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Technology

The Matrix Meets The NFL 155

Posted by michael from the can-they-dub-in-Trinity? dept.
wirehead_rick writes "Imagine 'The Matrix' style special effects for the replay of sports action. Being able to see a 360-degree stop action view of that receiver's foot on the line in the end zone." USA Today covers some whiz-bang video technology being debuted in the Super Bowl.
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The Matrix Meets The NFL More

The Matrix Meets The NFL

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  • They need to combine this "new" technology with that weird panoramic-style camera that they used in the movie "A League of Their Own". It would create a whole new spin on the instant replay, while being helpful to officials. Now if they would only adopt this for all NFL games, and for other sports as well...

  • Before anyone posts anything funny... (Score:3)

    by Glowing Fish ( 155236 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @02:39AM (#485388) Homepage

    Before anyone posts anything attempting to be funny by having football players quoting dialogue from the Matrix, remember that every possible parody of the Matrix has already been done, and is no longer funny.
    Thank you

  • Whoa (Score:3)

    by Klaruz ( 734 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @02:40AM (#485389)
    Now we just need to give the players some guns like in the last boy scout. Then have the mics in their gear pick up a player saying 'Whoa.'

    I can see it now, the cameras pan in, millions of pixels are processed, and the result shows the crowd reality, or does it?

    As the crowd sees the instant replay of the player scoring the touchdown you can hear whispers in the crowd saying he is the chosen one.
  • Drat, you should have warned me sooner. At least I threw in something from the last boyscout. That's gotta be worth something... Right?

  • So now our sports will look great, but probably suck. I wrote all about how much The Matrix annoyed me at geek-ware.co.uk [geek-ware.co.uk]

    I wonder if the football players will be wearing expensive sunglasses.




    ==============================
  • I wonder if this technology would let you choose where you wanted the camera pointed/located on the field? That would be truely cool.

  • I fscked up the url with fancy target attributes, sorry.

    So now our sports will look great, but probably suck. I wrote all about how much The Matrix annoyed me at geek-ware.co.uk [geek-ware.co.uk]

    I wonder if the football players will be wearing expensive sunglasses.




    ==============================

  • Actually your post was funny. I was thinking of trying to write something along the same line, but knew people would make fun of me, so I just decided to be a spoilsport :)

  • Mmmmm Tennis (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If they could marry this technology with digital tv so you control the camera, imagine how much fun you could have watching ladies tennis. Come on panty boys, you're with me on this one aren't ya.
  • ...and dumping the replay footage of highlight plays into a Quicktime VR movie for download from NFL.com could be very, very cool.

    information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.

  • Check this paragraph from the article:

    Keeping a secret

    EyeVision was developed under utmost secrecy after CBS Sports President Sean McManus gave the go-ahead for $2.5 million in research. In the end
    CBS Sports got input from rocket scientists at Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and equipment and cameras from Japan and the Internet.

    That just blew my mind! Where is this place on the Internet that produces equipment and cameras? How do I convert it from bits to physical hardware?
  • The second-greatest advancement in viewing sports in all of history (the first being, of course, the instant replay). I have thought, for several years, that the only thing keeping officials from calling a completely correct game, looking at plays from each camera angle they have, is that the fans wouldn't enjoy the amount of time that they spent reviewing the play. With this one camera trick (though it's really not any trick at all), referees can now not only see the play, but see the play from almost any angle regardless of where the cameras were positioned. Better yet, it can be seen in one feel swoop with one video. Absolutely wonderful. I hope all stations can adopt this for football. The only disadvantage to this is that it can be easily overused. CBS: Go ahead and show it off on Sunday night, but in the regular season, please only use it when necessary!

    Later,

  • how does that help blind referees?
  • They don't need Matrix [imdb.com] technology! They just need some of that technology from Enemy of the State [imdb.com] ....

    you know, where they take the single POV security camera from the lingerie shop and make a 3D model out of it ... now that was coo --

    oh wait, it was also impossible (did it irk anyone else when they saw it?) ... :)

    rLowe

  • Soccer World Cup (Score:4)

    by mindriot ( 96208 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @03:12AM (#485401)
    At the Soccer World Cup in 1998, here in Germany they used a virtual soccer field, freezing all players in their current position and then allowing rotation and zoom in the virtual model, making it possible to determine, for example, an off-side position and see the game situation from a player's point of view, for example before a free kick. The system was pretty accurate, and apparently working automatically plus maybe some manual corrections of the players' postures. OK, that Matrix style thingy may look cooler, but I think this virtual field was much more flexible and practical... it should have used real textures only...
  • As long as they aren't superimposing a Pringles logo on the football or anything else when they're showing the replay, I'll be happy.

