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With optical tracking technology and high-speed cameras, we can finally capture the full volume of action
A century ago, the greatest innovation in sports was that a radio announcer could transmit his live description of a game right into your living room via radio. Today, we have the opportunity to experience every moment – not just what happens on the field, but what happens inside the players’ bodies! Companies like Emergent Vision Technologies are supplying brands with multiple high-speed camera systems, making volumetric capture of sports action a practical reality. This in turn enables new forms of analytics, 3D model creation for applications like the metaverse, and opportunities for a fully immersive way of viewing sports. Fans have already experienced the power of analytics, enabled by superfast cameras through the use of systems like Sony’s Hawk-Eye. Its optical tracking capability delivers hyper-accurate goal-line technology, which has changed officiating forever – and probably reduced fan conflict. Hawk-Eye was recently adopted by Major League Baseball’s Statcast player analysis platform. “Our partner Hawk-Eye Innovations takes analytics to another level,” says John Ilett, founder and CEO of Emergent Vision Technologies. “Its advanced mechanics can even track the seam
on a baseball, used to determine the type of pitch thrown. Certain analytics in these systems are said to be three times more accurate than its predecessor. Hawk-Eye owns sports analytics and Emergent cameras are under the hood.” High-speed capture technologies in combination – like Emergent’s 10G, 25G and 100G Ethernet cameras – create extensive 3D biometric data about athletes, as well as volumetric capture. This offers a full, 3D representation of the entire playing field. Biomechanics is the study of the structure, function and motion of mechanical aspects of biological systems. In the realm of sports, this means using motion capture to produce graphics relating to an athlete’s body as if it were a
finely tuned machine. This creates incredibly valuable data for coaches, teams and sports scientists, as well as rich visualisations for both fans and commentators. In the early days of motion capture, biomechanic analysis relied on ping-pong ball-like markers placed at significant body landmarks. Their locations were caught by cameras, then translated into motion data. “In the past 20 years, marker-less methods have become the norm for motion capture applications,” explains Ilett. “It now relies upon grabbing images from numerous cameras and reconstructing the body in full 3D. A whole field of players can be tracked, without them having to wear suits covered in ping-pong balls.”
ENCIRCLED Emergent’s
eCapture Pro demo system, as seen at NAB 2022 (above)
BATTER UP Volumetric capture means a play can be modelled in 3D and analysed in depth
38 FEED:XTREME SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022
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