I’m fairly keen to start capturing some polo in 180deg 3D VR.
Earlier this month I went to my local apple store and had a demo of the Apple Vision Pro. First things first, if you haven’t already done so, book a 30 minute demo. You won’t regret it. The whole thing blew my mind. My partner and I have a 6 month old and when when I saw the immersive footage of the birthday cake scene I teared up… It felt like a bloody time machine… I had no intention of laying out USD$3500 on a Vision Pro but once I saw the nature of the immersive footage I went home and started researching 3d capable cameras. I ended up buying a Kandao EGO just for pics and vids of Noa. It’s such a cool device. It comes with a viewer that you clip on to view in 3D. I figured that this would at least make my memories forwards compatible with the next generation of viewing devices which I have no doubt will be 3D VR. If you have children or do anything that might be fun to relive in 3d I highly recommend the EGO. I managed to pick one up for USD$380. I’d recommend a second battery and the fastest and largest memory card you can find. Anyway, that’s how I ended up dipping my toes in immersive video.
Also included in the Apple Vision Pro demo is some ridiculously high resolution immersive video produced in association with Blackmagic Design. There are two examples of it being used to capture sport - one basketball and the other football. I swore out loud numerous times during the demo but the loudest expletive by far was when the premier league footage from behind goal came on during the final part of the demo. It was incredible… It led me immediately to consider whether I could do something similar at lower resolution than the kajillion K blackmagic stuff for a reasonable price.
One downside of the current workflow is that it requires a camera operator or you have to capture in 180/360 and manually pan in post production, as the Connect Bike Polo crew have done in the past. Hats off to Alex from Connect because I believe he does this frame by frame… Of course, if we were all using VR headsets to view the footage we could just follow the ball ourselves… But that’s unlikely to happen in the near future.
Here’s the rub though - the majority of us will have vr headsets within 24-36 months… Consider that the Metaquest 3s is due to drop soon with a pricetag of USD$349-399. This is a standalone device meaning that to view livestreamed vr content in 2d and 3d this is all you need. No fancy gaming pc or new mac…
The question is, if all of the tournaments currently livestreamed on youtube did so in vr would you be tempted to buy one? Having seen the sample footage - assuming that a reasonable quality version is achievable on a livestream - I would buy one immediately. Even more so if the footage were 3D. Doubly so if the content was uploaded after the fact in higher resolution than is possible via livestream.
There are a number of advantages of VR from a production perspective. No camera operator is necessary for the main camera, replays are able to capture the entire court making for even better game analysis after the fact and multiple angles can be captured on the day and put together in post without the need for a single camera operator… There aren’t fantastic workflows yet for editing 3d footage so perhaps multiple angles is a pipe dream for now but single camera continuous footage is no harder than what we are working with now and would appear far easier than cropping a 180/360 ij post production for follwing play.
I just pre-ordered a Calf Visense 3d VR 180. Whenever I get it I will upload some footage and people with access to VR headsets can give me some feedback.
D.