    Oh, wait, I hope I didn't just give them an idea. Oh boy.

    --Bernie
  • So do we also get special features where we can 'follow the white rabbit'? ;-)

    Moz.
  • This thing was created for Sport but imagine this would make a kick ass Security Camera System. Now I can see people stealing my stuff in 360 rotation. I also see this as a great system for thing like televised surgeies. I can see the doctor from all the angles. Great teaching tool.
  • pfft, I've had this for at least a half a year now. I've been known to spend lots of time creating my own 'bullet-time football' replays in NFL2k1, just to annoy my friends. :)
  • how does that help blind referees?

    in many sports already (cricket for example) a third umpire has been in place to make that final decision if the two on the field cannot make up their mind or there is some point of uncertaincy in the decision.

    now, this advancement is cool.. could be a bit of a problem if there are other people in the way of the 33 camera's :)) they never demo'd this thing with a field FULL of players :P i guess the ladies will be very happy.. some close ups of some NFL butts in those rotational shots :)

    i dont think there will be replacement umpires :) however, it may help clarify those "oh bullsh*t" type discussions we have on the couch when there is a penalty that we think is unlawfully cranted :)

  • Cool, but... (Score:4)

    by Eg0r ( 704 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @03:24AM (#485407)
    Just wondering,

    Okay, so for a smooth rotation, the object is at the center of the cameras, all having the same lense settings.

    If not at the center, then you have to compensate for the error with matched zooms so that you don't have, as the viewer, the weird impression of a comet like elliptical motion (not even as they only cover 270 degrees).

    Even if you compensate for the distance with a zoom, what about the fields of view? how do you morph your different frozen camera views into one smooth video sequence, when all your field of views are different?

    My (wild) guess is that you'll see quite a lot of these instant replays at the center of the field...

    Ubercool nontheless... I wonder how much processing power you need to render your animation... and how automated the whole thing really is. 33 cameras, say 3 second animation @ 60 frames/s, 800x600 that's 247Mb uncompressed @ 24bit/pixel and 32 different morphs to compute with say 5 images each... I wonder how many anchor points you use in such a morph. Anyway, sounds highly //isable to me, so 32 processors on a nifty board or a beowulf?

    ---

  • I always took that to be a tongue-in-cheek take off of Blade Runner! 8)

    Don't forget that the director was Tony Scott, Ridley's brother...

    C'mon, Enemy of the State wasn't a bad caper movie, as they go...
  • Yeah, here in the UK, Sky Sports (providers of all things good re football), do this, especially to determine whether the ball crossed the goal line.

    Having said that, they've stopped using it as much as they used to when they first introduced it. Andy Gray has a nice(ish) replay/analysis tool - a LARGE touchscreem "TV", showing the play, with some clever(ish) s/w allowing him to eg highlight an individual player, track him, draw arrows, etc.

    Every time I see him use it though, I want to shout to the manufacturers (FASTER PROCESSOR, or maybe MORE MEMORY), as there's a horrible 1 or 2 second delay between him doing something and the results showing up.

  • ...I mean, it's just software, right? CBS doesn't deserve to profit off of this just for putting up the $2.5 million to actually develop the system. ;)
  • ... geeks actually know what sport is?
  • "Plans for EyeVision include erasing players from the video who aren't critical to the play and putting a transparent plane on the goal line to show distinctly whether the ball penetrated the plane and crossed the goal line."

    Ok, that's creepy.
  • I'd prefer to use the term "improbable" in that case. If you could discover the perfect prediction algorithm... why not?!? They did mention in the movie that the computer was only predicting. That kinda stuff isn't impossible to do with computers, since our minds can predict that kinda stuff OK. After all, our minds are just genetic computers. while(alive == TRUE) { // think. }
  • You sound like the kind of guy who'll put up nekkid pictures of your gf when she dumps you

    URL?

    -- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!

