VR technologies for rich sports experience

Abstract

NTT has developed progressive VR technologies to provide a rich sports experience to its users from the perspectives of both entertainment and player performance enhancement. The "Sports Performance Enhancement System" we have developed provides a virtual experience that enables participants in sports to feel as if they were actually on the playing field. It enables both sports participants and their coaches to devise strategies for upcoming games through the use of a highly realistic immersive experience. The "Kirari! for Mobile" system, with which users can use compact multi-layered 3D technology on smartphones. It provides a 3D model that our free viewpoint capturing system can easily capture. Users can easily use and intuitively manipulate it by turning their smartphones in various directions to find out what is actually happening. The "Effective Live-streaming Method for Omnidirectional Video" enables real-time video streaming that reduces necessary network bandwidth requirements by 80% for a widely captured omnidirectional video, such as one for a sports event or a concert. This was made possible by streaming user viewing areas in real time at high resolution. The technologies are demonstrated to show their potential application to sports.