distances, heatmap of their position on the field, etc.

All of this to say that I don't really think that placing specific cameras in the arena to provide this type of view while keying out the rest of the stadium would be that difficult. Especially if the cameras are in fixed positions where the distances/angles were well known to the court.

[asadotzler]

30-60 cameras and expert producers with years of experience broadcasting live NBA games. The NBA will NEVER upgrade their nation-wide broadcast kit, billions of dollars, for about 100K strap-on facial PC users. It's just not gonna happen.

[dylan604]

it wouldn't need to be 30-60 cameras. so if you want to have a serious discussion, let's put down the ridiculous comments about something you clearly have no experience with.

from the demo, it's a stationary seat for a VR user. so in the VR experience, everyone will be sitting in that exact same seat. for 3D, you only need 2 lenses. for 3D VR in a 360° experience you need more, but much fewer cameras than 30-60. the best VR 3D i've worked with came from 16 cameras and a helluva lot of optical flow processing in post, but that was only on a cylinder and not a sphere. it did allow you to look 360°, and this demo doesn't need any of that. so yet again, your looking at less lenses than that. if you want to give a few degrees play in leaning left/right, you might need 4 lenses to allow for some parallax in that leaning. however, the demo clearly showed an unobstructed view of the "court" with nobody in the crowd obstructing your view. at that distant, there'd be very little parallax of the players on the court and the biggest notice would be from something in the foreground. yet, as previously stated, they've already shown that's not an issue.

as for the NBA never upgrading, you're saying that to someone that has personally worked on VR content for NBA finals. you can even see some of the camera rigs in the footage of the games. so in a sense, the NBA has already embraced VR which I guess means never has already come and gone

as for expert producers, if you've ever worked in live action VR, everyone that works in it promotes themselves (personally or as company) as experts. i started in 2014, so that's about 10 years of experience. i'm not an arrogant asshole, so i'd never call myself an expert, but i've got enough experience to qualify.

[1shooner]

>from the demo, it's a stationary seat for a VR user. so in the VR experience, everyone will be sitting in that exact same seat.

From other videos of the app, you can see the viewer isn't bound to any specific position. It appears to track enough skeleton key-points per player in full 3d to reconstruct them as models. Maybe they are skinning them from video but it doesn't really look like it.