  • Going off on a tangent with your mention of cricket, this would actually be a huge help for the third umpire in cricket - it's not uncommon that a decision will go to the third umpire and there isn't a camera angle that shows all of the things the umpire needs to see to make a decision. It seems that this technology would go a long way towards eliminating that.
  • It should be pointed out that the "Virtual Camera [virtualcamera.com]" technique saw its first prominent use in commercials for The Gap, long before "The Matrix" was produced.

    With that in mind, I believe this technique should no longer be called "bullet time". Instead, it should be called "khaki time".

  • For insfance, can if fix my keypoard?

    Since Fuesday, everyfime I press f, I gef an f.
    And everyfime I press p, i gef a p!!!
    Fyping has pecome an apsolufe nighfmare.

    Oh well,
    I feel a pif peffer for geffing if off my chesf.
    Fhanks for lisfening.
  • Are interpolation frames being generated? It's hard to tell from the clips. Otherwise, it's just "stick a bunch of cameras on the field and rotate the views quickly." Neat, but hardly the Matrix.
  • "In the end CBS Sports got input from rocket scientists at Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and equipment and cameras from Japan and the Internet."

    Wow, I must've been under a rock. Why didn't someone post on slashdot when they declared the Internet it's own nation?

  • Well, Dr. Yacoub, why don't you just go and do some more of your genetic tampering so that the polar caps will freeze more and the penguins will have a better habitat?

  • Anyone else check out that video?? A little jerky and I'm pretty sure I saw the ball actually change its position for a frame or two when the camera was mid-swing... Hopefully thats just due to the poor quality video...
  • The sunglasses I am not worried about. I just got a vision of the Giants in black vinyl hotpants - and it was not pretty. Root Down ~#

  • one word... (Score:4)

    by coreman ( 8656 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @04:14AM (#485424) Homepage
    Cheerleaders!
  • I wonder how much processing power you need to render your animation...

    I'm guessing that they're not going to be using computers to do this. They'll just have a video signal from all 33 cameras available, and instead of switching between them with buttons like in normal linear editing, they use a dial.

  • Cool now I will have two reasons to watch the super bowl, the commercials, and the instant replay. This might be tough because I often would go get food, or goto the bathroom during the game in fear of missing a funny commercial.

  • This won't be used in the game (Score:3)

    by w.p.richardson ( 218394 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @04:20AM (#485427) Homepage
    If you are familiar with either of the teams in the Super Bowl, then you know there won't be any "foot on the line" touchdowns. Hell, there won't event be a score. This will be a 4 overtime scoreless tie, eventually decided by a safety. Nice to see that this will be available, as it means that it will sooner or later make it into all games.
  • All examples of how this has already been done years ago.

    Soccer Set from Orad brought this to European and other countries several years ago.

    Kenny's Kourt, on TBS and TNT has been doing this since SPRING 1999 with basketball, right here on American television.
    ----------

  • It'll never happen. Unless it becomes available as a pay-and-pay-and-pay-per-view. This is the NFL and CBS we're talking about. These aren't exactly the most philanthropic organizations in the world. They're not doing it because it can provide the fan with excellent coverage of a beloved past-time. They're doing it to attract more customers so they can squeeze as much dough out of them as possible. If they can get even more suckers to pay for this extra frill, do you think they'll really provide it for free? The almighty is what is at work here.

    I think this is a very cool use of a new technology and I'd love to see it provided just they way you suggest. I'm just too much of a realist(cynic?) to expect it.

    Naeser's Law:

  • One problem that the third umpire had at the moment is that he can't use multiple angles at once. If the video feeds were timestamped (or even better synchronised) and they could be viewed concurrently, a lot of run-out decisions would be made easier. (ie one angle shows the bales, while another shows the crease.)

    It would be cool, though, to see a diving Mark Waugh catch in bullet time, although the focal point in cricket moves around faster than in NFL so the robotics would need to be quicker.

    And while we're getting completely tangential, I've sometimes though about the possibilities of having an spatial array of microphones recording, so that a DSP directional mike effect could be extracted later... might have solved the "can't bowl, can't throw" problem sooner.

    Good to see cricket discussion on ./, my two biggest time wasters, together at last :)

    --zaugg

    .sig free for 10 months

  • I've actually had the synchronised multiple-angle thought myself... can't quite understand why it can't be done, but I'm sure there's a technical reason somewhere.

