The first Major League Baseball game that fans can watch in virtual reality via Intel True VR will take place Tuesday, and that’s apparently just scratching the surface of what is possible in the future as part of the three-year deal.
“By 2019, you”ll be able to don on your VR headset and go anywhere on the field… and watch the game with maybe a two-second delay,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich told Axios at Recode’s Code Conference on Thursday — the day Intel’s partnership with MLB was announced.
Krzanich earlier in the day on stage at the conference presented a vision of what that could look like from a fan’s perspective.
“Because we voxel-ized everything, you could go down and sit on the pitcher’s mound,” he said. “You’ll be able to sit behind the catcher at home plate. You’ll be able to stand out in the outfield.”
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A voxel is a pixel with volume that at this time enables Intel 360 replay technology to render highlights in 3D, enabling broadcasters and viewers to take a spin around the action.
For the Super Bowl, that meant being able to see downfield from the POV of quarterback Matt Ryan and Tom Brady even though there was no cameras inside their helmets.
“We had approximately 50 high-definition cameras up right around the box level of that stadium all going back to a massive server complex that then basically stitches together in what we call…a voxel,” Krzanich said. “We built billions of that cube real-time. We’re constantly two terabytes of minute of data pushing off this system. What that allows us to do now is completely digitize.
“What we do is we go down into one of those voxels that’s sitting at his eye level, and we look out digitally.”
SB51 POV Brady INT from Replay-Technologies.com on Vimeo.
For the coming NFL season, Intel has plans to deploy this freeD technology in a larger number of NFL stadiums. Preston Phillips, the director of business development for Intel Sports Group, told Fast Company that the company has agreed with the NFL to install the system at 12 stadiums.
The goal, Phillips told the publication, is to eventually supplant the traditional broadcast experience with a fully immersive, real-time VR viewing experience that can put fans right in the middle of the play.
What a virtual sight that would be.