Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) recently developed a system to automatically convert 2-D video of actual soccer games to 3-D video—and they did it all by using FIFA 13.
This 3-D video is no joke—it can be played over any 3-D device, including all 3-D televisions, devices like the Oculus Rift, and even Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard headset that turns smartphones into 3-D displays. In addition, as this technology automatically converts video to 3-D, you can watch three dimensional soccer matches in real time.
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Right now, we can really only watch movies in 3-D. This is done by having many visual effects studios manually go over video and animate every frame that involves 3-D imaging, which can involve hundreds of animators at a time. However, this live 3-D soccer technology can happen instantaneously because the researchers exploited technology that already has 3-D maps—the video game FIFA 13.
In general, today’s video games have very detailed 3-D maps of the virtual landscape in order for them to appear more realistic. As you move across the video game environment, the game adjusts this 3-D map and then projects a 2-D image that you see on your screen.
The researchers used these images on FIFA 13 by using Microsoft’s video game analysis tool PIX to take continuous screenshots of FIFA gameplay and then extract the 3-D map from each shot. They then used an algorithm that gauges the difference between two images to find the screenshots that best captured the angles and positions of the game’s environment. These selected images (there were tens of thousands of these) were stored in a database.
Finally, they programmed a system that looks at the 2-D soccer match, scans through the database images, and finds matches that it uses to create the 3-D stream. Processing each frame of video takes only a third of a second, but successive frames can be converted in parallel, meaning that the entire broadcast could be delayed for mere seconds. Even so, the researchers hope to reduce this delay even more.
While this is only available for soccer right now, its not inconceivable that this same process could be used for other sports video games to help create live 3-D viewing. I only pray that this happens quickly—imagine watching all of your favorite team’s games in 3-D!