    The diving Mark Waugh catch would be cool, though. And it is nice to combine /. and cricket for once :)

  • I read a book way back in elementary school (1980's) about somebody in the 21st century who created a computer system to completely simulate sporting events. You could pick and choose players from any era and pit them against one another. Since it's all just "pixels", with enough processing power, it wasn't possible to tell the illusion from the reality. How are away from this are we? Kind of like the matrix, except we're just plugged into our TV's instead of something in the back of our heads. How long before anything you see or hear on TV could just have easily come out of someone's computer as a live camera? We know that CBS has been doing this on a small scale already. Man, you could come up with some pretty good conspiracy theories really quickly with this ammo... I'm sure some /.er will! Cheers!
  • What you really need is a tracking signal attached to each player so that you can pin-point any of them automagically with a very small error margin.

    The best lense setting on each camera may be obtained by minimising the differences between frames from close cameras.
    For a real 360 loop, that'll probably give you a global error minimum too, with camera 1 getting minimised with camera N.
    I'm not too sure about the morphing, but it seems feasable with RBFs or something similar when you already have close images.

    The point is, they already have at least 50% of the installation, I wonder how much it would cost to have proper morphing instead of crappy frame switching...

    Do you think I could ask for a million or 2 to implement it? You just gotta love these Ph.D. in blablabla thingies attached to your business card ;-)

    ---

  • Near the end of the article there's a brief mention of adding and removing individual objects from the scene. So EyeVision very likely works by reconciling all the 2D views into a 3D model, which is then re-rendered from a new viewpoint.

    This goes by the name of "image-based modeling and rendering," and one of the the pioneers [debevec.org] of the field developed the technique that was used for the notorious bullet-time shot. Another group demonstrated their realtime IBMR-from-video [mit.edu] process at Siggraph 2000.

  • The Ridiculopathy.com superbowl spot will air during the second quarter.

    We had to sign on for the air-time last year at this time, and since everyone else was doing it, we didn't want to be left behind. I've had "rais a million dollars" on my Palm's To-Do list for most of a year- and you know how that goes.

    Due to cash constraints, it will be only six seconds long.

    It took us months to concept and complete the spot. The cost to produce it was nearly as expensive as the price of the air-time.

    The Making of The Ridiculopathy.com Superbowl Spot [ridiculopathy.com]

    download the spot (file will be taken down on Sunday) [ridiculopathy.com]

  • My Understanding is several Vegas Casinos already have this technology. On TLC or the Discovery Channel I saw a report about vegas Casino Security and IIRC they showed this exact technology. Chainsaw

    -Jason
  • Don't worry. They're already doing this in news broadcasts, too. Wasn't this on /. a while back? You know, CBS plastering their logo all over the place, replacing an NBC viewscreen with the CBS logo, etc.
  • Hey, thanks for that! the team's website seems to be here [mit.edu]...

    Pretty cool stuff! I always wanted to play with something along these lines, but never got round to actually try it (blame slashdot for it ;)

    ---

  • Using this 270 Deg technology, and 3d Photo Software (like Photo 3d, Image 3d, and others) they could be building a database of 3 dimentional players. They mention the can remove a player from the scene, heck they could add a player from this 3d database just as easly. What happens when the broadcaster and the sports team are owned by the same company? Ever watched the Braves on TBS? If they can add/remove players, can they add/remove footbals? Baseballs? Sidlines? Foul Poles? "Ted says make that look like a home run, it wont change the game, but it will sure help ratings" "Ted says remove rocker from the lockerroom video, he's about to say something stupid again."

    -Jason
  • I think (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that "bullet time" was developed during the Matrix but first seen in the Gap commercials. Remember, post production for a Movie takes a hell of a lot longer than a 30 second commercial.

  • I find it interesting that the engineers who designed the system referred to the Matrix technology as using still cameras. The technical (as opposed to artistic) breakthrough of those effects in The Matrix was that they used actual movie cameras, so action could continue during the rotation. The Gap ads (and others) preceding the Matrix used still cameras for that effect; that wasn't new.

    An error I could overlook, but the fact that the creators of CBS's version themselves didn't know this basic fact tends to suggest they didn't bother to do their homework...

    -spc

    http://www.parabon.com [parabon.com]

  • Quote about this (Score:3)

    by TOTKChief ( 210168 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @05:08AM (#485442) Homepage

    Evidently Keanu Reeves heard about this and said, "Yet another shameless use of our ground-breaking technology. I'm sick of all these parodies."

    Told that Trent "Lame Duck" Dilfer and Kerry "Lame Drunk" Collins would be the starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl XXXV, Reeves said, "Whooooa."


    --

  • What else can they borrow from The Matrix? (Score:4)

    by Elkman ( 198705 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @05:09AM (#485443) Homepage
    This new camera thing sounds pretty cool, even though every single car company has been using this technique in their commercials for the past two years. But I think they should borrow a few other things from The Matrix:
    • Whenever a player wants to go to the sidelines, he has to get on a Nokia cell phone (product placement!) and call for an exit.
    • All of the players are wearing black leather trenchcoats and carrying lots of weapons.
    • Skylons appear above the stadium and move around whenever the players touch brightly colored stones. (Oh, wait. I'm thinking of the matrix table from "Land of the Lost".)
    • Instead of coaches, players consult The Oracle for advice during the game, and inadvertently knock over a vase during the process.
    • A running back about to be tackled can jump up high in the air, spin around, and roundhouse-kick his opponent and it all looks real.
    • There is no spoon.
  • Omg I just got Hard [hardocp.com] thinking about it! Seriously - I love women's tenis. Lindsay Davenport is my girl. Holeesh!t! Lots of people seem to go loco over Anna cause of a few pics of her being particularily arid in the jungle. Davenport is where its at man. Tenis skirts own - thank you Wimbeldon (sp?) for not changing that rule. Amen.

    Question - what is the difference between 'lights' and 'hard'?

    Answer: You can go to bed with the lights on.
  • Although I believe the different methods produce similar results, the NFL stuff is the work of Takeo Kanade, the former director of the CMU Robotics Institute. Check out the page here [cmu.edu] for information on the research which I assume led to this.
  • That "The Matrix" is now being used as an adjective. Guess that's when you really know the impact a movie has had on society.
  • Yea - its insane - also newsstations covering protests will edit out placerds etc. I blame the Washington Post - they were the first to edit 'unimportant' items from news media.

  • Maybe, but who cares? That was for soccer, the most boring sport in the world.


    --

  • Your you live video and some quick replays yes, but they did mention that it also had the ability to erase unimportant people for replays, that takes modeling
  • It's gotta be invisible to the home viewer, and practically flawless in design, to work. The first down line they use now is a good example. Fox's ugly "shadow puck" for hockey, complete with electronic trails every time the puck was fired, is not.
  • I meant "For your live video..." not "Your you live video.." -grin-
  • I'd prefer to use the term "improbable" in that case

    Okay, that part was improbable, but the part where you saw a satellite with a massive radio reflector dish point towards the earth and get VISUAL images was just too much for me. I mean, sure, technically light is just EM radiation, but I'm pretty sure that a mesh RF dish won't work for collecting a visual image.

  • I believe that the technology popularised by the Matrix (and used before that in several commercials) is already patented. A brief search on google failed to confirm this, tho.

    As for the erasing part, that is pretty cool, technically; they'd have to pretty much incorporate all the visual inputs into one 3d interpretation of the scene, and then recreate the scene from the desired viewpoint. I had no idea that 3d visual research was that far advanced. Or can anyone suggest a Q-n-D approach?

    Johan
  • I understand that movies take a long time to make, but I am fairly certain that the technique in question was developed independently, first used in commercials, and then later used in movies such as "The Matrix".

    I am not sure if the people behind the Matrix used equipment from the "Virtual Camera" people, or if they just rolled their own. Probably the latter, since the virtual camera website [virtualcamera.com] makes no metion of "The Matrix".

  • A nerd is someone whose life revolved around computers and technology. A geek is someone whose life revolves around computers and technology, and likes it

    Good...but try this one:

    "A geek knows he's a geek and revels in it. A nerd is a geek who thinks he's normal."

  • Dude, just because the "massive radio dish" was the most prominent feature, doesn't mean the moviemakers were trying to imply that was what was doing the actual sensing! All satellites look that way -- the dish is always the biggest part (other than perhaps the solar panels). The cameras were there, they were just hard to see: some small little piece down in one corner.

    What, you wanted to see a giant Nikon floating out in space? :v)

  • While I can appreciate the humor, I do have to take exception here...

    This new camera thing sounds pretty cool, even though every single car company has been using this technique in their commercials for the past two years.

    I'm sorry, are you seriously comparing camera technology developed for a live event with camera technology for commercials? Commercials are staged in advance, painstakingly prepared, and touched up again and again. What they use for filming commercials isn't even close to what they're doing here.

    It's so far removed, even if you just consider the fact that this new technology is realtime. And yes, it is realtime. They have to track/zoom the cameras in realtime to be able to play back an instant replay, and the camera tracking and zoom is the really hard part of this, not the stitching together of video streams to make a 270 degree rotation.

    -Todd
    ---

  • Re:A league of their own (Score:3)

    by Apotsy ( 84148 ) on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @06:51AM (#485458)
    You are correct that the 3D camera technique was popularized by The Matrix, but invented before that movie was made. It was used in commercials such as those for The Gap, and is called virtual camera [virtualcamera.com]. VC has their own camera rigs, which are patented, but I believe the people working on The Matrix seem to have built their own rigs, and thus avoided having to pay any royalty fees. (Notice that there is little mention of The Matrix on the virtual camera website.)
  • That was my first thought too... But then I realized that they could also show replays of say, Tony Siragusa and Ray Lewis putting the Malacci Crunch on Kerry Collins (or Michael Strahan and Jesse Armstead on Trent Dilfer) and that would be even more Matrix-like. 'Whoa, look at that whiplash!'

    I'd still rather have a Raiders-Vikings match-up that the Stupor Bowl that we'll probably have to endure...

  • They already have this - its the XFL!!!

    http://www.xfl.com
  • So...tell me, why do almost all athletes in professional European sports leagues have 99% of their bodies covered with sponsor logos?
  • Giants: 14, Ravens: 11. CBS is now ready to call the superbowl for the Ravens.
  • Yeah, the only scoring attempts will be [insert player here] trying to hook up with Britney Spears before she hits the stage at halftime.
    --
  • Well, other than the fact that FOX lost the NHL contract (to ABC), they were making the "glow puck" a bit less painful -- e.g., only "glowing" the puck when it was out of camera view (down on the near-side boards, for example). But those "vapor trails" really needed to go...

    --

  • What really sucks... (Score:5)

    by Mignon ( 34109 ) <satan@programmer.net> on Wednesday January 24, 2001 @07:24AM (#485469)
    "What do you need, Coach?"
    "Touchdowns. Lots of touchdowns."

    What really sucks about this is that now I'm tempted to actually watch the game. And it's not like it's some cool half-time stunt - this could happen at any time during the game. There goes my afternoon.

  • There will be no off-Broadway tryout for the technology. The process will make its debut in front of 130 million viewers.

    See, this right here makes me more than a little skeptical about how well this thing was engineered. If it was 2 years in the making anyway, it seems like the least they could do would be to hook it up a few days in advance and take some rotating retakes of, oh, the groundskeeper replacing sod or something.

    Or at least take accurate measurements of the dimensions of the stadium and set up a demo in an airplane hangar someplace. While it would make for some of the coolest replays ever, I think their efforts towards secrecy and "adventure" are going to make for a barely-functional system that won't live up to its hype.

    also, there was a line in there about how this would "prove conclusively" if certain passes were received and whatnot, but don't you really only need 1 really good angle for that?

  • -rant
    It makes me sad to be an American when something like this develops. Joe Sixpack doesn't care about this technology when it could be used to cover newsworthy events. Hey, let's take another look at that assassination attempt to see WHO was actually firing. NO WAY, Let's make sure that the reciever made his two steps in bounds before he went out!

    It is depressing when I watch someone's eyes glaze over when a football game is on. People spend entire holidays sitting on their fat asses feeding their faces and watching the same moronic game over and over again all day.

    Why wasn't this developed for use by a news agency? Was it a question of funding? If so, why then does the sports dept. get that amount of funding?

    American football is a children's game being played all to often by overgrown babies.

    -/rant

    LK

  • Hey, let's take another look at that assassination attempt to see WHO was actually firing. NO WAY, Let's make sure that the reciever made his two steps in bounds before he went out!


    The thing with sport is that you can tell with some certainty that something worth filming is going to happen within a certain range of space and time.

    If you could do the same with asassinations, then, sure, you could point a few dozen cameras at it and generate bullet-time recreations. Or, you could intervene and prevent it from happening. Let me know when you have this technology.

    Now there are probably newsworthy events that could possibly benefit from this stuff -- but I can't for the life of me think of anything that would give you long enough to set up the equipment *and* is action-oriented enough to warrant the effort.
    --
  • Yeah, it could happen at any time. Expect it while Britney Spears is "singing" and "dancing" on the stage.
    --
  • Some other effects they're coming out with sound pretty cool:

    Plans for EyeVision include erasing players from the video who aren't critical to the play and putting a transparent plane on the goal line to show distinctly whether the ball penetrated the plane and crossed the goal line.


    The goal line plane will actually be kinda cool, sort like the 1st down line they have now, but a big wall. They'll probably soon add sound effects of crashing glass sounds when they break through...

    And removing other players sounds neat, but I would think that everyone out there is effecting some part of the play. Although, it could be super-sweet for training videos.

    Jason
  • Here is a link to more info on the technical details
    http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~virtualized-reality/ [cmu.edu]
  • If not at the center, then you have to compensate for the error with matched zooms so that you don't have, as the viewer, the weird impression of a comet like elliptical motion (not even as they only cover 270 degrees).

    I don't think so...

    If the cameras weren't at the same distance, but had the same field of view, the viewer would have the POV of someone quickly running around the sidelines, focussed on a single spot. It might look a little wired, but having a constant field, and getting closer and further would be more like what the eye has to interpret in real life. It would probably be much easier to follow than zooming in and out as you run around the field.

    All you'd need is a bunch of cameras with linked and equal amounts of zoom, pointing at the same spot.

    Greg

  • I wonder if I could buy a bunch of Kensington webcams(which are selling on clearence at Best Buy), a big USB hub, and do my own bullet time stuff at home. Anyone? Anyone?
  • It actually is an advancement over the tech used in the Matrix. It is pretty cool, too - too bad I am not a huge football fan by any means.

    Essentially, in the Matrix still cameras were used, all fired in sequence, aranged "around" the point of action. This "in action" panning strip was then enhanced/scrubbed with a computer to make it cleaner, and more presentable.

    What is being done in the Superbowl is similar - but replace each still camera with a video camera, and feed the frames in a computer. Now, as the action is going on at the "action point", you have 33 streams, all from different angles, running and capturing frames. Now, think of these strips of frames - if you played all 33 in sync (so that frame 1 of strip A is played at the same time as frame 1 of strip B), and switched "along" the sequence of the 33 cameras, you could get full video along those points, at any angle. Or, you could show various angles (as seen from camera 27). Pan from 1 to 33, while moving the video forward, or reverse, and you have full motion panning, through time, along an arc.

    Then, the CBS engineers go one step further - they have mounted all of these video cameras on robotic pan/tilt/zoom platforms - very precise platforms - all working in concert to all point at the same 3D coordinate in the stadium. I would imagine the software to be quite complex to manage all of that, to manage the calculations, the control, the capture, playback, review, etc. The system to store the video frame streams would have to be pretty huge as well, to do it all in real time, at TV quality, for over 30 streams. I mean, for one stream at 16 bit quality - 30 fps - say 640x480 video - for one second of video that would be 17 MB! Over 30 streams would be half a gig - every second! I would imagine a parallel video RAID-like system for this, to get a few seconds of video. Entirely doable, very custom, I would imagine.

    I am sure these cameras can also be used in "teams" as well, or individually. I think (I could be wrong here) that the motion of the streams would cancel out the need to do real-time interpolation of the images as was done for the Matrix (which was done because the raw strip of images was very jumpy). I might be wrong about that, though (depending on how far apart the cameras are spaced would determine the jumpiness as well)...

    All I can say, if what I am thinking is correct - is wow!

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • see a 360-degree stop action view of that receiver's foot on the line in the end zone.

    I dont care, unless said reciever is Carrie-Anne Moss [carrieannemoss.co.uk]


    --
  • I always thought they had access to two security cams, and extrapolated the 3-D architecture based on those. This isn't impossible, or even improbable. they're doing it right now at Berkeley...
    Kevin Fox
  • The Football World Cup in France 98 (soccer for our American breven) had this technology - some off-side rulings where analysed with this technology, but after the game. What would really be cool is if the processing power existed to do this in real time, with a 3D TV standand in process which allows the viewer to rotate the camera angle anywhere they want.

    Fans of EA Sports titles have enjoyed this replay facility for over 4 years now.
  • I'm 6'1" and weigh about #220. I'm not fat by any stretch of the imagination. I've been a student of Go Ju Do, Kenpo, Shotokan, Jui Jitsu and Aikido. You couldn't kick my ass if I were asleep.

    Get out of your dream world, moron and realize that there are somethings that are better to get excited about than whacking off at your computer while viewing newsgroup porn, because I know you don't get no chicks with an attitude like that.

    So, you get excited by watching all of those big burly men in tight shiny pants huh? I do alright in the "chicks" department. I'm no Cassanova, but I get my fair share of action.

    At least football promotes all of the basic fundamentals of humanity. Violence, intelligence, strategy, teamwork, and winner takes all.

    Intelligence? Dream on! Just listen to the average football player give an interview. Because they were good at running while holding a ball, or at stopping people who run while holding a ball, they got an easy time in school. They never had to learn anything because the were good at playing a game. For grown men to do irreparable damage to their bodies for a GAME is not intelligent.

    I bet you got your ass beat every day you went to school because you were a whiny bitchy little wimp that couldn't hack it.

    I gave more ass kickings that I got. Sometimes to dimwitted jocks.

    Are you one of those Al Bundy types, who sits on the sofa all day, with one hand down his pants and the other rubbing on his fat belly, while you watch the game, talking about how you "used to play a little high school ball."?

    People like you make me embarrassed to be an American.

    LK
  • Assassinations are rarely random. People worth assassinating are in public for short periods of time, usually in a small designated area.

    It wouldn't be terribly difficult to set up as preparation for a press conference.

    While we're at is, why not boxing? Why not hockey? Why not soccer? Why not tennis? Why not gymnastics? Each of those sports could use this technology just as much as, if not more than the NFL. But the mindless drones who are ass locked to the couch on sunday will make it financially possible to pull off.

    LK
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I played football in highschool, but it was just a game. It's not an amalgamation of real life events and values. It's a GAME. I was also on my school's chess team. I was also on the track team.

    Martial arts is not a "sport" in the traditional sense of the term.

    I never got beaten up by a football player. So you can hang your pseudo psychoanalysis up, you'll never make a living at it.

    The strategy of the game? Offense. Move the ball that way. Defense. Keep them from moving the ball this way. It's simple. That's why so many simpletons are enthralled by it.

    Then again, you are just a troll. That's why you're anonymous.

    LK
  • Did it occur to you that maybe this is only a debut, and will LIKELY spread to many other endeavors both sporting and otherwise?

    Yes, and the fact that it took a football game to roll it out is sad.

    2) You shouldn't make a big deal out of how idiotic you think football is. as your links tell me, you happen to be obsessed by playing computer games over a LAN.

    Enjoy? Yes. Obsessed with? No. On every sunday afternoon I don't have my hindquarters glued to a chair while I game. Many (not all, but many) football heads don't move except to get another beer, and to um, recycle their previous beer.

    I didn't like bozo jocks in high school either, but I like football. sorry you think I'm a moron.

    Whether or not you're one of the morons that I was ranting about depends on whether football is a passtime or an obsession.

    LK
  • Gee, Sparky, I watch football. I guess that means I'm some kind of fat-assed moron.

    If (and that's IF) you are one of those Al Bundy types whose eyes glaze over when that first football game starts on any given sunday and you don't move until the last one is over, yes.

    News agencies are too busy trying to figure out how to cram more useless gerbage into their already fatuous programs of rapidly declining relevance.

    Like the scrolling displays of football scores at the bottom on the screen?

    It should be fairly obvious why sport organizations have large amount of money: many people watch sports, and the sports organizations sell their eyeballs for large sums of cash.

    Because these Al Bundy's won't get their fat asses off of the sofa, or change the channel.

    It makes no sense to me that a love for play and for learning should be supressed when a person gets old.

    I have a couple of little cousins that would love to play candyland with you.

    LK
  • Hell, there won't event be a score

    Yeah, they said the same thing about the Vikings/Giants game a couple weeks ago, except they were talking about the wrong team.

    Ouch!
  • Oh, I get it. You long ago stopped using your brain for anything other than propping up your wounded ego and mental masturbation. No great tragedy, I suppose.

    On sunday when you're inthralled in football, I'll be reading. To do any one thing to the exclusion of all others is idiocy. Why don't football zombies see this?

    LK
  • I was thinking that morphs are needed to make a transition from camera to camera... just switching from one camera to the next seems to me it's going to look a rather jerky motion.

    When you have a 100 cameras, things probably get much better... it wouldn't be used otherwise ;-)

    ---

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